The actress was unsettled by her role in a harrowing true crime drama.
Chloë Sevigny — the actress and '90s It Girl described by the writer Jay McInerney as "the coolest girl in the world" — has played plenty of harrowing roles. She was Patrick Bateman's secretary, Jean, in AmericanPsycho and the best friend of the "club kid killer" Michael Alig in Party Monster, and has worked with Lars von Trier, who is no stranger to disturbing subjects. Yet becoming a mother to Vanja, 2, has changed her approach to tragedy and made her latest role, as a grieving parent, particularly painful.
In The Girl from Plainville, a series based on a true story, she plays Lynn Roy, whose son Conrad killed himself in 2014, aged 18. It was the first time that Sevigny had worked away from her son. Before she had Vanja, she says, she channelled into emotional scenes her grief at the loss of her father, a painter who died of cancer when she was 20. "But being a mother and navigating this material, I didn't have to draw on anything; it was just floodgates."
Elle Fanning and Colton Ryan in The Girl from Plainville.
Lynn is blindsided by her son's death and the subsequent trial of his friend Michelle Carter, 17 (played by Elle Fanning). Michelle and Conrad had struggled with mental health and exchanged hundreds of messages about their feelings. Michelle was jailed for involuntary manslaughter after the police discovered texts she sent Conrad suggesting ways for him to kill himself, which he eventually did. After the suicide, she texted a friend saying, "He got out of the car because it was working, and he got scared and I f***ing told him to get back in." Sevigny remembers the tabloids portrayed her as "a rich bitch". She has since been released from prison and is on probation.
Conrad was on medication, but Lynn thought he was getting better. "The day of his suicide they went to the beach. They were eating guacamole, telling jokes," Sevigny says. "He was seeing his doctor. He seemed on the up-and-up. And that's what terrifies me; how do you navigate teen angst and know the severity of it?"
The real-life Michelle Carter in court in February 2019. Photo / AP
For a long time Sevigny was ambivalent about motherhood. As a model, spotted aged 17 in New York's East Village in 1992, she was an influencer before the term existed, working with the Beastie Boys and Sonic Youth. She has joked, "I'd never see a baby and go, 'Oh, I want a kid,' but I'd see teenagers and be, like, 'Damn, I want a teenager.'"
She met Vanja's father, the Croatian art gallery director Sinisa Mackovic, in 2018, and spoke about fearing that she had left it too late to get pregnant. "I feel like it's now-or-never time … I dreamed my whole life it would be a natural occurrence. Now that it seems like it has to be forced, it takes on a different connotation." So when she had Vanja, she felt lucky — and leaving him to shoot The Girl from Plainville in Savannah (she lives in New York) was tough.
"I could cry just thinking about the fact that I'm a damn actress and my career has to pay our mortgage," she says. "I mean, I can't complain. I'm very privileged, but there is something enviable about the nine-to-fivers when you have a kid. I'm trying to navigate the mum guilt, but it's pretty daunting. I haven't been for a massage in two years and when I go on the table I'm instantly thinking, oh my God, is he okay? Has he fallen over? Is he going to be hit by a car?" She laughs. "My friends are, like, 'This worrying isn't helping any of us, Chloë.'"
Chloë Sevigny's latest role sees her playing Lynn Roy in The Girl from Plainville. Photo / Getty Images
She also worries about Vanja growing up in the social media age, "and how I keep my son safe from it". Instagram isn't all negative — it has allowed her "to control how I am seen" — but she isn't convinced by the age of the influencer. "The underground was something that I cherished with pride — it represented something," she says. "I remember saying, 'If I ever appear in People magazine, I'm going to quit acting.' I was frustrated doing magazine shoots back in the day and them having to put advertisers' clothes on me. Now influencers want to wear advertisers' clothes to make money on their Instagram. It's such a different landscape. How does one identify as alternative in this wash?" She shrugs. "Maybe I'm just old, I don't know."
Her other worry is the country her son will grow up in. "What's happening in America is upsetting." Her eyes lose focus for a moment. "I was hopeful with Bernie [Sanders], but … we need some really radicalised left. We often turn to art to try and inspire and motivate and uplift, but I don't know anyone's ready to have their mind changed." She surveys it briefly — it would be easy to be downhearted, but she's surprisingly cheerful. "I don't think it's all bad. I think there are opportunities. The problem is I don't know what they are."
More new real life dramas
Blackbird Taron Egerton plays Jimmy Keene, as he is given the choice of life in prison for drug dealing or befriending a serial killer and helping the police discover where the bodies of several girls are buried. It's also Ray Liotta's last show; he plays Keene's father. Available on Apple TV+
The Thing About Pam Renee Zellweger stars in and produced this show about Pam Hupp, who appeared to be a friendly suburban neighbour but ended up murdering her best friend. Available on Amazon Prime
Under the Banner of Heaven An adaptation of Jon Krakauer's non-fiction book about a murder in a Mormon community, with Andrew Garfield and Daisy Edgar Jones. Available on Disney+ from July 27
