Melanie Lynskey has always been brilliant. Why did it take until now for the world to realise?
In the midst of her most high-profile career moment, the Emmy-nominated Kiwi star talks to Zoe Walker Ahwa, and is photographed in Los Angeles wearing New Zealand fashion, exclusively for Ensemble and Sunday magazine.
Melanie Lynskey has always been there. The Emmy-nominated star has spent three decades deliberately adjacent to the glare of the spotlight, quietly but confidently building a career as one of Hollywood’s most reliable actors - and New Zealand’s most successful exports. Now, after a starring role in the buzziest show of the moment Yellowjackets, the world is finally paying attention.
Lynskey’s trajectory is Kiwi cultural canon at this point: growing up in New Plymouth and cast, at the age of 15, in Heavenly Creatures as “dastardly daughter” Pauline Parker, alongside Kate Winslet as Juliet Hulme. The film, released in 1994, set the tone for her acting career, with a quiet intensity and roiling darkness hidden behind soulful sad eyes. It also has sinister parallels to Yellowjackets, both portraying, in their own way, the obsessive darkness of teenage girlhood, friendship and rage.
Lynskey stars in the show - following a high school soccer team who survive a plane crash in remote wilderness and the ramifications of their survival tactics 25 years later - alongside an ensemble cast including Juliette Lewis, Christina Ricci and Tawny Cypress. Her subtle, slow burn performance as adult Shauna, a repressed suburban housewife with a dark past and a talent with a knife, feels like the heart of the show.
Red carpet ready
Lynskey is speaking from her home in Los Angeles having earlier spent the day filling out forms to enrol her daughter in preschool, and trying on dresses for the Hollywood Critics Association (HCA) TV awards ceremony (she went on to win best actress in a drama series, wearing a divine pink pleated Brandon Maxwell gown).
We’re talking over Zoom, her Kiwi accent featuring hints of hard American Rs. She’s wearing a purple Isabel Marant top and collection of fine necklaces, some with hearts; Lynskey and daughter Kahikatea have a game where they point out the symbol to each other, so she’s accumulated a few hearts that sit close to her own.
Our photo shoot, where she’ll be dressed in ensembles from five New Zealand designers, is the next day which perhaps explains why the conversation goes straight to fashion. Lynskey loves clothes and enjoys fashion, often working with stylist and best friend Misha Rudolph. But, she says, she does not fit clothing samples (the item that most designers make in a “generic” size to lend out for magazine shoots and to celebrities for events), and so she often has had to buy things for events.
“Hang on… surely people are falling over themselves to dress you?” I exclaim.
“Well, for the Emmys,” she says. High profile events are fine, but smaller events or panels can be a challenge and often there is not time to have custom things made. It may seem like a frivolous part of the job, but celebrity and red carpet dressing is a huge business - for both the designers, and the stars. As she enters the most high profile awards season of her career, Lynskey is conflicted.
“It's tough because fashion and how you dress on a red carpet has become such a big part of our industry. If you look back at the Oscars, even in the early 90s, people were not looking at the gown or designer you were wearing; people just kind of showed up, you know? I kind of long for a return to those days. But at the same time, I do love looking at what everyone's wearing…”
‘The air feels different’
On September 12 she’ll walk the red carpet at the Emmys, where she is nominated for best lead actress in a drama alongside Jodie Comer, Laura Linney, Sandra Oh, Reese Witherspoon and Zendaya. In late August she heads back to Vancouver to film the second season of Yellowjackets, but has no plans after that. She might visit family in Aotearoa. She’s reading scripts, seeing where this wild journey takes her next.
Lynskey has not visited home - and she does still consider Aotearoa to be home - since 2019. “I'm surprised how much I do [consider it home]. It's just something when I get off the plane, I feel like I'm at home. The air feels different.
“We were shooting [Yellowjackets] in Vancouver, and I realised that on rainy days I feel much more myself. It's something about gloomy rain,” she says laughing, reflecting on its similarities to New Zealand.
“Everything seems easier [at home]. Life seems easier. I know it's not and that life is difficult everywhere right now, but going to the doctor, things like that. I like the supermarkets better. The wine is better!”
Her “dream of dreams” is to be able to afford to buy a place in New Zealand, “to have somewhere back home that I know I can return to, that my daughter can return to, and my siblings and I, and [husband] Jason's siblings, can all gather. That's my dream. We'll see. I'm not going to get ahead of myself”.
Of good character
The last time we see Lynskey on screen as Shauna, she’s sitting on the couch with her husband, seemingly content after the earlier chaos (and cannibalism). They’re drinking beer, and watching a show about dogs. “I think cats are underrated,” she declares, brow furrowed thoughtfully. She could be talking about herself: as Shauna, a teenage girl who hides in the shadow of her popular best friend, and as Melanie Lynskey, the actor whose career has often been described as “underrated”.
Her career trajectory and the narrative that’s been associated with her is something many women will identify with: being underestimated or not the first to come to mind because they are quiet, shy, preferring to stay under the radar, or not fitting the patriarchy's mould of expectation.
Lynskey has consistently been cast as the “character actress”, taking on roles that are often described as “quirky” or “complex”.
“I think that’s just a way of saying, not the wife or girlfriend,” she says. “I find it almost impossible with those types of roles. If they're not very fleshed out, if there's not something extra to do with the character, I find it very difficult to perform. I get frustrated. So I think I've always gravitated towards people who have something to do.”
That approach has seen her build a diverse filmography that includes mainstream (Two and a Half Men, Ever After, Up in the Air), noughties romcoms (Coyote Ugly, Sweet Home Alabama), cult queer icons (But I’m a Cheerleader) and independent fare (Hello I Must Be Going, I Don’t Feel at Home in This World Anymore, Togetherness). She doesn’t like to think of her work as underrated.
“It's more the perception of what women in general are supposed to be like in this industry, which has been the thing that I've fought against. I've tried to make choices that don't fit in with the narrative that people have expected me to have for my own career,” she says. “If I'm honest, it's a lot more comfortable to be under the radar and underestimated. I feel very exposed right now.”
‘I didn’t ever want to be a famous person’
The cultural juggernaut of Yellowjackets has seen a resurgence in appreciation for her multifaceted career and propelled her into the spotlight in a way that makes her slightly uneasy.
“It's funny because it doesn't feel like a measure of success to me,” she says. “I would know I had ‘made it’ when I was able to make a living from acting, and not have to have another job, or worry that I wasn’t going to be able to keep acting - and I've been able to do that for a really long time. Honestly, that was all I wanted; I didn't ever want to be a famous person. I still feel quite scared of that.
“There are things about what's happened in the last year that I really dislike, in terms of people paying a lot of attention to what I'm saying.”
She’s talking, in part, about slight naivety with the celebrity spotlight and playing the Hollywood game. She is everywhere right now, clearly in full awards campaign mode, and her signature humble honesty has been both an asset and a hindrance. She was hurt by how passing comments she made in a Hollywood Reporter interview last month, about an experience on the set of Coyote Ugly where she was body shamed, were taken out of context and turned into headlines by the online content churn machine, and mortified that she may have inadvertently hurt people she’d worked with (Lynskey is known for being one of the nicest people on set to all crew, humble to a fault: “It's mortifying to me to think that I might get special treatment,” she says).
“I feel very not in control of the narrative and not in control of my own story and how people are seeing me, and that has been very hard to get used to,” she says.
“It's taking everything in my power to still be forthcoming and honest, and still be myself, because I'm starting to feel walls going up that I've never had to have before. But it’s very nice to have people paying attention to the work and, I suppose, to be 45 and be celebrated and on the cover of magazines and stuff like that.”
Rewriting the headlines
The experience also brought up conversations about her body that seem to be a recurring theme. It’s a sensitive topic, and she has been open in discussing it (including a history with disordered eating, and a separate experience on the set of Yellowjackets where her co-star Juliette Lewis came to her defence). But, I say, her body is not her story.
“Oh God, thank you,” she says, starting to cry. “I'm sorry.” I feel terrible bringing it up - here we are yet again talking about it - but her response encapsulates what makes her so compelling to watch as an actor, and I imagine, be as a friend: an intense vulnerability and steely confidence.
“I don't want that headline about me. I want people to talk about my work,” she says. “I want people to talk about my relationship with my co-stars. I'm tired of it.”
It seems like it’s become almost like a burden that falls to her, I say, to be a Hollywood spokesperson for a certain kind of body relatability - when there is so much more to her.
“It's tough because I do want to be a voice for people,” Lynskey says. “I do want to represent something where people feel celebrated and seen, and feel like they can recognise themselves. I do think that's important. And I feel very proud of where I am. I feel comfortable, or comfortable adjacent, in my own body. I do believe in that, but it does get very tiring when that becomes the narrative.”
She is excited for the day when there are more actors who are of a similar size to her being publicly celebrated in the same way - and then for when it is so normalised that we don't have to have these conversations anymore.
“In a way I understand because it's kind of new that somebody who looks like me is getting to have this kind of moment, especially in her mid-40s. But I'm ready for it to not be a special event.”
It is that vulnerability and lack of ego that is key to Lynskey’s success, both as a “relatable” celebrity and on set as an actor.
Tough as diamonds
“She exudes a kind of authentic depth,” says Miranda Harcourt, who coached Lynskey as a teenager for her successful audition for Heavenly Creatures, at the request of Peter Jackson and Fran Walsh, and co-directed her in the 2017 film The Changeover. The secret to her technique as an actor, says Harcourt, is that it doesn't look like technique: “That's why it's so compelling.”
“She's very emotionally courageous and that's something I really admire about her. She has no problem being grumpy, pissed off, downright angry and rude in her roles,” says Harcourt, on the phone from Adelaide where she’s currently working on a film.
“And that kind of emotional range and courage, where she doesn't set out to look at her best; she's not like, ‘but how is that gonna make me look?’ She has got complete unselfconsciousness.
“There are many, many facets to this particular diamond, but a diamond she is.”
The diamond analogy seems apt: tough, sparkling, solid, brilliant. People adore Lynskey, and the love is coming from all angles.
Leonardo DiCaprio, who Lynskey starred alongside in the divisive Don’t Look Up, recently told Vanity Fair, “She’s just a fantastic, fantastic actress, and everything that comes out of her mouth is so truthful”, while at the HCA TV Awards last weekend Lynskey’s Mrs America co-star Sarah Paulson accepted her award while commenting, “do I spy Melanie Lynskey, who I love with every fibre of my being”.
Earlier this month Saturday Night Live comedian Bowen Yang spoke about his obsession in podcast Las Culturistas. “I will watch every single interview [she does]. I will listen to that crazy Kiwi accent,” he said adoringly. With co-host Matt Rogers, Yang discussed stars such as Lynskey and Laura Dern who have had a mid-career renaissance, and how “it’s actually quite queer to stan [support] someone in their middle career, middle era”.
Lynskey’s moment in the hot glare of the global spotlight thanks to the power of TV and a deservingly meaty role has echoes of recent career moments of the likes of Natasha Lyonne (Russian Doll) and Jennifer Coolidge (The White Lotus): women who have worked for years, perhaps being slightly underestimated, and who have always stayed true to themselves. Lynskey wonders if that’s to do with the hunger for nostalgia, and having been in people's consciousness for a long time.
“But also, everyone's been working very, very hard. And maybe it's a case of looking at these women who have been around for a long time and being like, ‘hang on, she’s worked really hard, and she’s still here’.”
It’s satisfying, she says, to see both get roles that show the extent of their acting ability, and how versatile and intelligent they are. Like Lynskey, they have always been brilliant; the world is simply catching up.
“This is not Melanie's first encounter with great success,” acknowledges Harcourt. Right now she is riding the zeitgeist with Yellowjackets, she says, but her work stands on its own.
“And it's not just that she's been doing amazing work: she's been being rewarded for her amazing work,” says Harcourt. “But TV is ubiquitous, so I think it’s very accessible to see Melanie shine in this particular role.”
For Lynskey, the attention may be slightly unnerving but it’s also thrilling, representing changes in how we perceive women in high profile, powerful positions, and allowing them to be their true selves.
“In general, I hope that there's a cultural shift towards understanding that women get more interesting as they get older. I think women in general are like, hang on a minute, ‘I'm coming into myself. I'm understanding who I am. I have a lot to share. I have a lot to offer and I don't want to be invisible now’,” says Lynskey. “And I think there's an embrace of women who are saying: I am not going to be invisible.”
Photographer: Dani Brubaker
Creative director: Delaney Tabron
Stylist: Caitlin Boelke
Hair: Marcus Francis
Makeup: Stephen Sollitto
Photographer’s assistant: Ram Gibson
Project manager: Rebecca Wadey of Ensemble
Location: Catherine Jacobson Residence
