How to have the best Sunday in L.A., according to playground connoisseur Melanie Lynskey
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In Sunday Funday, L.A. people give us a play-by-play of their ideal Sunday around town. Find ideas and inspiration on where to go, what to eat and how to enjoy life on the weekends.
Melanie Lynskey is busy. Though the New Zealand native has been a working actor since 1994, when she was a teen and starred alongside Kate Winslet in “Heavenly Creatures,” she’s undergone something of a career renaissance over the last few years, earning award nods for her turn in “Candy,” stunning as the manipulative and troubled Shauna in “Yellowjackets” and popping up in a couple of pivotal episodes of “The Last of Us.”
What audiences like about Lynskey, in part, is that no matter what role she plays, she seems so deeply real. That bears out in her personal life as well, where Lynskey is equal parts kind and open. She’s an avid fan and outspoken supporter of those she admires, including her husband, actor Jason Ritter. The pair have a 4-year-old daughter, Kahi, who frequently travels with them to shoots.
Given Lynskey's and Ritter’s rigorous work schedules — she’s working on “The Tattooist of Auschwitz” right now while he’s due to star in CBS’ "Matlock" reboot — they tend to be on the road quite a bit. When Lynskey is home, though, she tries to make the most of it, spending time with friends and taking her daughter to an endless stream of kids’ birthday parties. “Oh my gosh,” she says. “It’s like a new world to me. It’s almost every weekend!”
When there’s not some bounce house to supervise or birthday gift to purchase, though, Lynskey spends her weekends in a fairly chill manner. Here’s what she says she’d do on her ideal Sunday in L.A.
12 a.m.: Stay up late chatting
My husband and I like hanging out with each other. We’ll get our daughter into bed at night, and then we'll hang out and watch something and then we'll watch another episode of something, and then sometimes we get into bed and just chat. We end up going, “What are we doing? It's 1 a.m." So we try our best to get a good night's sleep, but it doesn't always happen.
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6:45 a.m.: An early wake-up call
Our daughter wakes up somewhere between 6:45 and 8:15 a.m., which is a big window. We’re always hoping for the 8:15 side, but we travel so much that her little body clock is always like, “Where am I?”
My husband sleeps very soundly and he sometimes snores, so quite a lot of the time his job is to get up with our daughter, which I'm very appreciative of. I think that's the only point in the night that I truly get deep sleep is when he's up and I know that she's safe and happy and no one's in the bed, because she gets into bed with us every single night at a certain point. So, when they’re up, no one's cuddling me or kicking me or making any noise so I get very deep sleep for like an hour and a half and then I get up.
9 a.m.: Breakfast and family time
All of us have Marmite toast every single morning. Sometimes if my husband and I are having a very special treat day, we will order from Blu Jam or Salt’s Cure. If we do that, I want egg whites that are cooked so well that they’re brown. At Blu Jam, they have a migas dish that’s so yummy and they'll do it with scrambled egg whites. From Salt’s Cure we just like the traditional oatmeal griddle cakes.
We don't go out to eat very often, though, especially on the weekends when we're all together. We try to do most things at home. Sometimes we will have Jason's family over so all the little cousins can play, or we'll go to someone else's house and bring bagels or doughnuts from Trejo’s for the kids.
10:30 a.m.: Some “tragic” exercise
We used to do a lot more hiking and walking because our daughter was still in a stroller, but now she wants to walk by herself so instead we mostly go to a lot of playgrounds. We go to La Cienega Park sometimes, and our tragic exercise is that she'll play in the playground while one of us watches and the other one will do three laps around the field, and then we’ll switch off. It's efficient.
There are a lot of good playgrounds in L.A. Pan Pacific Park is always good. We love to go just to the La Brea Tar Pits and walk around. That's always a fun thing to do. There's a great playground at Griffith Park too.
We know all the playgrounds. Also, if you need to know about playgrounds in Vancouver, Atlanta or New York, we have all the info.
Read more: Our guide to Griffith Park. How to safely explore its wild, classic and hidden gems
12:30 p.m.: A health scare and a smoothie
In reality, my actual day usually involves eating one piece of Marmite toast and then at a certain point in the day, I start saying that I have COVID. I'm sure of it. Something's wrong. I feel terrible. I feel faint. And then somebody will say to me, “Have you tried eating something?” and then I eat something and it’s like, “Oh, right, you actually need fuel to survive.” I forget every single day.
When that happens, sometimes I just make something boring at home, but I often like to get a smoothie from Earthbar. I love their Flax Master. Other times, I’ll order from Crossroads Kitchen. We love getting their food for lunch because they have a lot of good kids options.
2:30 p.m.: Play date with pals
Honestly, it's such a treat for us to actually be home in Los Angeles that we do try to see friends a lot of the time. Kahi’s at a new school, and she has friends there around her age, so a play date is always fun. One of her other little friends since they were babies is Levi, who is Dulé Hill and Jazmyn Simon’s little boy. Kahi and Levi have played in Atlanta and Vancouver and Los Angeles. Also, Jason's siblings have kids who are around Kahi’s age and if you also invite his cousins and their kids, then there are 10 little girls under the age of 5. Sometimes we'll go to a playground with everyone or we'll hang out at his mom's house or people will come over here.
5:30 p.m.: Cheese plates and wine
My favorite thing in the world is to host people. I love, love, love to host people. I'm not much of a cook, but I'm good at a cheese plate, I'm good at getting desserts, and I'm very good at picking wine.
Say Cheese is always a good cheese option. The Cheese Store of Beverly Hills can be good too. If I'm really short on time, I'll just go to Whole Foods. There's a place called L’Antica Pizzeria da Michele that's such a crowd-pleaser. If you get a few pizzas and pastas and salads from there, people are delighted. I always get wine from K&L because they have a great selection of New Zealand wine, and usually I do the Pie Hole for dessert. I’ll get a couple of different pies, and everyone will be so happy.
I always get too much stuff. At the end of the night I end up giving away all my Tupperware trying to get people to take stuff home.
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7:30 p.m.: Mafia with a tarot twist
I could go out, but I would rather be at home and have a bunch of people over for a Mafia night. That's my true dream night.
During the pandemic, a group of us would play a Zoom Mafia game that became very complicated. It was run by myself and Craig Mazin, the creator of “The Last of Us.” It was a big group of people, including my ex-husband [Jimmi Simpson], my very dear friend and her ex-boyfriend and his new partner. … There were so many convoluted relationships at play, but it was a very fun group.
Thank God for Craig because he's very, very good at multitasking and keeping a lot of different things in his mind at the same time, so we had different Slack channels depending on the group people were in. A couple of times, we did it where everyone had a special character and that was so much work. We gave people their assignments ahead of time, and I’d always do a thing where I draw a tarot card for people. I’d choose ahead of time which cards were mafia and which cards were detective or whatever, and then I’d think of a person and pull the card for them. Then later, I’d say, “This is the card that came up for you. This is your fortune.”
The whole thing is very, very elaborate. Now that everyone’s back at work, we don’t quite have time for all of it. But Mafia is always fun, no matter what.
10 p.m.: Reality TV fix
Typically, at the end of Mafia night we are not doing anything. But most of the time, we're catching up on our shows that we love. Unfortunately, that means so much reality television. I have to be honest. When you have little kids, the days are long and at the end of the night you're like, “I don't want to think. I want to watch ‘The Bachelor’ or ‘Love Is Blind.’”
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11:30 p.m.: Late-night vacuuming
I can't go to sleep unless the house is clean, and not just like the dishes are done. It just needs to be clean. The table my daughter eats at has to be wiped down. I have to vacuum everything. I need to wake up in the morning and be like, “Things are great. Things are altogether clean and perfect.” It just stresses me out too much to go to sleep with a messy house. I can't ever, ever, ever do it.
This story originally appeared in Los Angeles Times.
