How Linda Cardellini Became TV’s Killer Queen
Linda Cardellini has lived a hell of a lot of lives. Sure, there’s her real one: a 49-year-old mom who grew up in California and is now raising a 13-year-old daughter with the love of her life while balancing a career that only seems to grow richer as she ages. But that’s not what people are most excited about when they stop her on the street. Most often, they’re stoked to see Judy, Cardellini’s homicidal but loveable character from showrunner Liz Feldman’s black comedy Dead to Me, which ran for three seasons on Netflix from 2019 to 2022. “People will literally just yell ‘Judy’ at me across the street,” Cardellini says.
Others geek out over Velma, the glasses-wearing, hypothesis-sharing nerd from Scooby Doo. Some might be overcome by the sight of Lindsay Weir, the angsty, retort-slinging teenager from Freaks and Geeks, or the murderous college student with a suspiciously intact perm from Legally Blonde, or — I don’t know, it could happen — Sylvia Rosen, the guilt-stricken mistress of Mad Men’s Don Draper.
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But right now, it’s the real Cardellini sitting opposite me at Cafe Luxembourg on a cold December Thursday in New York, trying to figure out what to order for brunch. “I’m not gonna get that, but that sounds so good,” she says, eyes catching on a menu listing for cinnamon doughnut holes through her thin-framed reading glasses. She admits she’s still “in denial” about needing glasses, and she loses them constantly. “Every time, we joke, ‘My glasses. I can’t find my glasses,’” she says in Velma’s signature nasal drawl.
Characters seem to stick on Cardellini. “I try to give my whole heart to everything,” she says. “So your roles become like a piece of you.” In the case of Judy — a hit-and-run driver who befriends the wife of her victim and leads them both down a rabbit hole of murder and deceit — Cardellini connected with the fact that, in spite of her criminal deviance, she’s also a total sweetheart. Somehow, Cardellini says, Judy felt like someone she could relate to. That’s also why she’s glad to be done playing her.
“Judy is a very selfless, empathetic, angel. She makes her mistakes but she just really cares about people,” Cardellini explains over French toast. “Liz was talking me through an especially doormat moment, where [Judy has] kind of been trampled on. And I told her, ‘Next time, I want to play a Bad. Ass. Bitch.’”
Enter Margo, her character in the new Netflix series No Good Deed. The latest show in Feldman’s darkly funny oeuvre (she also wrote on 2 Broke Girls), it centers on a gorgeous home in the Los Feliz neighborhood of Los Angeles that’s the target of a heated bidding war among potential buyers. There’s the author trying to keep the peace between his new wife and his strict mother, the lesbians who can’t decide whether to have a baby, and a swarm of real estate developers looking for a windfall. But from the minute the title sequence begins and Cardellini steps into frame — a single shot of her Dolce and Gabbana blood-red patent leather platform wedges taking up the entire screen — it’s clear which potential buyer has come to take no prisoners. The wife of a disgraced soap opera star, Margo is decked out in designer brands from tip to toe, and clearly determined to make a splashy entrance into the world of real estate — starting with buying and flipping this house.
“I wanted to play something different because I really wanted to exercise those muscles and stretch myself,” says Cardellini. “So much of who Margo is, or how she presents, is about how she looks. The character is someone who puts on a lot of masks and arms herself against the world in this persona that, in her mind, is very polished.”
The rich bitch is a common villain trope in television, but Cardellini brings layers to the character, drawing out a desperation in Margo that’s only underscored by her 2010-Kardashians-meets-Desperate Housewives wardrobe. “It really does put you in the mood, especially when you have to put on high heels and Spanx and all of these things,” she says. “At one point, I had to be sewn into my pants and then cut out of them. And when they were focusing that shot on my feet, I had to keep saying ‘Don’t wobble, Linda. Don’t wobble.’ I usually play someone more earthy, so when I read that she was dripping in designer [clothes], I thought, ‘How fun.’ But it was a great day when I got to take it all off.”
Cardellini is thrilled to be working with Feldman again, and at times seems to let friendship guide her career. She loves reuniting with old colleagues on new projects, mentioning how her role on New Girl brought her back together with producer Jake Kasdan and costume designer Debra McGuire, who she’d worked with on Freaks and Geeks. “It was like a happy little friendly family,” she says.
Similarly, she says the tight-knit relationship between her, Feldman, and her co-star Christina Applegate was key to the success of Dead to Me, which was a favorite of critics and fans alike. “If you’ve ever read a Liz Feldman script, you’re wondering what the tone is, and with [Christina] and I, together with Liz, it came easy,” Cardellini says. Describing Applegate as “so sharp” and “so funny,” she says the script was “right in the pocket of where we felt most connected to each other. We trusted each other to tell each other everything. One of our first long night shoots, we had this scene on the beach and it was freezing. And we just sat there and talked instead of going back to our trailers. It’s pretty wonderful to have that.”
For Feldman, who says she became “dear friends” with Cardellini over their five years working on Dead to Me, Cardellini’s humanity and kindness are as important as her acting prowess. “I told Linda — well, I threatened her — ‘I’m going to take you with me wherever I go,’” Feldman says. “She’s so game, so committed, and has the range that any comedy writer would dream of. She’s one of the great character actresses of all time. And to be able to go to a set where you’re working 12 to 14 hours a day, and there’s someone there who is like family, makes it all worthwhile.”
Experiences like these are everything Cardellini could have dreamed of growing up. As a kid, she was involved in community theater (she has fond memories of playing a little old lady in The Music Man). But it wasn’t until she attended college at Loyola Marymount University in L.A. that she realized she might be able to turn her hobby into a full-time job. “It was always, ‘If I could just make enough to live… I don’t need to be famous, I don’t need to be rich, I just need to make enough to do what I love,’” Cardellini says. “Now, people ask me if I think my child will want to be an actor. And I always say if she loves it, there will be no stopping her. Because there was no stopping me, no matter how many times people told me to be more practical. I mean, my mom wanted me to take typing.”
Her mom was probably not very encouraged when one of Cardellini’s first series, Freaks and Geeks, was canceled after just one season. But it found new life once it was released on DVD and, later, streaming platforms, eventually becoming a dearly beloved cult favorite. For Cardellini, who never thought the show would be so popular that people would be celebrating its 25th anniversary, this turn of events still feels shocking.
“We thought it would disappear forever,” she says of herself and co-stars including Jason Segel, Seth Rogen, and Busy Philipps. “Back then, I imagined a basement at NBC where we would just be this dusty tape on a shelf that nobody remembered. We weren’t winners, which is funny, because the show is about that. We went to the Thanksgiving Day Parade and were on this teacup float. And people were yelling at us, like, ‘Who are you? We don’t know what show you’re on!’”
That’s a long way from today, when Cardellini is one of the most in-demand actors in Hollywood. She’s built a career playing characters who are brimming with hunger and determination, always grasping for more, whether it’s knowledge or a bigger bank account. Following her turn as Margo in No Good Deed, Cardellini will be heading to HBO for the limited series DTF St. Louis, where she’ll star opposite Jason Bateman and David Harbour as one-third of a love triangle that has deadly consequences. Yes, shows about murder seem to follow Cardellini, but each character represents a new person she can get to know one line at a time — and hang onto forever.
“Judy’s got a place in people’s hearts that is so wonderful, so when people come up and talk to me, they’re so kind,” she says. “One night, my daughter was watching somebody say some things [to me] about Judy, and when we came home, she said, ‘Do you miss Judy?’ And I just thought for a second, ‘What a funny question. Yeah, I do. Sometimes I miss Judy.’ I miss Judy and I miss Lindsay. Because I feel like we would be friends.”
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