Chlo? Sevigny Brings the Pain
The howl of a small child erupts on the other end of the phone. “Oh lord,” says Chlo? Sevigny.
Her son, Vanja, who turns two on May 2, is having a moment. “He had a little spill this morning, so I think he’s a little sensitive,” she explains. And then she coos: “Vanja, will you please go in the other room with Emma [the babysitter] and do some reading? Thank you. I’ll be right here.”
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“Are you a mama?” she asks as she gets back on the phone.
Sevigny, 47, and husband Sini?a Ma?kovi? (the director of Karma Art Gallery in the East Village) welcomed Vanja as COVID-19 was raging in New York City. Motherhood has naturally reoriented Sevigny’s priorities. She takes her son on location, which she admits felt “pretty risky” during COVID-19. And she wears her emotions very close to the surface. Emotional pain, she says, “is much easier to access.”
The actor, model and designer has emerged from the pandemic with her usual eclectic roster of roles, a fashion campaign (for her friend Marc Jacobs’ resort 2021 collection) and, coming up, a pandemic-delayed wedding ceremony.
Brianna Capozz/Courtesy of ID PR for Chloe Sevigny
In Hulu’s “The Girl From Plainville,” she plays the mother of a teenage son who commits suicide. The eight-episode series is a dramatization of the real-life death by suicide of Massachusetts teen Conrad Roy 3rd and the ensuing manslaughter trial of his long-distance girlfriend Michelle Carter, who sent Conrad a series of text messages seemingly encouraging him to take his own life. (She received a 15-month prison sentence but was released early on good behavior.) Sevigny also reprises her role as Lenora Vulvokov, the troubled mother of Natasha Lyonne’s Nadia in the second season of “Russian Doll,” dropping Wednesday on Netflix. The second season of Lyonne’s, Leslye Headland’s and Amy Poehler’s cult hit travels back in time (via the Downtown 6 train) to more deeply examine the roots of generational trauma that still haunts Nadia, including the scars of her Holocaust survivor grandmother (Irén Borán).
“Everybody was, like, ‘What are they going to do after season one?’ I don’t want to say season two is better — because I’m in it more,” laughs Sevigny, “but it is just as good.”
She also has a supporting role in director Luca Guadagnino “Bones and All,” an adaptation of author Camille DeAngelis teen road movie about cannibalism that stars Timothée Chalamet and Taylor Russell. Expected in theaters later this year, Guadagnino shot the film last summer in and around Cincinnati, his first U.S.-set and -shot production. It is Sevigny’s second project with Guadagnino after 2020’s Italy-set HBO limited series “We Are Who We Are.”
And in May, Sevigny and Ma?kovi? will have their long-delayed wedding ceremony. The couple were quietly married at New York’s city hall in March 2020. “Because of COVID-19 we couldn’t have our church wedding-slash-social occasion,” she says. “So we’re considering this our real wedding.”
Here, Sevigny talks with WWD about playing a mom on screen, working with best friend Lyonne and what she’s going to wear to her wedding.
WWD: Without spoiling anything, I do like the Lenora reveal in season two of “Russian Doll.” In season two, we see Lenora earlier in her life. How did that inform your approach to the character?
Chlo? Sevigny: I felt like there were a lot of unanswered questions and a lot of piqued interest around that character. I think that her mental illness had progressed when we see her later in life [in season one]. We find her in season two in a different part of her life. So I felt like I didn’t have to adhere to what I had done in the first season. It could be a little different. And what Natasha wanted to explore was very clearly on the page. So I just followed that. We would try some takes where I was really pushing it and some where I pulled it in. So there was luckily room to try and work stuff out.
WWD: Natasha is acting opposite you but she’s also directing you. What is it like working with your best friend? Is it easier to communicate?
C.S.: It’s easier and harder. She gets more annoyed with me and can take it out in a way that she can’t on other people. She can get away with it because we’re like family. (Laughs) But I think we were all just excited to be working again after COVID-19 — and to be working on something that we were proud of and stimulated by. It was the perfect alchemy.
WWD: “The Girl From Plainville” also deals with mental illness, which seems especially resonant as the pandemic has propelled these issues into the mainstream.
C.S.: We are in a mental health crisis. I just don’t think that anybody knows how to deal with it, even people coming from privilege like Michelle Carter. She was suffering and she had access to all kinds of help. It’s such a complicated issue. I think [Hollywood] can help destigmatize it and maybe that helps people reach out through the right avenues to find the right kind of help. I also think the spectrum is so vast. I mean, we all don’t have to be like “Girl Interrupted” to be suffering. I think reflecting that is a great first step.
WWD: How did you prepare to play Lynn Roy, your character in “Plainville?” There is a lot of interview footage of her. Is there more pressure in a way when you are portraying a living person?
C.S.: The first thing I did was watch the documentary [director Erin Lee Carr’s “I Love You, Now Die: The Commonwealth v. Michelle Carter” for HBO]. I was just very moved by [Lynn Roy], by how grounded she was and the humor that she found. And I was struck by the way she spoke about her son. I know it’s very important for her that people hear her son’s story and know that he was a bright, charming, promising young man and not just news fodder. I wanted to help honor him. I tried to just capture something of what I was so moved by.
WWD: As a parent, the deepest pain imaginable is losing a child. How did becoming a mom change how you approach roles like this?
C.S.: The feelings, the emotions are much easier to access. In the past, when I’d have to access that sort of pain [for a part], I’d often think about my father and his passing. [Sevigny lost her father to cancer when she was a teenager.] It is still a really raw emotional place for me to go to. But the thought of something happening to Vanja…I can’t. And this was my first time working away from him. [“Plainville” shot in late 2020 in Savannah, Ga.] So there was also that weighing on me. How am I going to work? How am I going to go away? What if something happens to him? I mean, that alone could get me in a tailspin.
WWD: How has your has your personal style changed as you’ve entered your 40s and become a mom? Or has it?
C.S.: I think we all fell prey to comfy, cozy clothes during the pandemic. And then I also had a baby, so it was doubly so for me. I’m trying to work my way out of it and take more pride and joy and bring it every day. Because I felt like there were a couple of years where it just kind of fell away. And I wasn’t fitting into anything in my closet. And now I’m kind of getting back into stuff. I just want to have more fun and dress up when I’m just walking around the corner.
WWD: When you got married at city hall, you were very pregnant and wore a black bodycon dress. What are you going to wear at your May wedding?
C.S.: Umm, I am thinking…white. I am trying to keep it a little bit of a secret. It’s new. It’s couture. It’s definitely nontraditional.
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