\t\t\tOn a mid-May morning in Brooklyn, Odessa Young is recognizable, though muffled under a shield of ubiquity. In her home neighborhood of Williamsburg, she arrives at the snug caf\u00e9 Marlow & Sons with her eyes hidden behind a pair of tortoiseshell-rimmed tinted glasses. She\u2019s makeup-free, dressed in the local uniform of black loafers and socks, a clip holding up half her blonde hair while the rest tangles at the nape of her neck. Loping at her side is Slim Jim, a mutt she rescued after discovering him abandoned in a parking lot in Atlanta about a year ago. A teeny chestnut-colored poodle-miniature pinscher-shih tzu-cocker spaniel-American Eskimo dog mix, he repeatedly interrupts to fight for a nibble of her pastry. Young leans in, grinning: \u201cCan you imagine all those dogs in this tryst?\u201d I\u2019ve read before that Young doesn\u2019t come off like a star, or even like most other actresses of her caliber. It\u2019s unclear if this fuck-it attitude is curated or natural, though I suspect the latter once she tells me why she got into acting in the first place: \u201cThere are just some parts of me and my personality and the way that I was built that inherently lend itself to doing this job. Because if I wasn\u2019t an actor, I\u2019d probably be a grifter.\u201d Case in point: She\u2019s a high-school dropout, an Australian expat who convinced her musician father and writer mother in Sydney that, following two roles in Aussie films Looking for Grace and The Daughter, she could go full-time. After enduring unemployment for about a year, she made the big move to LA; after that, she abandoned Hollywood for New York City. \u201cI don’t like rules,\u201d she says, by way of explanation for her career choices. \u201cUnless they are the Ten Commandment-esque rules of, \u2018Don\u2019t kill people\u2019 and \u2018Do unto others\u2026\u2019 But in terms of the rules of how we’re meant to behave in public, how we\u2019re meant to carry ourselves, what we\u2019re meant to believe and how we\u2019re meant to express that? I find all of those rules a little confounding. I think that acting gives me an opportunity to express that confoundedness.\u201d She shrugs, takes a self-deprecating swing. \u201cDidn\u2019t finish high school, so I make up words.\u201dNow Young divides her time between the East Coast and West, simultaneously convinced of her talent and conflicted about it. \u201cI think that everybody in the fucking world has the ability to be on a screen and move someone [who\u2019s] watching,\u201d she says. \u201cAnd I know I have that ability. What is difficult is figuring out all the stuff around it.\u201d I don\u2019t have to nudge her toward these more existential topics; she falls into them willingly, if not gracefully, plugging her nose before the dive.Her most recent role, as Martha Ratliff in HBO\u2019s true-crime drama The Staircase, lends itself to a particularly soul-searching chat. Something of an ing\u00e9nue wunderkind, especially after her lauded role as a housekeeper in the 2021 film Mothering Sunday, Young\u2019s enjoyed a steady command over her own performances. The Staircase was a departure. In the series, based on the French documentary of the same name, she plays one of the adopted daughters of Michael Peterson (Colin Firth), accused and convicted of murdering his wife, Kathleen (Toni Collette), after she\u2019s discovered dead at the bottom of their household staircase. Throughout both the real-life case and the HBO adaptation, Martha insists on her father\u2019s innocence, even after a nearly identical case is unearthed from years prior: Her own mother, who died when she was a child, was found dead at the bottom of a staircase before Michael and Kathleen adopted Martha and her sister, Margaret (played in the series by Sophie Turner). In both reality and fictionalized reality, Michael isn\u2019t exactly known for his forthcomingness; he\u2019s caught in several lies and omissions, but the majority of his family members\u2014and those crafting the documentary about his case\u2014remain convinced of his innocence. Of all his children, Martha identifies the most with her father\u2019s secrecy: He\u2019s eventually revealed to be a bisexual man who hid his frequent affairs with men from his wife and family. Martha is a closeted lesbian.Young never made contact with the real-life Martha, in part because The Staircase creator Antonio Campos had met with the real-life Margaret, whom she said made it clear the Peterson family didn\u2019t want to be \u201canything more than just conversationally involved.\u201d (Some of the real people involved with the documentary have also expressed their displeasure over the HBO series.) But sequestering the real Martha from the show Martha was also a sign of respect. \u201cI\u2019m not her friend,\u201d Young says. \u201cShe doesn\u2019t have any reason to tell me secrets about her.\u201d<\/p>\n
\tChristopher Schoonover<\/p>\n
In hindsight, that distance might have made it trickier for Young to get into Martha\u2019s head. So much of The Staircase is about projection and perception, how a different lens can provide a different\u2014but equally convincing\u2014account of reality. Was Michael Peterson unjustly vilified for his bisexuality? Was he a pathological liar and cold-blooded killer? Did an owl kill Kathleen? Did an alcohol-induced fall? What about a blow poke? Does Martha actually believe in her father\u2019s innocence, or does she need to? \u201cThe revelation is not that [Martha\u2019s] gay,\u201d Young says. \u201cThe revelation is that she has an understanding of her father\u2019s secrecy and propensity to hide. She understands how someone can feel\u2014even when they\u2019re telling the truth\u2014they feel like they\u2019re lying, because if you\u2019re lying about one core thing, it creates this haze around everything else.\u201d For someone like Young, who\u2019s less obsessed with the \u201cintegrity\u201d of a performance than the clarity of it, that haze felt like an actual menacing presence on set. \u201cI see a bit of a lostness in my performance, that, for me, feels painful to watch. Because I know that I, as a performer, was lost,\u201d she says. Young couldn\u2019t discern how much of Martha was real, how much was a persona for the public, nor whether she should replicate mannerisms from the documentary or trust her own instincts. \u201cThat was always the pendulum for me as the performer, and I never felt like the pendulum settled.\u201dNever mind that no one, including her cast-mates, could settle on whether Michael actually killed Kathleen or not. Each tended to fall into the perspective of whatever character they were inhabiting. At this point, Young\u2019s a little sick of even considering Michael\u2019s guilt or innocence. \u201cI thought for a long time that I was going to be the really smart one to figure it out, to see something that no one had seen or think of something that no one had thought of,\u201d she admits. But like all those who\u2019d come before her, chiseling into the warped psyche of Michael Peterson, \u201cnow I know that’s not going to happen, and so I\u2019m like, it\u2019s actually none of my business.\u201d<\/p>\n
\t\u201cWe’re becoming really lazy about discerning between narrative and reality.\u201d<\/p>\n
Yet she does, desperately, want her performance as Martha to have merit. Perhaps that\u2019s why she\u2019s frustratingly insecure about it: She needs people to watch this series and get something\u2014anything!\u2014out of Martha\u2019s tears, her dye-dipped hair and early-aughts glasses, her kisses behind closed doors. All the discomfort during filming\u2014and it was discomfort; \u201cI don’t think I\u2019ve ever been so uncomfortable for seven months, from the beginning to end, all the time\u2026I had all sorts of existential crises every single day playing that character\u201d\u2014couldn\u2019t be for show. There\u2019s an almost childlike earnestness that rears its head when Young, now 24, discusses her repertoire. She\u2019ll rein herself in when buzzwords slip out\u2014\u201cOh my God, this is so fucking corny\u201d\u2014but the terrible truth remains: She\u2019s a card-carrying member of the Acting Matters fan club. Sue her! It\u2019s in vogue for artists to exhibit a healthy cynicism, to admit Netflix isn\u2019t researching cancer cures and Star Wars isn\u2019t therapy. (Young would add, duh.) But for a would-be grifter, she\u2019s no skeptic. \u201cI believe so greatly and devoutly in the power of this work and the power of cinema and drama and all that sort of stuff, even though I hate it with a passion and wish I could just fucking drop it and move to the woods,\u201d she says. Tearing a hunk off her pastry, she adds, as a way of accepting her fate, \u201cI unfortunately do believe in it more than anything.\u201d The problem is that Hollywood\u2019s a package deal: If you want the big, meaningful stories, you\u2019d best be prepared to craft a persona to deal with \u201chow intent this industry is on distracting you from actually doing the work,\u201d Young says. When I ask her for clarification, she drops back into jokes at her own expense: \u201cI remember I did a bunch of mushrooms once, and thought I’d figured this out and then promptly forgot it.\u201dBut, the gist of her argument\u2014not that it\u2019s anything new\u2014is this: For how often it waxes poetic about artistic purity, Hollywood\u2019s still a business, and its job is to sell commodities. Sometimes those commodities are films; often, they\u2019re actors themselves. That means actors are competing products, which explains why Young finds herself flustered when she encounters a film set in the city and her name\u2019s not on the trailer. \u201cI get fucking grumpy, because I\u2019m like, Why didn’t they hire me? Why didn’t I know about this?\u201d That competition is intensified for female actresses, who not only commodify their personas but also their bodies. Their performances become an image and their image a skincare line. There are old performances of Young\u2019s that she\u2019ll watch every so often, ones where she can just tell she couldn\u2019t forget the presence of her own face. It doesn\u2019t help that directors have told her not to raise her eyebrows in crying scenes before, supposedly because she has too many forehead wrinkles. Ironically, Young\u2019s little imperfections, the aforementioned forehead wrinkles, her slightly crooked teeth, are part of what make her performances feel so\u2014God, that word again\u2014real. Meaningful. Like they matter.\u201cWe\u2019re preoccupied with showing controlled ugliness [at the detriment] of showing realities,\u201d Young says. \u201cWe completely ignore true ugliness, for fear that it will reveal or create a misunderstanding between us and the audience\u2026We’re becoming really lazy about discerning between narrative and reality. And it’s a little worrisome.\u201dI point out that, well, isn\u2019t that exactly the point of some of these films and TV shows? One like The Staircase, for instance? That there is a place where narrative and reality mesh, and can anyone really know where the line is drawn? <\/p>\n
\t\tOdessa Young (center) as Martha Ratliff.
\n\tCourtesy of HBO Max<\/p>\n
She agrees, but insists that line still matters. She uses a friend of hers as an example: a so-called \u201cmulti-disciplinarian\u201d with a strong social media following, \u201cwhere her persona is a fictionalized version of herself,\u201d Young says. \u201cDespite the fact that she says, all the time, \u2018It’s partly fabrication,\u2019 people refuse to see that and think that they are welcomed into her life and her experiences by the very fact that they’re witnessing what they think is her real-life experience. It becomes dangerous when we cannot discern between reality and narrative, because it means that we will live to the standards of those narratives, not to the standards of those realities.\u201d\u201cThat’s how those rules you dislike come about,\u201d I say.\u201cExactly!\u201d Young says. \u201cBut truly.\u201dSo then I ask about her persona, if she has one, which of course she does, because don\u2019t we all? I tell her a colleague of mine once described her as a cinematic \u201cIt Girl,\u201d and Young reacts like I\u2019ve just let a fart loose in a place both sacred and hysterical, like a wedding or a funeral. \u201cAn It Girl?\u201d she repeats, equal parts disgusted and giddy. \u201cNo! Who said that? Oh my God. What are they reading? That’s shocking. Because in order to be an It Girl, you need to have lots of friends and be in lots of places. I don’t leave my house and I have four friends.\u201dWell, the narrative has to come from somewhere, right? So what evidence has been manipulated this time to give Young the sheen of tastemaker? \u201cI’m going to be thinking about that the whole week,\u201d she says, then considers. \u201cNo, I think really what has happened is that, since I stopped thinking that my worth in the industry was based on how many people wanted to work with me without knowing why, I have actually become way more confident.\u201d As she thinks more, she ends on a paradox: \u201cI don’t want my persona to be a persona. I’d like it to be somewhat real, while also knowing that, as an actor, it’s impossible for me to know who I am.\u201dPhotographed by Christopher Schoonover, styled by Chloe Hartstein for The Wall Group, hair by Takuya Yamaguchi for The Wall Group, makeup by Tyron Machhausen for The Wall Group.<\/p>\n
\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\tLauren Puckett-Pope
\n\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\tAssociate Editor
\n\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\tLauren Puckett-Pope is an associate editor at ELLE, where she covers news and culture.<\/p>\n
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