If you knew Ozark’s Wendy Byrde in real life, you might be surprised to meet her in her current state in Lake of the Ozarks: willingly participating in a large criminal enterprise, running a riverboat casino, and finding her way through a dark underworld that was unimaginable to her when the series began. But for Laura Linney, who plays Wendy, it all “kinda makes sense.” Though she had no idea where Wendy would end up when the series began, her collaboration with the show’s writers has made her evolution as natural as possible: “The fact that they’ve allowed not only my character, but every other character on this series, to constantly shed and grow and change and reveal, is really unusual.”
On this week’s Little Gold Men podcast, Linney talks to Richard Lawson about her work with the “company” of Ozark—one of many ways she reveals her extensive theater experience. They also discuss her return to the Netflix series adaptation Tales of the City, her desire to jump between theater and film and television, and her personal challenge in the midst of coronavirus quarantine: homeschooling a six-year-old.
The episode also includes discussion of both the newly launched Quibi and changes to Disney’s release slate that suggest just how long it will take Hollywood to get back to “normal”—if that’s even possible. And in the continuing Little Gold Men Essentials series, the group discusses Singin’ in the Rain, the 1952 classic that takes a rosy look back at the silent era but has the kind of optimism—and mind-boggling dance moves—that can win over even hardcore skeptics.
Take a listen above, and follow us on Twitter to vote on what next week’s Little Gold Men Essentials pick should be. Below, you can also find an abridged transcript of the Laura Linney interview.
Richard Lawson: I have the distinct pleasure now of being socially distanced but digitally connected to Laura Linney, one of the stars of Ozark. Laura, thank you for talking to us today.
Laura Linney: My pleasure. Nice to hear your voice.
Can I ask how you’ve been spending your time in quarantine?
I am homeschooling a six-year-old. So I am busy. I have been very, very, very busy, and enjoying it, but it’s a lot. But it’s nothing in comparison to what so many people are dealing with. Really just a terrible, terrible, terrible time.
It is. And I think that when we have a moment to find something that is enlightening, some kind of diversion—and for me, as a critic, watching all of Ozark season three, just really devouring it, was exactly one of those respites, and particularly the arc of your character, Wendy Byrde. This woman has gotten darker and darker as this show has gone on. Did you see it that way?
Well I think she’s sort of revealing herself more and more. What I sort of love about all of these characters is how much they have all grown and changed over three seasons. The fact that we were given a story that allowed for such room and such growth is pretty unusual. So I think we’ve all been having an awful lot of fun sort of getting to know our own characters and then seeing how our characters react to everybody else.
How much of Wendy’s descent into this kind of criminal enterprise was foretold to you, back when you were kind of talking to people about doing the job in the first place?
I didn’t know where the story was going. But I had long talks with our showrunner, Chris Mundy, who is also our head writer, who leads that exceptional writers room. We talked a lot about how the potential of telling a story line about identity could be pretty interesting, and that it would give all of us a wide berth in which to explore different levels of personality and instinct and then would also enrich the plot and the narrative. At the beginning of season one, you have the Byrde family—they don’t know each other very well, and they don't know themselves very well. And going through the trauma of being uprooted from Chicago and thrown into the Ozarks and having to survive under enormous stress, it reveals an awful lot about who people really are. Unfortunately a lot of people today are experiencing that as well, in some form or another. You sort of learn a lot about yourself, things that you are proud of and things that you’re not so proud of, in moments of great stress.
