Tatiana Maslany played up to 17 different characters in Orphan Black, so she is fully familiar with the challenge of working with various tones and nuances within the same story. The industry recognized that display in 2016 with an Emmy for Best Actress in a Drama Series, in distinction to her work in the fourth season of the Canadian production.
Read more Book review: from Mary Beard to Elisabeth de Waal
The identification of that versatility also helps explain why director David Gordon Green and writer and creator David J. Rosen – each separately – thought of her for the lead role in Maximum Pleasure Guaranteed (Apple TV), one of the boldest and most thrilling series of recent times.
“She is so expressive. Sometimes she is amazing and theatrical and sometimes she is minimalist and intimate. Being able to have that wide range of skills was really valuable for creating Paula,” Gordon Green tells Culto, highlighting that he had forged “a great working relationship” with the actress in the film Stronger Than Fate (2017), a drama based on true events in which she played the partner of Jake Gyllenhaal’s character.
Maslany can’t help but laugh when she hears that both creators agreed she was the best choice to embody the main character of the Apple TV story, Paula Sanders, a woman in her forties who is going through a divorce and gets involved in a frantic journey that starts with a crime.
“That’s so sweet, because I felt like I did such a bad audition,” the actress tells Culto. “I guess they saw something in that discomfort or unease that felt true to Paula. But I feel honored because I respect both of them a lot and loved working with them.”
As if it were a version of Rear Window adapted to 2026, Maximum Pleasure Guaranteed begins with the protagonist watching an assault through her computer. The victim? Trevor (Brandon Flynn), a male content creator – from the CamBoys platform – with whom she has developed a unique closeness. In the blink of an eye, Paula becomes a victim of extortion and not long after the police start connecting the dots and forming a hypothesis that involves her in the crime scene.
All this entanglement unfolds at a moment of great fragility in her life: while dealing with the initial steps to divorce Karl (Jake Johnson), the father of her daughter, and the possibility that he and his new partner, Mallory (Jessy Hodges), might move to another city with the child is on the table.
“I think her unpredictability was what excited me about her, and that I didn’t fully identify with everything she did. I was curious about her,” Maslany says. And she states: “It’s very fun to play someone who makes decisions that don’t necessarily seem responsible or logical.”
For his part, David J. Rosen notes that “all the first times in her life didn’t go well, so seeing her go through all this intensifies the tension. Any mistake she makes could cost her daughter’s life or something worse. That was what I had in mind when we started working on the character.”
The actress recalls that she turned 40 – last September – while filming Maximum Pleasure Guaranteed, a milestone that in some way brought her closer to her role in the ten-episode fiction. “Forty in a woman’s life is an interesting stage to explore, so I felt there was a lot to discover.”
Read more New York Mayor considers ordering Netanyahu’s arrest during UN visit
She then reflects: “There is a strange disconnect between the age I am and the age I feel I am. I remember being younger and looking at 40-year-olds and thinking: oh my God, they’re adults, they have it all figured out. But then, of course, you get there and think: oh, I’m the same kid as always. So yes, it’s a strange time.”
-It seems Paula is always punished for trying to satisfy her needs. Do you think her decisions are wrong or that the world is wrong about her?
I think it’s a combination of both, because I believe there are many things working against her, but I also think she makes decisions that aren’t always the smartest and that she doesn’t always make them thinking about the future. I think we see that a bit in the fourth episode, when we witness the car accident outside her house and the anger she feels behind the wheel. The question is: what happened? How did it happen? And later, at the end of the season, there’s a moment when we wonder what her intention was and if it was partly her decision.
-You played multiple identities in Orphan Black. Although Paula is one person, she seems just as fragmented. Did you approach her as a single identity or as someone divided who doesn’t realize it?
I think that idea of being divided without realizing it is very true. And I think especially when you’ve lived something like what she has lived, with a breakup, infidelity, her husband leaving, and the need to rebuild her life and discover who she is… There are fragments of her everywhere. She’s trying to rebuild who Paula is, but some pieces no longer fit. I think it’s a true story of reinvention, of rediscovery. So yes, there is some multiplicity in that.
-What new facets do you think you discovered about yourself as an actress by playing Paula?
I was talking with David Rosen, the head writer and creator of the series, about how he and the writers had created scenes that seemed limitless in possibilities, where moments could mean so many different things and feel so many different ways depending on the take we did. And I think that level of spontaneity and openness is something I’ve always sought in my work and always enjoyed, but in this series it felt very guarded. It seemed like the essence of the series was this kind of unpredictable chaos. It was fun to feel that as an actress.
–Maximum Pleasure Guaranteed is a mix of thriller and comedy. How do you think its themes and atmosphere resonate with the times we are living in?
I think the feeling of paranoia and distrust, and the fact of witnessing horrors that we name and then people tell us they aren’t happening or aren’t true. (I think of) some things we see through the internet all the time, whether it’s the genocide in Gaza… People denounce it, but there’s also a great silence around it. I think that idea of saying “I witnessed something horrible,” and feeling a bit crazy because it seems not everyone sees it, that feels familiar to me.
Read more Hooded subject opens fire in bar in Brazil, leaving two dead and three injured
