This article contains spoilers for the season one finale of Too Much.
Emily Ratajkowski was always open to acting again, but wasn’t sure if she’d have an opportunity to—until Lena Dunham came calling with Too Much. The Girls creator wrote a part in her new Netflix series, now streaming, with her longtime friend in mind. At that point, Ratajkowski had largely stepped away from onscreen work. Aside from a cameo appearance in the sketch series History of the World, Part II, she hadn’t acted on a film or TV set since 2017. In 2023, the Los Angeles Times said in a profile of Ratajkowski that “she’s basically quit acting.”
Despite an interest in the art that began in childhood, Ratajkowski came to acting professionally only after launching a massively successful modeling career. But by that point, she was already famous, pigeonholed into a “hot girl” box and not taken seriously as a performer. She fired her team and turned to working behind the scenes, including writing the New York Times bestseller My Body. “I had a pretty negative experience as far as Hollywood went,” Ratajkowski tells me.
that LA Times profile made you feel uneasy?
Profiles are hard, because you’re kind of like a distorted funhouse mirror. I was in a serious “I don’t give a fuck moment” of my life—which I really like for myself. But it was an interesting time to see it on paper for me, because I was like, “Whoa, I’m still figuring this out, and I don’t know if I like what I’m seeing back.”
There’s a level of excitement just in seeing you get to play a part like this. I wonder if there was an element for you of, “Can I go there as an actor?” Since you weren’t getting those opportunities before, how has the balance evolved, between industry feedback versus your own sense of ability?
So much of being a good actor is the confidence, right? The performance is just like any presentation—it’s like I’m public speaking, or I just did something where I had to talk for 25 minutes four times in a day. It almost felt like doing a routine. I liked that. But the second that someone makes me feel like maybe I’m not good at it, it’s like the air deflates. I really felt that, and was also simultaneously experiencing a very particular side of Hollywood and the industry—as “the girl with the tits,” basically. It just really compressed into this just awful insecurity.
I was like, “I want to make things, so that’s fine. I don’t need to be an actress.” To be honest, I was watching the way that actresses were being treated, and I was like, “I don’t even know if that’s what I want.”
I was thinking about that period when you started appearing in a lot of films. It was 2018, right as #MeToo was blowing up.
It was really a weird time. A lot of my book takes place in that period. My mom was sick. I had kind of realized, “Whoa, I’m fucking famous. I have a career. I’m not going to quit this now and go make movies, or whatever I thought I was going to do when I dropped out of UCLA.” I was like, “Okay, this is your life, man. So how do you want to do what you’re going to do?” That’s when I started writing, and fired everyone, and thought about who I want to be—just for myself privately. And then how to use what I had built in my 20s—whether that was accidental or just through real hard work towards one goal, which was security and money and whatever—to marry these two things.
Just having time to sit with myself and be like, “Okay, do you care about [acting]? Do you like it? You were really good at this at one point—you knew this was a thing you were good at—so try it again.” But doing it my own way too. Technique-wise, I was really being like, “Okay, this is what worked for me, and that’s that, and I’m just going to not listen to the concept of this is what a real actor does or this what a real actor doesn’t do, because it is just so personal.” Returning to it at 33 felt really right, because it was enjoyable. And I do feel confident. I wasn’t worried about that scene [in Too Much] at all. I wasn’t like, “Oh, will I cry or not?” I knew I was going to be there. I was going to show up.
How do you feel coming out of Too Much? Do you want to put yourself out there more as an actor again?
Yes, for the right projects. I want to be producing and writing and directing. The acting thing is very exciting and cool, but I’m more interested in being involved in the conception and the execution of things from behind the camera as well.
Talk about your interest in directing a little bit, since it sounds like that may be where you’re looking next.
Yeah, I do feel ready. Which is so obnoxious. I hate talking about things, like—I’m somebody who didn’t tell anybody I was writing a book until it had sold. [Laughs] When my New York Magazine piece came out, I was like, “Oh, people can read it now.” There’s nothing worse than people walking around being like, “I’m doing this and I’m doing this.” It just cheapens it too. But I love telling stories. I wasn’t raised in a house of religion; I was raised in a house where my mom was an English professor and gave me The Bluest Eye inappropriately young.
I also have issues around control, obviously. [Laughs] It’s nice to have control. It’s nice to not just show up. I think modeling has been that for me—well, maybe not anymore because I’ve been doing it for more than half my life. But I do like to be in charge. I’m bossy. I’m a bossy person.
This interview has been edited and condensed for clarity.
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The post ‘Too Much’ Led Emily Ratajkowski to Act Again—and Gave Her the Best Scene of Her Career appeared first on Vanity Fair.
