On paper, the job of starring in “Ponies” looks tricky. The lead roles are two young women working at the U.S. embassy in Moscow in the late 1970s. Their husbands die unexpectedly in a plane crash that might not have been an accident. As they’re in mourning, they’re unexpectedly drafted into undercover jobs for the CIA. The missions put them in harm’s way at every moment, forcing them to acquire espionage skills they don’t have or risk capture, torture and death.
Oh, and it’s a comedy.
“Yeah, that is what the show is,” said Haley Lu Richardson, who along with Emilia Clarke embraced the assignment. “But it somehow works. That’s how life is. I know that when I am in an intense or awkward situation, I rely on inappropriate humor. It’s something that humans do. It’s not just a ploy for writers to make the audience laugh in a TV show.”
“It all comes down to the truth of it,” Clarke added. “Funny is only funny because it’s true, right?”
If “Ponies” feels both funny and true, a lot of the credit goes to Clarke and Richardson. Created by Susanna Fogel (“Booksmart,” “The Flight Attendant”) and David Iserson (“Graves”) for Peacock, the eight-episode series got its title because the embassy secretaries turned CIA operatives become useful to the agency for being PONIs, or Persons of No Interest, to the Russians.
The series is part twisty spy thriller and part comedy, but mostly it’s an amusing character study of two women who might be in way over their heads, or might be savvier and smarter than anybody realizes. (The jury is still out on that one after a season finale that leaves nothing but provocative loose ends.)
Fogel and Iserson approached Clarke first, finding the British actress receptive to playing the naive and timid Beatrice “Bea” Grant, even if she wasn’t sure she wanted to commit to another series after her run on ”Game of Thrones.”
“It was a huge decision, going back into ongoing TV,” she said. “I knew I needed to have a character that didn’t just have an arc but had substance and an ability to pivot and turn and change and morph and grow. It was a combination of an undeniable script and me loving the creative people involved. I wanted to spend my time with Susanna and David—and as you get older in your career, that becomes a huge part of the conversation.
“When you’re in a movie, you’re dating; when you’re in TV, you are marrying these people, so you better like ’em.”
Clarke had already signed on to star and executive-produce when Fogel contacted Richardson, offering her the part of the eccentric, brash and seemingly fearless Twila Hasbeck. The actress, best known for indie films like “After Yang” and “Montana Story” and for the second season of “The White Lotus,” had met with Fogel years earlier and was impressed by what she said was a “really thoughtful, well-written and intuitive letter” from the co-creator.
“I was blown away by how much she intuited about me as a person,” she said. “Twila is very different from any character I’ve played before, but she’s the most similar to me of any character I’ve played. And the fact that Susanna saw that connection deep within me, and also trusted me to be able to portray this kind of character that I haven’t portrayed before, was really cool of her.”
The deal was sealed over a get-to-know-you Zoom between Clarke and Richardson. “It was love at first sight,” Clarke said. “Everything in my gut was saying, ‘Yes, this is exactly who you want.’ She’s a truly extraordinary woman, and the more we hung out, the more we clung to one another throughout the process.”
Richardson returned the compliment, though she admitted that she was not a “Game of Thrones” viewer. (“Emilia was kind of mad but also kind of relieved when she found that out,” she said.) But her lack of interest in Daenerys Targaryen didn’t stop her from being dazzled by her co-star during that Zoom call.
“I was overcome by her light,” she said. “There are people who are earnest and empathetic and filled with joy and light, but Emilia is so strong, she’s one of a kind. I’d never felt that over Zoom before.”
For both actresses, it was also a rush to be offered a leading role opposite another woman. “That really was huge,” Clarke said. “It felt different from anything I’d done before.”
Finding the show’s tone wasn’t easy, she added. “When I’m pitched a show, the first question I always ask is about tone,” she said. “Like, ‘Do you have a comp? Is there something that you’re aspiring to be? What sandpit are we playing in here?’ And there wasn’t one, which is terrifying and exciting in the same measure. The closest thing I can compare it to tonally is a movie like (the 2002 Steven Spielberg film) ‘Catch Me If You Can.’”
She quickly shook her head. “I’m not comparing us to ‘Catch Me If You Can,’ but just bear with me in this metaphor. There are moments of complete humor, complete tragedy, romance—it’s a movie, it’s got a full story, there’s so much in it and it all comes from character. And I feel like ‘Ponies’ lives in that space. You can’t categorize it, because it’s got everything.
“It’s so interesting now that it’s coming out in the U.K. I was at the fishmonger’s the other day, and Tony, my fishmonger, was like, ‘Are you finally in something I want to watch?’ You get that energy from everyone: ‘Oh, that looks like something I’m going to want to spend my time watching.’”
Asked about the biggest challenge of the production, Clarke had an immediate answer. “The Russian,” she said. “Oh my God.” (Although Bea is from Rhode Island, she has a Russian grandmother and is supposed to be fluent in the language.) “When you first get the scripts, (the Russian dialogue) is just in italics. And then scripts started coming through not in italics, and it was terrifying. I got to where I thought I knew what I was doing, and then we got there and it was made very clear that I did not know what I was doing.”
Studying the language, she said, “consumed every waking hour. I would dream in Russian. Haley would watch me rocking in the corner with my Russian, trying to get it down, and she’d be like, ‘Baby, I’m so sorry.’ She definitely had the sweet end of the deal there.”
Richardson, whose character does not speak Russian, agreed. “To say I was happy not having to learn Russian is an understatement,” she said. “I learned one phrase, Tvoyu mat, which is ‘Go f— yourself.’ That took me days to perfect, and I still don’t think I’ve perfected it. Emilia made it look like nothing, but I saw how much she had to work. To do it on top of the normal acting stuff we have to do and the lines we have to memorize and the emotional spaces we have to go to, that’s a new level of torture, I think.”
She laughed. “I got a text from David a couple of weeks ago that was like, ‘We’re just thinking about some things for a potential Season 2 and wondering, Would you learn Russian?’ And I was like, ‘Am I allowed to say no?’”
This story first appeared in the Comedy Issue of TheWrap’s awards magazine. Read more from the issue here.
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