Warning - disturbing content. YouTube / Netflix US & Canada
Melanie Lynskey tells Chris Schulz her new Netflix movie is a parable for our times.
Melanie Lynskey has something on her mind. She can't stop thinking about it.
"I don't know if there has been a day [lately] where I haven't thought about moving back to New Zealand," says Lynskey, who's on the phone to TimeOut from her home in Los Angeles. "It's always in the back of my mind."
Lynskey's been thinking more and more about her real home - she was born and raised in New Plymouth, and her family's still there - thanks to the Fanta-faced tyrant causing mayhem as America's President.
Elijah Wood and Melanie Lynskey in their new Netflix movie, I Don't Feel At Home In This World Anymore. Photo/Netflix
His divisive politics, says Lynskey, has her reconsidering her American living arrangements.
"There's a weird vibe right now," she says.
"It seems quite divided ... I feel like, 'Well if there's always been an underbelly it's good it's been exposed, and it's good to realise that a lot of people don't think the way you do.'
"[But] how's this country going to come together?"
If she's to return home, there are a couple of problems standing in Lynskey's way. One is her partner, Jason Ritter, an American-born comedian who shocked her with a proposal last week after four years of dating.
She'd probably have some convincing to do to make him make the move with her.
The other is that Lynskey's based in America to take advantage of the many TV and movie offers coming her way. It would be much harder to get work from New Zealand. "I still have to audition and I still need to be here," she says.
Lately, there's been no shortage of work. Lynskey's been in everything from TV shows Two and a Half Men, It's Always Sunny in Philadelphia, Key & Peele and Togetherness (more about that later), to movies such as Up in the Air, The Perks of Being a Wallflower and The Intervention, which co-starred her fiance.
I Don't Feel At Home In This World Anymore, a new Netflix film starring Melanie Lynskey and Elijah Wood.
Last year, she was in five movies. This year, she's already been in two. Just last week, she was in horror anthology XX in a segment directed by Anne Clark, aka musician St Vincent.
And tomorrow, her new Netflix movie debuts in every country that has access to the streaming service. Called I Don't Feel at Home in this World Anymore, Lynskey plays Ruth, a nurse who "doesn't think anything exciting is going to happen to her".
That changes when the mousy-yet-puckish girl-next-door-type embarks on a hellish revenge mission after her laptop is stolen in a burglary. "Things take a turn," she says. "It's crazy."
With Ruth being irked by many of life's little inconveniences, from rude drivers to queue cutters, the film, says Lynskey, sums up the way she thinks many people are feeling at the moment.
"It's such a fun movie but it's also quite profound. It's quite existential. It talks about a lot of the things people are experiencing in the world. But it's also a crazy crime movie. I was kind of amazed when I saw it that it all works and it came together."
Giant teardrops of rain are falling outside as Lynskey admits she took the job with mixed emotions. Her first day filming I Don't Feel at Home coincided with news breaking about the abrupt cancellation of Togetherness, her much-loved HBO show created by Mark and Jay Duplass that was axed after two seasons.
It hasn't happened to her before, and she's still not over it. With the Duplass' having written a third season, she, like the show's fans, have been left wondering what happened to her character, Michelle, a suburban mum having a midlife crisis.
"It was over a year ago and I still haven't quite recovered. I loved that job ... It feels so unfinished to me, that's the main tragedy of it," she says.
"I feel like this character was left in limbo. I've never had that experience before. I've done movies or Two and a Half Men and there's a crazy finale, and the story ended. It's a really weird feeling to just be like, 'Is she okay?'"
I Don't Feel At Home In This World Anymore, a new Netflix film starring Melanie Lynskey and Elijah Wood.
Lynskey soon found a reason to cheer up. For one, her co-star Elijah Wood plays her neighbour, a bonkers conspiracy nerd who owns nunchakus and ninja stars. He is, she says, "hilarious".
"There were a lot of moments where I definitely laughed. I tried to keep it together because we didn't have a lot of time to make the movie. There was no time for laughing."
Also cheering her up was her location. I Don't Feel at Home was shot in Portland, which is, says Lynskey, the closest an American city comes to feeling like home.
"It feels like a very New Zealand city: the coffee shops are really good, the people are very down to earth, it rains all the time, there's a lot of greenery ... It's a gorgeous city. I love it so much."
