Time Travel Guides: Russian Doll stars Natasha Lyonne and Charlie Barnett unpack season 2
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Joe Pugliese for EW
Natasha Lyonne can't wait for your 6-year-old to watch Russian Doll.
It's a typical sunny Monday in Los Angeles, and the (deep breath!) co-creator, star, executive producer, showrunner, and director of the Netflix series has just rolled into EW's cover shoot when she declares she wants to "make sure the kids see" the dramedy's highly anticipated second season — which, at the time, was just about a month out from its April 20 release. She jokes that the latest seven episodes are like a Pixar film: "This is really a PG season. It's fully animated."
She's kidding, of course. The genre-bending, philosophy-heavy, Easter egg-laden show she created with Amy Poehler and Leslye Headland has never been kid-friendly, nor is it animated.
In fact, Lyonne is in her "divorced dad era." Not that she's complaining. "I live a pretty no-dependence lifestyle, and I like it that way," says the 43-year-old, who started acting professionally on Pee-wee's Playhouse at age 6. "I just want to do my workaholism and have my weekend — and have some yacht rock and weird parties. But I think it's so weird that we have such limited time here and we spend so much of it worrying about the dumbest shit ever."
What's not weird is the general anxiety felt by Lyonne and her cast as they set out to make this new installment. The first season, after all, was a resounding success by any metric. Critics tripped over themselves in an effort to sing its praises. It was nominated for 13 Primetime Emmy Awards in 2019 — ultimately winning three. And the all-important barometer of success that is social media immortalized the show's sardonic wit in meme form (remember "Thursday, what a concept"?).
The premiere season followed the misadventures of coder Nadia Vulvokov (Lyonne), who was stuck in a seemingly infinite time loop wherein she kept dying on her 36th birthday. Eventually, she realized that an uptight, lonely man named Alan (Charlie Barnett) was going through the same death spiral, and the unlikely duo discovered that the only way out was through — together.
This theme of togetherness, as well as the show's other heady existential ideas, resonated with audiences, which surprised Lyonne. "It felt like they really received it quite emotionally, and they really understood the jokes and what we were trying to say. It was very moving, because I personally had never felt so exposed," she says. "I really took it as a way of them saying, 'It's okay to dive even deeper and take a bigger swing,' and I wanted to try my best to do that."
As Lyonne began planning season 2, Barnett worried his character wouldn't make the cut. "I was afraid of, well, 'Where would Alan go? Why would anyone want to know anything more?'" he says — adding that he, too, was daunted by the success of the series. "I was scared about, 'Can I even live up to what Natasha is going to imagine for the next step?'"
That next step bears only a passing resemblance to what was mapped out in the "charming" original three-season pitch for Russian Doll — which Lyonne fondly refers to as a "time capsule" that included a small role for Alfred Molina, and a part for a pre-Oscar winning Jordan Peele as Nadia's love interest. "I still look back at it and share it with [first-time] showrunners and stuff, because it's so sweet," says Lyonne. "You can tell that our hearts are in it all the way, and it's also really interesting to see how much it's sort of deviated from itself, even in season 1."
What hasn't changed is the anthological nature of the pitch. Lyonne says the idea was always that they'd play with these characters in this world, but they'd be "rotated" in such a way that it would never be a "direct extension" of the season before. The other thing that remained the same? "It always was that season 2 was going to deal heavily with mom."
Editor's note: This story continues below with very detailed spoilers for the entirety of Russian Doll season 2, which is airing now on Netflix.
Netflix Charlie Barnett and Natasha Lyonne in 'Russian Doll'
That mom, Nora Vulvokov (Chloë Sevigny), appeared briefly via flashbacks in the first season, but is indeed an important part of its sequel — which takes place about four years later, as Nadia prepares to turn 40.
While grappling with (or avoiding) the impending mortality of her surrogate parent — Nora's best friend Ruth (Elizabeth Ashley) — Nadia finds herself in a wormhole of sorts on the New York City subway. (Recognize the MTA announcer? It's Rosie O'Donnell, who Lyonne says "very generously" stepped in when she wanted someone with "a real New York accent" for the voice recordings.) This train portal not only thrusts her to several different points in the past, but — in a truly bonkers twist — it also puts her inside the bodies of her mother and grandmother as she relives their experiences through their eyes.
Sevigny was thrilled the new episodes would provide a deeper dive into her character, but she was wary of acting as though Lyonne, her close friend of 25 years, was controlling her body and voice. "'Can I try and be quite as funny as Natasha, or even one iota, when she's in my body?' That was terrifying," she admits.
On the other side of the timey-wimey shenanigans is Alan, who finds himself in East Berlin in 1962, living out the life of his grandmother, Agnes (Carolyn Michelle Smith). Unlike Nadia, Alan is loving this other existence — until it becomes clear that Agnes' boyfriend is attempting the perilous journey to West Berlin and likely won't make it out alive.
In order to pull off the Charlie-Agnes body swap, Lyonne encouraged Barnett to find someone he had a connection with. In other words, the Chloë to his Natasha. Barnett immediately thought of Smith, his old Juilliard classmate. "We were able to call each other out on certain things. When we were working together, we were able to push the boundaries of our story in a different way than I have ever been able to with somebody," he says of his friend of more than a decade. "And that's just because of history and relation, which is ultimately what this story kind of boils down to as well. It really helped."
A literal treasure hunt sets Nadia off on an obsessive journey through 1944, 1968, 1982, and present day — as well as to Budapest and back again. Along the hunt for her family's lost Krugerrands, she enlists her friend Maxine (thankfully giving more screen time to the comedic talents of Greta Lee) and interacts with a young Ruth (Schitt's Creek breakout Annie Murphy, in perfect '80s garb).
But Nadia's haphazard mad dash to change her fate keeps her from saying a final goodbye to present-day Ruth. "Time is what gives life its order. And its meaning, on some level, is that it is finite," says Lyonne. "These are ideas that are well-explored, but I think that Nadia is so hard-headed — or wants so badly to be able to affect some kind of change, or fix things — and in trying to rearrange the past, there is a karmic consequence wherein she misses that present moment."
Nadia misses Ruth's death, but not her own nativity — literally giving birth to herself on a 1982 subway platform. When asked about that surreal moment, Lyonne says it wasn't even close to the hardest thing she was tasked with doing this season. "I would say the most traumatizing was learning Hungarian," she explains with a laugh, referencing Nadia's ability to speak her grandmother's native tongue while inside the matriarch's body. "It was such a crazy undertaking. I blame Alex Buono, who's the other director of this season and really my partner this year. I love him to death, but my God, what a lunatic."
Lyonne says the goal when speaking the Uralic language was to make it "feel casual, like it was in Nadia's language." To get it right, she enlisted the help of Sam Rockwell's acting coach, Terry Knickerbocker. It all worked out in the end, but Lyonne says, "Absolutely, I'd give birth any day on the subway platform over learning Hungarian."
Another thing that didn't come easy to Lyonne and her stable of season 2 writers was how to show that Nadia officially breaks time when she decides to steal the baby version of herself and reparent her in an effort to give herself a better life. She recalls thinking, "We don't have the budget to break time, because there's all those movies like the multiverse… whatever that movie is, and the CGI is so insane. Or you'll see tidal waves in Manhattan, and the Empire State Building goes down, and Godzilla comes. These are the ways that we're used to."
In somewhat of a Christmas miracle, the creator says she came up with the idea of using Maxine's infamous season 1 party as the time-breaking device right before the writers left for a holiday break: "We all went away into vacation being like, 'By golly, we've done it.' But then it was like, 'Oh, right, but now you actually have to do it.'"
But do it they did — and the resulting finale scene is a fun payoff for fans, who will recognize the vaguely vaginal bathroom door, Maxine's prized chicken dish, "sweet birthday baby," and Harry Nilsson's "Gotta Get Up" from Nadia's season 1 time loop. However, because Nadia has broken time, Maxine's apartment building suddenly transforms into the old Yeshiva school it served as decades earlier.
As is the Russian Doll way, eagle-eyed finale viewers will notice the devil is in the details — literally, in this case. "I'm a Satanist or a Buddhist, or that intersection…. I believe in Beelzebub and the Buddha," Lyonne says, taking a drag on her cigarette. "That's a long way of saying I'm flicking light switches on the Sabbath like nobody's business and eating bacon like it's going out of style, so I'm definitely non-practicing. I guess despite all this kind of Yeshiva and Talmud sort of education that I've had, I had never heard of this thing called Sheol, which is this weird other kind of half space, sort of like a Jewish purgatory, and you kind of see that touched on in the finale."
Joe Pugliese for EW Natasha Lyonne
That influence is everywhere from the rabbi's chalkboard to Alan and Nadia's interactions with the mysterious vagabond Horse (Brendan Sexton III) — who, keeping in line with the writers' room's love of mythology, is supposed to represent a "Pan figure," or a sort of ferryman of the River Styx. (The character's name actually comes from a crush that Lyonne used to see all the time in Tompkins Square Park in New York City. "He was very hot, but a terrible drug addict," she says. They'd make plans that never panned out, and she hasn't seen him in over a decade.)
If viewers find themselves thinking there's more to the seemingly all-knowing homeless man, it's because there probably is. "We played with the idea of Horse being on the trains as a sort of Gordon Gekko-type character," says Lyonne, pointing out an Easter egg fans may spot: Sexton channeling Wall Street and holding a briefcase on the '80s train. "If you remember, in season 1 he's talking about the dark web and having money, and it's kind of funny to be like, 'Oh right, has Horse been moving through time since the ages?' But we never really got a chance to get there, because there's a lot to do."
Back at the EW cover shoot in L.A., Barnett and Lyonne also have a lot to do. The two are vamping it up to a Spotify playlist that could have been curated by Nadia herself (think the Doors and the Rolling Stones). In between shots, the costars take turns watching the monitor and cheering each other on. At one point, as Barnett is shooting solo, Lyonne calls out, "Charlie, handsome devil, much?"
Throughout the day, Lyonne frequently calls out for her "Baby Charlie." Barnett, whose nickname for Lyonne is "Mama Tash," says later that he sees her as a "fearless leader". "God, it's a blessing to see her growing as a leader from season 1 to season 2," he says. "I cannot wait to see the growth that comes from season 3."
A third season is not officially in the works yet, but Barnett and Lyonne have ideas — the former suggesting he'd like a trip into purgatory or a Dante's Inferno-type hell, and the latter joking that she openly desires to become a cyborg. "I would love nothing more than to have a half-silver face with a red eye, and in season 3 just be walking around with my robot neck and stuff," says Lyonne.
But before they can focus on the future, they have to share their past. Both Lyonne and Barnett eagerly await the fan reaction to the season 2 finale, which ends with Nadia and Alan accepting that they can't change the past or where they come from.
"I think a lot of it [is about] identity," says Barnett. "It's also about living in that identity, figuring out, for Alan specifically, he doesn't need permission to live — and he doesn't have to live in a certain aspect or to portray a certain way in order to fill it." The actor, who was adopted and never got to meet his birth mother before she passed away, says he struggled for a long time figuring out his identity. But, like Alan, he eventually learned to free himself. "There's something beautiful, too, about just connecting or finding the puzzle pieces that you think you need [in order] to fill in the blanks, but you realize are actually always with you," he says, adding that "for me, it's really about living, this second season. It really is."
These notions of time, and what it means to live or die, have been ruminating for Lyonne since childhood. One might even say they're a part of her identity. As a kid, she was exposed to "all kinds of Talmud and interpretations of the Bible," as a teen she was into the works of Nietzsche and Sartre, and she's been open about her past struggles with drugs and run-ins with the law — previously telling EW she was once "definitely as good as dead."
As she got clean, her interests grew beyond the philosophical. "In those very sort of lonely years, I got really into reading a lot about science, because it posed all these questions that were just so expansive that I couldn't wrap my head around, and I didn't have the education to really understand," she says. "I really hear the click when I'm reading those books, of just the relief that I don't know the answers. You know what I mean? I don't have to [know the answers]."
Joe Pugliese for EW Charlie Barnett
For someone who claims not to have the answers, Lyonne is full of them — at least where Russian Doll is concerned. "I think we really live in a culture of compare and despair, and it's such a bummer, it's such a waste of time, I would say, in so many ways," she muses. "I think we live in a culture that really encourages that. But for Nadia and for Alan, it's this idea that life is a bit of a setup, where we're each bringing our personal past to bear on our present moments, such that we create a narrative for ourselves around brokenness where there is none. And I think all I'm really trying to do with this kind of transparent personhood and personal work is sort of shine a light on my own messed up story and say, 'Hey, it's okay.'"
She continues, on a roll now: "There's nothing really to be that ashamed of here. I didn't create these events. This is just sort of how it is. And I think [in season 1] I wanted very badly for Nadia and Alan to sort of ask a question of, 'How do I stop dying?' Great. But really, for them, three and a half years later, [it's about] 'How do I start living? What does it mean to be present in a life and make the most of the time that we have in the here and now, with our set of circumstances? What would it take? Would it take a time-traveling device? Would it take me actually being there to see it all? Would it take my grandmother kind of signing off? 'Hey, I'm telling you, kid, you're all right. You come by it honestly.'
"At what point," — she's no longer talking about Alan and Nadia here; perhaps, she never was — "would I be able to walk free in life and say, 'It's okay that this is the way I am, and it's okay that this is the way you are,' and then sort of try to exist? What would it be like if that was how we were interfacing in the present?"
We'd say that's a present worth living (and dying, and living again) for.
Director and Photographer: Joe Pugliese; Photo Editor and Producer: Maya Robinson; Digi Tech: Nick Leadlay; Assistants: Hussein Katz and Zach Fernandez; Natasha: Hair: Ted Gibson; Makeup: Tracey Levy; Styling: Cristina Ehrlich; Styling Assistants: Bridget Blacksten and Karen Chinchilla; Charlie: Grooming: Alexa Hernandez; Styling: Rima Vaidila; Styling Assistants: Lana Eldjoundi; Editor: Ethan Bellows; Cover Design: Chuck Kerr
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