Parker Posey, once dubbed “Queen of the Indies” by Time in the late 1990s, has more than 110 acting credits to her name. She’s starred in such acclaimed projects as feature films “Dazed and Confused,” “Party Girl,” “You’ve Got Mail,” “Best in Show” and television shows “Boston Legal,” “Lost in Space,” “Louie” and “The Staircase.” But it wasn’t until this year, for her guest appearance on the Amazon Prime Video Series “Mr. & Mrs. Smith,” that Posey received recognition from the television academy. Posey is a first-time Emmy nominee for the spy series in the Best Drama Guest Actress category, one of 16 total for the show from creators Donald Glover and Francesca Sloane.
“I was so shocked. I was not expecting it at all. So yeah, it feels great,” Posey tells Gold Derby in an exclusive video interview. “I’m really excited, especially with this project. What a great group of actors in this one show. It was just a great job.”
Posey was in Thailand shooting the third season of HBO’s “The White Lotus” when she found out about the nomination. “Everyone texted me. ‘We’re so proud of you. Congratulations!’ And I’m like, ‘Oh, it’s so nice to hear that, but I’d like to hear I’m proud of you when you’re really struggling,’” she says with a laugh.
Posey is one of several actors nominated for “Mr. & Mrs. Smith,” including stars Glover and Maya Erskine in, respectively, the Best Drama Actor and Best Drama Actress category, as well as guest actresses Michaela Coel and Sarah Paulson and guest actors Paul Dano and John Turturro. The show, which tracks the relationship between its title spies, from their ostensible “first date” to an inevitable breakup and beyond, was also nominated for Best Drama Series.
To play her character, called simply “Other Jane,” Posey had to embody someone she says “has no soul.” The spy and her partner, Other John (played by Wagner Moura), are introduced as a potential “couple’s goal” for the title characters. But the quartet’s double date goes slightly awry, leaving John and Jane with a sour taste in their mouths after a mission goes wrong. Later, Other Jane and Other John return for the season final, when it is revealed they’re actually secret agents who assassinate fellow Smiths when they step out of line.
“It’s so transactional and it was really fun to play a complicated person like that,” Posey says. “It’s like, I think she’s kind of a robot, but underneath she does a great job of playing the game. When the parts are written like that it allows the actors just to have so much fun.”
Posey says she and Moura had a “blast” on the show, and the results of their work even pleased Posey’s mother. “She was like, I thought you were hilarious. That’s always good. You know, it’s all about making your family laugh and be proud of you.”
Posey says she would love to return to the show for Season 2, although whether that’s possible is unknown after the show’s cliffhanger ending when Other Jane appeared to have corned John and Jane and was ready to kill them or be killed herself. (The season finale ends with a flash of gunfire, but who was shot is not shown.) If Posey does get the chance to play a spy again, however, she’ll be ready for the work – especially thanks to all the action training she had to do for the show.
“You know, those guys come on, and they show you what to do,” she says of the preparation work – before recalling a story from her time on the set of “Blade: Trinity.”
“[Director] David S. Goyer was like, ‘We’re ready for you.’ So I went out and was shooting at a vampire, and the David’s like, ‘That was great. That was great, Parker. Just don’t make the sound with your mouth,’” she says. “And it was really hard. It was hard to do that. To shoot a gun and not make that sound.”
All episodes of “Mr. & Mrs. Smith” are streaming on Amazon.
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