If you are wondering if 2016 is somehow repeating itself, then look—and listen—no further than Natalie Portman’s turn as Maddie Schwartz in the new Apple TV+ period crime drama Lady in the Lake.
Early in the first episode, wearing a blood-stained skirt suit and a pillbox hat, her perfectly coiffed flipped bob framing her face, Portman’s Maddie delivers 1960s (and 2016) déjà vu. The moment Portman opens her mouth, it is impossible not to hear echoes of her infamous Jackie inflections that dominated much of an award cycle that ended with Emma Stone winning Best Actress for La La Land—yep, it was that Oscars.
Accent discourse can stretch for years, bubbling to the surface when you least expect it, which is why I couldn’t help but prick up my ears upon hearing Portman’s wispy mid-Atlantic tones in her Lady in the Lake Baltimore lilt (hello, “wooder” instead of “water”). Here, she plays an affluent Jewish housewife who aspires to break free from suburbia. She code-switches a bit between Yiddish words like “macher” when buying kosher lamb at the butcher, and a curt, abrupt tone during an emergency trip to a department store after blood leaks from this meat onto her chic suit. “I would never have guessed. You don’t look Jewish at all,” says one of the bigoted shopgirls when Maddie mentions the majority-Jewish neighborhood she is from.
