Natasha Lyonne’s Resident “Evil”

Natasha Lyonne comes clean about getting "Evil," enjoying acting again and her feud with Angie Harmon.

You really don’t like watching yourself?

It’s such a weird thing, to sit and look at yourself is so distracting to the psyche. It would be like me standing in front of a mirror and looking at myself all day, trying to find a flaw. That’s probably just my issue, or maybe it’s an old idea that will change at some point. I think I could maybe get the balls to evolve into a better actor if I could stand to watch myself more often, and find out what worked and what didn’t.

I did a day on that movie “13” — they called me to come in and play a prostitute, with Ray Winstone. And so I’m watching Jason Statham run to the monitor after every take — that’s something that would just never occur to me. And it’s not like he was doing an action movie. But I thought that that was so interesting. [There is a brief discussion of a certain movie star style of acting that requires you do as little as possible.]

So the film’s going on this tour all around the country — are you going to be there on Friday (it is playing at Landmark’s Sunshine Theatre on July 30 and 31) for a Q&A?

Yeah, I’m going to be there for both, and I don’t know, maybe I’ll work my way up to watching more of it.

I think if there’s any film you do watch with an audience, it should be this one. I read a quote from Joshua saying that when the shoot was over, you said the experience helped you fall back in love with acting. I kind of think that watching the film in that kind of environment — seeing the effect it has — might help you as well. Not that you need help.

Oh Lord knows I need help — come on! [laughs] Well, I did watch some of it in San Francisco, because the energy was so palpable, it was wild. Certainly I’ve been in bigger movies, but I’ve never experienced anything like this. There were people already dressed up like characters from the movie, and there was some girl doing a whole song and dance number as my character — it was weird. That girl looked more like me than I did, when she was up there. I did not know what the fuck was going on up there — and like, that was not Angie Harmon, that much I could see. I now have hard evidence. [laughing] Have you seen the Phil Spector documentary?

No, not yet.

For some reason, he has built up Tony Bennett as his biggest competition — like, of all people. Phil Spector? Tony Bennett, really? That’s the guy you feel bitter towards in life? And I feel like I did have that moment in this movie — my ideas of who I think I’m supposed to be are so warped. Phil Spector has no business competing or comparing himself with Tony Bennett. They’re not in the same language. And yet I think that a lot of artists do that. You compare yourself to somebody who you think is a peer, and you can totally lose the plot, and not understand that you are nothing like them in the first place, and it was never you versus anybody.

That person for you — I mean, it can’t be Angie Harmon.

What if it was? What if every day I was calling my agent and being like, “Why is it always Angie Harmon?? [laughing] Don’t tell me, I know who got the part: ANGIE HAAAARMON!” The only reason I thought of her is because my dentist today was asking me about her, like: I’m in Hollywood and she’s in Hollywood — surely we know each other. She was like, “How about Angie Harmon’s new show?” And I was like, “Yeah, totally — clean my fucking teeth, whatever you say.” So now I’ve got Angie Harmon on the mind.

I’ll never forget when I had to first visit Dr. Katz, the movie doctor — I’m 16, I’m doing a Woody Allen movie and I’ve gotta go get my cast physical with Dr. Katz. And he looks me dead in the eye and he’s like, “You know who you should look up to? Lauren Hutton.” And it was this very Angie Harmon moment. I mean, I really like Lauren Hutton, in whatever that Richard Gere movie is from the ‘70s, but um, what does that have to do with the fucking tea in China? Like that was the one piece of advice in my life that really stuck with me: Lauuuuren Hutton.

I’ve never been able to understand what the fuck that means. It was like that and Bette Davis saying her only advice for living in Hollywood was “Take Fountain.” Those are really the only two pieces of advice I’ve registered in this whole, 25-year career of mine. I was working with limited information and no parenting whatsoever: Lauren Hutton and “Take Fountain” — and here we are.

It looked like you were having so much fun making this film though — it must have been stressful, it was a quick, low-budget shoot, but what was the set like?

No, it’s true — when I said that to Joshua at the end of the movie [about falling back in love with acting], I really did feel that way. I was so afraid of acting, and what I had distorted or confused myself into believing. I think I thought there were consequences to acting that were dangerous, and I was scared by it.

There was definitely a period, when all the shit went down with me, when I was convinced that I was never going to act again, because I didn’t want to. It took me some years to revisit the idea that maybe there’s a way to do this differently, in a way that’s not running on ego and fear, because that’s a brutal way to live. The feeling of unmet expectations, or disappointing scenes — I don’t know what it was. Maybe I’m just a fucked up individual, I couldn’t even tell you. I mean, I could tell you, but then I’d have to start paying you because you’d be my shrink.

So this movie was, for me, very much, the thing I love about what I do. Which is being surrounded by other creative people, I love the whole environment of San Francisco — it’s not as hectic as Manhattan and it didn’t feel like anyone was even thinking about Hollywood or Us Weekly. People really couldn’t give a fuck. And so I was very, in a kind of hippie way, free to be me.

They say that great directors create an environment that’s a safe place to work, and it did. With such a small crew like that, it feels like everyone’s a human being who wants to be there, and we all just want to make a movie together, and we get to explore stuff and come up with stuff. I do love filmmaking, it’s one of the few things I do love. I just don’t love — I love the show, I hate the business.

Is it just the business or does the actual act of performing have bad associations for you?

I think I’m still trying to reconcile a lot of that stuff, and what’s really helping me with that is theater. I’m not someone who went to acting school, I was just out of the gate, doing it. And I’m so glad, in a way, that I took time off when I did, that I dropped out of the ingénue business, and tried to get my head on straight. I’m glad I got to take that time and come back to this as an adult, not just a child actor who is just being propelled from one thing to the next.

With all this theater stuff that’s going on with me [Lyonne will appear in “Tigers Be Still” at the Black Box Theater in New York beginning September 10th and then in an Off-Broadway production of “Blood From a Stone”] and with this and a couple of other independent movies, I’m learning to have a different relationship with what I do.

I’m learning that it doesn’t have to be as superficial as I thought, or all of those things that made me sick and angry, or maybe me feel heartbroken. I had all these teenage ideas about how full of shit everything was, you know?

But I’ve learned that I really like having an audience, and making people laugh is such a privilege — it’s the one thing that I really enjoy in my life, whether it’s the fucking deli guy or a theater audience. I feel very much myself when I’m doing that. I like finding people in their mood and altering them to have a better time with the whole thing, and perk up — it makes me happy to make people laugh. But from a dark, sick place — it’s not like I’m coming over and doing knock-knock jokes. Basically, I’m coming to terms with the fact that I may just like my job.

“All About Evil” is in the midst of a national tour of midnight shows, including screenings July 30th and 31st in New York. A full schedule can be found here.

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