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Why Natasha Lyonne Knew Schitt's Creek's Annie Murphy Was Perfect For Russian Doll Season 2

In an exclusive interview with E! News, Natasha Lyonne told us why she knew Schitt's Creek star Annie Murphy was a perfect addition for the second season of Netflix's Russian Doll.

By Daniel Trainor Apr 20, 2022 2:00 PMTags
Watch: Russian Doll Star Natasha Lyonne Talks Season 2

Natasha Lyonne has been around long enough to know a liar when she sees one.

When the star and co-creator of Netflix's Russian Doll needed somebody to play a significant role in the show's time-bending second season, she and the team began searching for an actress who radiated humanity on-screen.

Enter Schitt's Creek star Annie Murphy.

"Annie has a real heart to her. It's very easy to love Annie," Natasha exclusively told E! News. "Obviously that has to do with who she is as a human being."

On the show's second season, Annie plays a character integral to the complicated backstory of Natasha's character Nadia. Natasha knew they needed somebody who the audience would trust but, more importantly, somebody the camera would, too.

"With some people, sometimes the camera lies like crazy and you find out people are total jerks," Natasha said. "In other ways, the camera is hard to hide from."

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It also didn't hurt that Annie looked the part.

"Who wouldn't want to be with Annie Murphy?," Natasha said. "In the meantime, she looks like Jane Fonda or something in the '70s. She looks great, she looks straight out of a [Martin] Scorsese movie. She was just terrific."

The second season of Russian Doll takes place four years after the end of season one and features the return of Charlie BarnettChloë Sevigny and Greta Lee.

For Natasha, it was an opportunity to dive into themes that she's been thinking about and wrestling with for years.

"I've spent a lot of time, obviously, in therapy and, in many ways, I'm curious about all these questions, about the nature of free will," she shared. "I became really obsessed with this idea of ‘the arrow of time.' The question of ‘Why is it that we can remember the past, but we can't remember the future?' Probably thanks to too many psychedelics in high school."

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And hey, when you have the chance to explore some of life's greatest mysteries with Netflix's money? Might as well give it a shot!

"I felt like ‘Well, they're giving me this budget, I guess I should put together a team of cracker jacks and try to find out the answer to that,'" Nastasha joked. "In a weird way, I was only drawing on the specifics of my own story to try and have a well of specificity with which to really investigate those inciting events of what I think is the formative story of me and, thereby, the formative stories of anyone."

Find out what Natasha, Annie and her crew of cracker jacks were able to dream up, as season two of Russian Doll is available to stream now.

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