Tatiana Maslany on ‘Orphan Black’: Best TV Performance Ever?

Tatiana Maslany as ‘Orphan Black’s’ clones (left to right): Sarah, Alison, Cosima, Rachel, and Helena

As I’ve said before, I’m not big on awards, especially those handed out by the entertainment industry.  The bequeathed statuettes do more to signify a snapshot of the industry at that particular moment in time, rather than a bid for posterity.  The fact that Orson Welles, one of the world’s greatest filmmakers, won only two Oscars, one for co-writing Citizen Kane and the other an honorary award, tells me that industry self-recognition should not be taken seriously. 

However, for the last four years, I’ve seen on my television screen a superlative acting performance of such depth and dexterity that it cries out for the TV industry to acknowledge it with the highest honor.  I haven’t watched enough television to say for certain that it is the best performance by a thespian ever to shoot through the cable and into the living room, but I can’t think of a better one I’ve seen.  

Since 2013, I have been mesmerized by the cable-TV science-fiction thriller Orphan Black.  The series gradually unveils the story of a dozen different laboratory-conceived female clones, genetic identicals, who are separated at birth but discover each other as adults and become enmeshed in a net of intrigue that threatens their very existence.  Not only is the series well crafted and compelling, but it also trenchantly touches on issues of identity and bodily autonomy.  And holding this sprawling series together are the masterful performances of the lead actress Tatiana Maslany, who portrays all of the numerous female clones.  Incredibly, Maslany has never won an Emmy for her astounding work.  But this year, for the second time in a row, the Emmys have nominated Maslany’s performance(s) in Orphan Black for Outstanding Female Actress in a Drama Series.  Still, why she wasn’t nominated from the very beginning of Orphan Black’s eligibility and why she lost last time remain mysteries to me. 

 

Maslany as both Alison (left) and Sarah

Playing each and every female clone character (I’ve counted twelve so far, some of them featured on the show only very briefly), Maslany endows the clone characters with distinct mannerisms and vocal traits.  Not only does the Canadian actress nail an utterly convincing London accent for the lead character of street-smart Sarah, but she also gives her multiple North American characters distinct styles of speaking.  (The series is set somewhere in the northeastern quadrant of North America.)  Combined with the show’s award-worthy make-up, which endows each of her characters with a distinctive appearance, Maslany’s performances, by the end of the episode, leave the viewer incredulous that these unique characters are all played by the same actress.  If I had my way, every Emmy acting nominee to qualify for best performer in their category would need to play multiple roles on their shows and try to convince the audience that these characters are played by different people.  I wonder how many other thespians can do that. 

 

Maslany as both Sarah (top) and Rachel

But more than that, Maslany endows each of her characters with a palpable complexity and layering that I have only seen the most gifted performers accomplish (Robert De Niro comes to mind).  Often when her characters speak, Maslany gives their voices inflections and intonations that suggest multiple layers of feelings and motives, even when the scenes don’t necessarily call for going that extra mile.  And her body language is equally expressive.  In one scene from the second episode of the second season, Sarah fires a warning shot close to the head of antagonist clone Rachel (also played by Maslany), whose body then jerks into nervous convulsions.  The performance comes across as though Maslany were genuinely frightened and had genuinely lost control of her body, rather than an actor’s obviously controlled affectation of alarm. 

Below is the very first scene of the very first episode of Orphan Black, where Sarah witnesses the suicide of policewoman clone Beth (Maslany again), the event that sets the show’s plots and subplots into motion. 

Once she sees Beth fatally throw herself under a train, Sarah’s eyes well with tears, as though Maslany were shocked and upset by actually witnessing a suicide.  The eye-welling is a touch that wasn’t absolutely necessary for the scene, but Maslany’s tearing up bequeaths a better sense of Sarah’s inner life and makes the authenticity of the character more credible.  This scene (which also shows off the actress’s mastery of an Estuary London accent for Sarah) is only one small example of Maslany’s extraordinary work on Orphan Black. 

However, this actress from the Great White North isn’t favored to win the Emmy this year, just as she lost last year.  While her competition is very talented, what Maslany is doing on Orphan Black — something that she is unlikely to be called upon to do in her future projects — is utterly phenomenal, and I can’t imagine Maslany’s competition pulling off what the Canadian actress pulls off week after week on the series.  And I can’t understand why Emmy voters and the conventional wisdom don’t regard her as a shoo-in for the award.  What Tatiana Maslany is doing on Orphan Black looks to me like the kind of work that the Emmy was invented for. 


Update, September 19, 2016:

Tatiana Maslany won the Emmy for Outstanding Lead Actress in a Drama after all.  Her work in Orphan Black has been recognized by the television academy.  Huzzah!  Now, I can go back to not caring about show-biz awards.  

Occasionally on ‘Orphan Black,’ one clone must disguise herself as another, and Maslany masterfully pulls off the impression of one character pretending to be someone else, with the imposter’s true personality bleeding through her disguise.  This narrative device is only used sparingly by the series, but Maslany’s ability to convey the pretender beneath the masquerade adds another layer of depth to her performances.

Just thought I’d pass this along...

From TVLine:

THIS JUST IN: We’re getting those final four words!  

Sources confirm that Netflix has closed a deal with Warner Bros. for a limited-series revival of Gilmore Girls penned by series creator Amy Sherman-Palladino and exec producer Daniel Palladino.

Although negotiations with the cast are only now beginning, I’m told all of the major players — most notably Lauren Graham, Alexis Bledel, Kelly Bishop and Scott Patterson — are expected back for the continuation. Additionally, per multiple insiders, the revival will consist of four 90-minute episodes/mini-movies.

Read the entire article.


From the Los Angeles Times: “5 Important Questions About the Rumored Gilmore Girls Reboot.”

From the New York Times: “Why a New Gilmore Girls Wouldn’t Really Be Gilmore Girls.”

‘Cupid,’ Part Two

Two years ago, I wrote a blogpost about Rob Thomas’ late, lamented TV show Cupid (1998-99).  As you may know, the series was an hour-long romantic dramedy about a man in contemporary Chicago (Jeremy Piven) who proclaimed himself to be Cupid, the Greco-Roman god of love.  On my post, I wrote how disappointed I was that the show ended before it would tell us whether or not Trevor, the protagonist with the talent for turning singles into couples, was indeed the deity or just some gifted guy suffering from a delusion — and also resolve Trevor’s will-they-or-won’t-they relationship with his sexy psychiatrist Claire (Paula Marshall).  I wrote:

Was Trevor really the god Cupid or a flesh-and-blood mortal — albeit one extremely skilled in affairs of the heart — with an identity-engulfing delusion (and an extensive knowledge of Greco-Roman mythology as well)? The series never let on. Given Cupid’s naturalistic depiction of contemporary Chicago, the idea of a mortal Trevor would certainly conform to the show’s ambiance. But this was also the realm of fiction, where it wouldn’t be impossible for archaic gods to assume human form and toy with our knowledge of the known world. I was certainly hoping that the show would last long enough to answer the question of Trevor’s identity in an intriguing way....  But such, alas, was not to be. 

Well, now I know.

In a 2004 article for Entertainment Weekly, series creator Thomas revealed how he would have ended the show, had it run longer.  Referring to the plot device of Trevor/Cupid needing to unite 100  couples in order to “return” to his home on Mount Olympus — all the while abstaining from romance himself to preserve his immortality — the article read:

Claire and Trevor [would have] become his [Trevor’s] lucky 100th match, with Trevor believing that he’s giving up his immortality to be with her. Eventually, she loses her practice because of the affair, and as the series ends, we’re left to decide for ourselves whether Trevor actually was Cupid. “I would have never disproved it,” Thomas says, “but I always wrote it as though he weren’t.”

I’m not sure how satisfying that would have been.  If I had stuck with the show for several seasons, only to have Trevor’s true identity still hanging in the air — without the series preserving that ambiguity in an unexpectedly clever way — I might have felt cheated.  Perhaps if such an equivocal ending had been preceded by a dream sequence, where Claire imagines that Trevor is indeed the god Cupid, the series at least exploring that possibility might have made the finale’s indeterminacy endurable.

But the truly frustrating fact is that we, Cupid’s loyal viewers, never got a chance to decide for ourselves.  We were dismayed by the ABC network abruptly pulling the plug on the series.  The cancellation of the TV show Cupid was a shot through the heart, in the bad sense, that rivaled its namesake’s legendary dexterity with the bow and arrow.


‘Cupid’s’ title sequence

Click here for ‘Cupid, Part One’

‘Cupid’

One TV series that I really liked but which — as a direct result, I suspect — lasted for less than one season was Cupid, created by Rob Thomas (Veronica Mars), which ran on the ABC network from September 1998 to February 1999.

In addition to being one of the few attempts to translate the movie genre of the romantic comedy into (non-sitcom) episodic television, Cupid had a heart-piercing premise: a wanderer (Jeremy Piven) in contemporary Chicago proclaims himself to be the Greco-Roman god Cupid in human form, banished because of the sorry state of love from Mount Olympus to Earth by Jupiter. The self-described deity’s way to get back home? Bring together 100 couples. Until he does, he’s stranded in the land of mere mortals. Of course, the local authorities think him crazy and put him in the care of young psychotherapist Claire Allen (Paula Marshall). In order to get released from the loony bin, “Cupid” says that his name is “Trevor Hale,” but Claire — ironically an uptight academic specialist in the psychology of romance — believes the name to be an alias. Still, she does what she can to get him to adjust to life in Chicago while trying to uncover his real identity. For his part, the bluff smart-aleck Trevor does what he can to bring his requisite 100 couples together — each attempt being the subject of each episode. Trevor’s declared identity and mission would be easy to dismiss as delusion if it weren’t for his preternatural ability to unite lonely hearts, as well as other telltale signs, such as his uncanny adeptness at throwing darts.

Built into this intriguing premise was a Moonlighting-like unspoken romantic and sexual tension between Trevor and Claire, which both seemed to suppress. In addition to the taboo of romance violating the doctor-patient relationship, Trevor claimed that any amorous attachment on Earth would complicate his “return” to Olympus. Also, their tacit attraction was counterintuitive to their personalities: Claire’s cautious, over-intellectualized, somewhat pessimistic view of romance constantly clashed with Trevor’s wildly optimistic, impulsive, damn-the-torpedoes approach to affairs of the heart. So, while he worked from episode to episode to bring potential lovers together, Trevor/Cupid didn’t indulge in any amatory pursuits of his own. Shot on location in Chicago, Cupid grounded each episode’s quasi-magical romanticism in a down-to-earth depiction of life in the unromanticized city.

Another story-line staple of the series was a therapy group that Claire held for singles, a group that Trevor sometimes attended. When the lovelorn members of the group would tell Claire of their romantic difficulties, she would respond with by-the-book analyses of their problems with an emphasis on the joy-killing laboriousness of seeking a soulmate. To Claire’s analyses, Trevor would usually counter with exultations of the adventurous messiness of finding romance and the joy of following your instincts.

The plots of the episodes provided a deft mix of comedy and drama. One installment involved a husband who constantly burst into song and dance on the street, movie-musical-style, embarrassing his dance-deficient wife; Claire tries to get the husband to stop dancing in inappropriate places, while Trevor encourages the wife to take dance lessons. A woman “falls in love” with a man on a billboard advertisement; Claire lectures her about the pitfalls of “emotional transference,” but Trevor hunts down the male model who posed for the ad. A local singer laments the would-be childhood sweetheart that she missed having; Claire advises her to accept the failure of a relationship with the boy in her past to work out, but Trevor takes her on a road trip to find him. In one of the more unusual episodes, Trevor, on his own initiative, brings together a man and a woman whom he senses were meant to be together, but the woman then reveals that she has a terminal condition which only a heart transplant will cure, and her rare blood type makes a transplant unlikely. In the end, the man dies in a car crash, and his heart provides the transplant that saves her life.

Cupid’s weekly appearance allowed the series to follow both the humor and the heart-tugging solemnity of finding love in the big city. In one episode, a young woman named Helen (Twin Peaks’s Sherilyn Fenn) gets a crush on Trevor, not knowing his claims to a life in ancient Greece (Trevor to Helen: “I knew a Helen once — beautiful face; bit of a troublemaker, though”), and we grin at Trevor’s attempts to avoid her, so he won’t endanger his chances to make it back to Olympus. But in one of the series’ inter-episodic subplots, Trevor has introduced Claire to a possible Mr. Right, and he now seems to be regretting the decision. Perhaps because of his ambivalent feelings for Claire, or perhaps because of his desire to remove himself from this mundane mortal world, at his moment of possible consummation with Helen, Trevor — without revealing his alter ego to her — breaks down in front of her and tearfully tells her of his yearning to “go home.” But is the god “Cupid” really homesick for the mythical Mount Olympus, or is the Earth-bound mortal Trevor unfantasically falling for Claire.

One of the show’s few bothersome false notes was its portrayal of Claire and her profession. The series was so quick to celebrate Trevor’s from-the-gut approach to love that it often went too far in portraying Claire’s psychoanalysis as strictly from the head. She seemed determined to cram every problem that a patient encountered into some textbook-defined box so that Trevor could rip up this metaphorical box with some seat-of-the-pants idea and thereby liberate the patient’s true romantic impulses. In other words, Cupid’s portrayal of psychoanalysis as over-intellectual and somewhat anti-feeling was a caricature, a straw man for Trevor to knock down. Also, the show’s invention of Claire’s therapy group specifically for singles — while providing Trevor with weekly opportunities to flex his wings — would be unworkable in the real world: such a group would probably devolve into a meat market. But, hey, the episodes’ story lines fueled by the singles group still worked.

Was Trevor really the god Cupid or a flesh-and-blood mortal — albeit one extremely skilled in affairs of the heart — with an identity-engulfing delusion (and an extensive knowledge of Greco-Roman mythology as well)? The series never let on. Given Cupid’s naturalistic depiction of contemporary Chicago, the idea of a mortal Trevor would certainly conform to the show’s ambiance. But this was also the realm of fiction, where it wouldn’t be impossible for archaic gods to assume human form and toy with our knowledge of the known world. I was certainly hoping that the show would last long enough to answer the question of Trevor’s identity in an intriguing way.

Another thing: Trevor’s knowledge of Greek mythology is immense, but he claims that one story from the otherwise true tales of ancient mythology never happened — he says that Cupid, contrary to the well-known myth, never married a mortal woman named Psyche. “Psyche” is also the psychoanalytic term for the mental forces of an individual that influence thought, emotion, and behavior. The psyche is often the central concern of psychoanalysis (as its name might suggest), and Claire is a psychoanalyst. This sets up a compelling possibility: perhaps the story of Cupid and Psyche tells of an ancient occurrence that has yet to happen. Perhaps Claire is the beautiful mortal woman with whom the god Cupid falls in love. Maybe instead of falling for a woman named Psyche, the god of love falls for a woman of the psyche. Maybe it’s Claire’s destiny to live and fulfill the ancient myth. Or maybe Trevor’s just out of his gourd — one of the two. I just wanted the show to make the outcome interesting.

But such, alas, was not to be. After 15 episodes, Cupid was cancelled, leaving the motivating questions unanswered. I’m still disappointed that the series wasn’t picked up for another season or two in order to play out its richly comedic and dramatic possibilities. However, ten years later — perhaps in recognition of Cupid’s enormous potential — the show was reworked, recast, and given a second chance, something uncommon for a series that lasted less than one season. In this iteration, Piven’s bristly, sometimes obnoxious Trevor was transformed into a lovable hunky lunk played by Bobby Cannavale. The dark and brooding beauty of Marshall’s Claire gave way to the airbrushed blondness of Sarah Paulson’s not-terribly-troubled psychiatrist. And most dismaying of all, the moody, cinéma-vérité Chicago setting was switched to a candy-colored, picture-postcard New York. The old show’s agreeably quirky premise was back, but the new show was missing the old one’s carefully crafted soul. This rejiggered Cupid ran for only seven episodes from April to June of 2009.

Somewhere, in a more perfect world, gas costs only 28¢ a gallon, there’s no such thing as war, and the Mudville Nine won the pennant. And in this perfect world, Rob Thomas’ Chicago-set Cupid, starring Jeremy Piven and Paula Marshall, would have been given the long and devoted TV run that it deserved.

The first ten minutes of the pilot to Cupid

Click here for ‘Cupid, Part Two’