InPalm Springs,shes a furious depressive stuck in a time loop.
Its the rom-com role she was meant to play.
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A few years ago, Cristin Milioti and her brother got high and went to a Radiohead concert.
I suddenly saw what everyone was talking about:This is how it is to talk to me.
Shes quick and snappy, her wit shot through with a black streak.
Its a huge part of what makes her lead performance in this summersGroundhog Dayesque rom-comPalm Springssuch a revelation.
I dont want tomorrow to be today!
I want tomorrow to be tomorrow.
He looks at her pityingly.
Yeah, thats natural, he says.
Unfortunately, thats never gonna happen.
Tomorrow will always and forever be today.
Thats what I love about the time-loop mechanism, she says.
At the beginning [of lockdown], people were like, We cant escape ourselves!
One of the great works of ones life, I think, is to learn hownotto escape yourself.
(Later, she texts methis photoby way of explanation.)
(Witch, to me, is the highest compliment one can be given, she explains.)
Then, as she does many times during our chat, she transitions seamlessly into a more serious register.
I think she comes from a place of extreme pain.
Milioti could easily be describing Palm Springss Sarah.
Milioti roots all of Sarahs behavior in a real sense of pain and frustration.
So much of Sarahs journey, I think, is her inability to escape her shame.
I mean, honestly, I should just go work for Goop right now.
I should quit my acting gig and sell vagina-scented candles.
And the roleshappenedto Milioti.
For a long while, her career was bifurcated into two sorts of parts.
Thats the jot down of shit I live for, she says.
If you’re free to let me get cartoonish, its my dream.
But then there were the jobs where I was just desperate to pay my rent, she says.
But I think that I didnt fit into working for a major data pipe.
Im certainly not the first actor to express that.
Would I have loved to see it?
It had to be more wrapped up in a neat little bow.
Life isnt like that.
Growing up in New Jersey, Milioti says she was raised equal parts earnest and raised eyebrow.
She was an emphatic theater kid a trained mime who loved the Coen brothers and Disney films.
I was a weird kid, she deadpans.
The theater department was the only place where I wasnt pushed or kicked in the knees.
I was like, This is the most sexist play!
The one female role is a woman whos beaten to death!
Not only was Milioti allowed to audition, she landed the role.
Obviously they said no, she laughs.
After graduation, Milioti followed her odd muse to NYU.
People would show up without their lines memorized, and Id be just absolutely combusting in the back.
Just seething and in a flop sweat from rage.
I had a recent memory from it that I think Id pushed down really far, Milioti says.
But when she arrived to film the scene, her costume had changed to a bra and underwear.
And this is when my memory gets very, very weird.
I couldnt tell what was happening, I had no one to talk to, I was so scared.
We shot the scene and I was shaking so hard.
I was so embarrassed.
And they cut the scene anyway.
Milioti says she became immensely frustrated by the direction her career was going.
I was getting nervous that people thought that I was only capable of one thing, she says.
Im not at home snapping my fingers listening to beat poetry, being like, I refuse!
I was like, Oh my God, thats an option?
you could be a woman who is enraged?
Wow, look at her fucking go!
She was immediately drawn to the series humor, a more disturbing kind of comedy.
That experience was really huge to me, she says.
You cant have any agency, you have to fit into my perfect fantasy of what a woman is.
And shes fighting tooth and nail to be like, Go fuck yourself!
Milioti says, getting visibly worked up.
That was my dream.
She saw the role as retroactive justice.
You exist in my universe.
The pilot wasnt picked up.
What if we tried something else?
The thing aboutmeis that I actuallyloveanimals.
She stops herself again mid-thought.
I say all this and Im cringing a little bit, she laughs.
She improvised a seduction scene alongside a drunk wedding guest played by Conner OMalley.
I went to the props department and said, Can you get me the jankiest hook and eye patch?
Theres so much pain there, so much resentment.
The men in her life have completely fucked her.
Of course shes allowed to be angry.
Just as quickly, she lurches into comedy.
The whole thing lasts about 90 seconds, but its a master class of tone and control.
On the heels of her own self-rescue, filming it felt vastly different for Milioti.
I sat myself down and asked, What if you just trusted yourself?
What if you trust that youve done all the work?
This world can be horrendous and shocking and scary.
But to walk around as a clenched fist is no way to live.
