Nick Dawson talks with filmmakers, musicians and comedians whose work he loves, avoiding the mundane, predictable questions they’ve heard numerous times and instead asking substantive, thoughtful questions that get to the heart of who they are.
Before we get to this week’s guest, some housekeeping: over the past year or so, this podcast has been a little … ad hoc, I guess. But that’s all changing now, as this is episode one of the show’s official first season. Over the next 12 weeks, we have some amazing episodes coming, as I talk with an array of artists whose work is really important to me, and go places other interviews simply don’t go.
Today, my guest is Tatiana Maslany, arguably one of the most gifted actors of her generation, but also maybe one of the most underrated?
She’s best known for her virtuosic performance playing Sarah Manning — and her many, very differentclones — in the TV show Orphan Black. The hugely acclaimed sci-fi thriller series ran five seasons in the mid 2010s and won Maslany a bunch of awards, including an Emmy for Outstanding Lead Actress in a Drama Series.
As a performer, Maslany takes on leading roles with a chameleonic character actor energy, always choosing emotional truth over being showy.
Acting since the age of 9, she has an insanely long and varied resume, with numerous credits across TV, film and theater, not to mention video games and audiobooks. She’s seemingly always working, and was recently seen in HBO’s Perry Mason reboot, the Marvel TV series She-Hulk, Attorney at Law, in which she played the title role, and the Osgood Perkins horror films Keeper and The Monkey.
The reason for our conversation today was her latest project, the new AppleTV+ show Maximum Pleasure Guaranteed, a smart, deftly plotted comedy thriller series which tells the story of Maslany’s Paula, a single mom in a custody battle over her daughter whose online dealings with a cam boy lead her into untold and ever-worsening trouble.
Maximum Pleasure Guaranteed is poppy and fun, but the reason it works so well is Maslany’s central performance, as she brings such humanity to Paula, who we root for because of her flaws, not despite them. It turns a show that would otherwise feel light into something much more substantial.
Maslany is always a very generous and engaged interviewee, and so this conversation went to some really interesting places, as we touched on … how she fell in love her husband over FaceTime, her very unconventional way of turning up for auditions, why she falls asleep thinking about coffee, the hardest time she’s ever had on a movie set, her love of taking COVID tests … and much, much more. — N.D.
Maximum Pleasure Guaranteed is now on AppleTV+ – go stream it!
This episode was produced by Myron Kaplan and the theme music is by The Range.
Nobody’s Ever Asked Me That now has a Substack, so head there to check out all of our past episodes, plus subscribe to get access to exclusive audio and video content!
Next week on Nobody’s Ever Asked Me That, my guest is filmmaker Zia Anger …
Featured image of Tatiana Maslany by Sela Shiloni is used here with permission.
