With a title like “Maximum Pleasure Guaranteed,” Tatiana Maslany understands why viewers would be drawn into her show’s web of lies and deception: we’re already living it.
Despite not being a big conspiracy thriller fan herself, the actress is well-aware of the real-life ramifications of living in a world filled with so much misinformation.
“‘Who’s telling the truth and who isn’t?’ That, I think, is a big question mark that a lot of us are contending with — in terms of just the information that’s out there, news, the Internet, AI, all these things. I think the feeling of paranoia is very alive in the world right now,” she told TheWrap. “I think that’s why Hitchcock keeps getting referenced with this show, which is interesting because it’s stylistically so different, but the ideas of paranoia, of surveillance, that tension; there’s something in there that feels very true.”
Maslany stars as Paula, a single mom who works at an online magazine and finds herself thrust into a deadly rabbit hole filled with killers, scammers and liars of all kinds. And after playing a fact-checker, she also sees the Apple TV show as a necessary examination on the current state of media — and media criticism.
“The ways that corporate interests can influence those things and the shrinking of independent media outlets is really interesting to me. I’m always seeking out more independent media than I am anything else. I have no interest in mainstream stuff because I just don’t trust it and there’s always a mandate,” she shared. “I was versed in sort of the complexities of that stuff, but I didn’t know a lot about fact-checking and that became a thing that I did a lot of research about. And that, too, being a space that is influenced by bias. A human being is doing this, but also there are other factors involved.”
“For Paula, there was a sense when I auditioned for her that I was not right for this and that I couldn’t get comfortable in my body in the audition. I felt very off. I think that was actually the script working on me,” Maslany added. “She is in this place where she’s like: ‘Who am I? I don’t know what I am now that I’ve lost all of these things that were markers of my identity, solids that I knew about my life.’ So that feeling of being like a deer learning to walk for the first time, that feeling was something I was playing with; but also the heartbreak of losing a love and then suddenly you’re by yourself and you’re jumping into something new with someone and it’s the wrong thing and you sort of have your heart broken again. And then just being a woman in my 40s and juggling the pressures of the world and feeling this paranoia and this stress in the world — there was stuff to tap into.”
The series also stars Jake Johnson, Jessy Hodges, Jon Michael Hill, Charlie Hall, Kiarra Hamagami Goldberg, Nola Wallace, Dolly de Leon, Brandon Flynn and Murray Bartlett, making for a particularly stellar cast. Of course, this is not Maslany’s first well-acted television drama, considering she made a name for herself with her Emmy-winning role(s) in “Orphan Black.”
“The overlaps are interesting. There’s a juggling element to it that feels somehow similar. This feeling of so many different lives within Paula and all these different roles she has to inhabit and to succeed at to convince someone that she is worthy of being promoted or worthy of having a child, worthy of intimacy and love,” she said. “Where ‘Orphan Black’ was these externalized performances of one person, [‘MPG’] is like inside of one person all of these performances. I’m always interested in those kinds of things where themes echo through an artist’s career. You get drawn to certain things or you are curious about certain things, and multiples have always been something that I’ve been drawn to.”
And speaking of multiples… “Maximum Pleasure Guaranteed” was just renewed for Season 2 last week following its series premiere in May.
“I was so excited to get the pickup and immediately texted all our cast. We’re so excited to get to keep exploring this, because we really all like each other, which is a nice, rare thing,” she concluded. “I was just texting with David Rosen, who’s in the writers’ room right now with all of our writers — but I don’t know what they’re cooking up. I’m excited by it, because I love all the writers who are in there and David’s just got a great brain. I just hope that it is as surprising and uncomfortable as the first season was.”
“Maximum Pleasure Guaranteed” Season 1 is now streaming on Apple TV.
The post Tatiana Maslany Credits Real-World Paranoia for Making ‘Maximum Pleasure Guaranteed’ Work appeared first on TheWrap.
