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Coppola’s “Dracula,” Cronenberg’s
“Videodrome.” She attributes the Dutch
angles in one episode to Orson Welles’s
“Touch of Evil,” and a long tracking
shot through a morgue in another to
“Spike Lee dolly tricks.” “The entire
season is an Easter egg,” she told me.
Perhaps as a consequence, the season is
more shambolic than the first. As Na-
dia’s adventures expand into multiple
time lines, the story becomes disorient-
ingly twisty. The result is less a puzzle
box than a messy metaphysical punk
opera, for worse and for better. In life
and in “Russian Doll,” Lyonne employs
the classic Jewish coping mechanism of
leavening difficult moments with shtick.
There are scenes in Season 2, though,
when Nadia’s wisecracking finally gives
way to quiet emotion. When she first
sees her mother’s image, in the 1982 time
line, the camera lingers on Nadia’s ter-
rified face as tears roll down her cheeks.
“I figured out how to stop dying,” Ly-
onne said. “How do I learn how to live?
That’s what Season 2 is about.”
L
yonne told me that one of the great
moments of her life was being in-
vited to read Lou Reed’s song “Coney
Island Baby” at his memorial service,
in 2013. An episode of “Russian Doll”’s
new season was named for the song.
Reed was one of many hard-living men
whom Lyonne idolized in her youth.
“Any macho swing involving a guy on a
Greyhound bus with a notebook,” she
said. “A Hemingway type with a glass of
whiskey. Bukowski at the bar. John Fante
on the case,” she said. “I started to think,
O.K., so that’s what being a person is.
You’re supposed to go into the belly of
the beast.”
But her recovery and her second act
have been shaped by the guidance of
other women. In 2009, Lyonne audi-
tioned for Nora and Delia Ephron’s Off
Broadway play “Love, Loss, and What
I Wore.” Nora remembered her from
“Heartburn,” and the two struck up a
friendship. She cast Lyonne in the play
and later offered her second home, in
L.A., as a place for Lyonne to stay during
work trips. “I was, like, ‘Nora, what are
you doing? I’m a crackhead and a chain-
smoker!’” Lyonne recalled. “She was, like,
‘Oh, shut up already. Not anymore. Just
smoke outside and tell the housekeeper
when you’re done.’ ” (On the wall of her
office, Lyonne keeps a note from Nora
that reads, simply, “I love you.”) In 2012,
Lyonne appeared in her third “Ameri-
can Pie” film, and the following year she
had small roles in a string of other for-
gettable comedies. Then Jenji Kohan
launched her comeback by casting her
in “Orange Is the New Black,” in the
cheekily self-referential role of a former
heroin addict whom another inmate dubs
“the junkie philosopher.”
Through Animal Pictures, Lyonne is
currently developing shows with several
female creators, including Alia Shawkat
and the “Russian Doll” writer Cirocco
Dunlap. She compared her friendships
with other women in the business to the
fellowship among such men as Martin
Scorsese, Brian De Palma, and Paul
Schrader in nineteen-seventies Holly-
wood. “It’s almost like they had a pick-
up-basketball-game community of film-
making, where they came around and
saw each other’s stuff,” she said. A few
nights after the “Zola” panel, I went with
Lyonne and Janicza Bravo to see a Ro-
manian film called “Bad Luck Banging
or Loony Porn” at Film Forum. The
movie is an experimental romp about a
teacher’s weathering the aftermath of
her homemade sex tape appearing on
the Internet. Its middle section features
a dispassionate narrator reciting facts
about Romanian history. “Have you guys
seen Lina Wertmüller’s ‘Seven Beau-
ties’?” Lyonne said afterward. “I don’t
want to insult this movie, but that one
is better done.”
She and Bravo retired to the nearby
Washington Square Diner, where they
settled into the same side of a booth.
Like Bill Murray in the diner scene in
“Groundhog Day,” Lyonne ordered with
abandon: two grilled cheese sandwiches,
two cups of chicken-noodle soup, French
fries, turkey sausage, a side of pickles,
and black coffee. Bravo asked only for
mint tea. As Lyonne dipped a sandwich
into a puddle of ketchup, she spoke of
being a teen star in turn-of-the-millen-
nium Hollywood.
“After ‘Slums of Beverly Hills,’ they
were, like, ‘Welcome to the WB! What
do you want to do here?’” she said. “And
I was, like, ‘I don’t fucking want to be on
“Dawson’s Creek”!’ I went into that meet-
ing in a Lenny Bruce T-shirt with a bot-
tle of whiskey in my back pocket. My
manager had to get me out of bed be-
cause I was so hungover. I came in and
was, like, ‘You guys have seen “China-
town”? Have you thought about any-
thing like that?’”
“I actually do wish you’d found your-
self in ‘Chinatown’ for teens,” Bravo said.
“I was in there pitching it before I
knew what pitching was, like, ‘You guys
need slats in the shades where the light
gets through.’”
“And a suit, right? And a secretary!”
Bravo said, putting on a Lyonne accent.
Lyonne talked about her family.
“I mean, I got really lucky, because
they died,” she said. Bravo laughed sym-
pathetically. “I only mean that it was so
all-consuming, and I think it’s very hard
to let go of that,” Lyonne continued.
“Now I’m an adult, and I can start my
life. That’s no longer a present danger
in my psyche.”
“Did you ever see them in your
dreams?” Bravo asked.
“It was worse than that. I would think
I saw them on the street or in a grocery
store, because I was terrified of running
into them. For me, it’s a great relief to
feel like I can walk free in New York.”
After dinner, we strolled south through
Washington Square Park toward Bra-
vo’s hotel on the Lower East Side. De-
spite the rise of Omicron, the night-life
crowd was out in full force. Lyonne has
a distinctive way of moving through
the city: clomping, springy, coat collar
popped high. Season 2 of “Russian Doll”
opens with one of many shots of Nadia
perambulating, her black boots tapping
in rhythm with Depeche Mode’s “Per-
sonal Jesus.” Lyonne is currently work-
ing, with the director Rian Johnson, on
a “Columbo”-style crime show for Pea-
cock, and it’s not hard to picture Ly-
onne, an avid Peter Falk fan, as the hard-
boiled detective, stalking the streets with
a cigarette between her fingers and a
wry expression on her face. Waiting to
cross Houston Street, we spotted a group
of fratty-looking revellers on the far side
of the intersection, elbowing one an-
other and pointing in Lyonne’s direc-
tion. “Oh, no, we need to get away from
them,” Bravo said. But Lyonne just cocked
her head confidently as she stepped off
the curb. I asked her if the attention both-
ered her. “In New York, I like to think
I’m a gnome or a leprechaun,” she said.
“I’m part of the psychedelic journey
through Manhattan.”
