Yahoo Lifestyle Bravo Housewives inspired Linda Cardellini's “No Good Deed ”character: 'Always some heightened drama'
The actress chats her new Netflix dark comedy with Liz Feldman, which she says is "in the same world as 'Dead to Me,'" but ultimately "a very different show.”
Real Housewives and Erewhon girlies inspired Linda Cardellini’s character in No Good Deed, Netflix’s new dark comedy that reunites the star with her Dead to Me collaborator Liz Feldman.
Cardellini plays Margo Starling, a status seeker in the real estate business, in the eight-episode series centered on three families vying to purchase the same 1920s Spanish-style home in the picturesque Los Angeles enclave of Los Feliz. At the center of the sale are homeowners and spouses Lydia (played by Lisa Kudrow) and Paul Morgan (Ray Romano), empty nesters with dark secrets and unresolved trauma. Among the hopefuls with their sights set on the property is the conniving Margo, who lives on the Morgans' block.
The foundation for No Good Deed was first laid during production of the third and final season of Dead to Me, after Cardellini — who earned two Emmy nominations for her work on the series as Judy Hale, the kindhearted, guilt-stricken artist who befriends the widow of a man she unwittingly kills in a car accident — expressed a desire to play a character the complete opposite of Judy once the series came to an end. Well, Margo is the complete opposite of Judy, alright.
Courtesy of Netflix
Linda Cardellini on 'No Good Deed'Sign up for Entertainment Weekly's free daily newsletter to get breaking TV news, exclusive first looks, recaps, reviews, interviews with your favorite stars, and more.
“To me, that is the really fun part of what I get to do for a living, is to play something that's different from the last thing that I've done,” Cardellini tells Entertainment Weekly. “I just love how Liz creates these characters that are filled with secrets and deceit. There's a lot of different layers, and then there are all these twists, and that is just really fun to do.”
From her wardrobe and hair (hello, highlights!) to her cutthroat personality, there’s certainly a hint of Housewives in Margo, who, in perhaps her only likeness to Judy, has some buried secrets of her own. “I watched some Bravo,” says Cardellini of becoming Margo. “I had never seen any of those shows, so I had definitely watched some. And I thought the heightened drama of all of that really spoke to how Liz was writing this, too. There's always some heightened drama between characters.”
Cardellini admittedly also mined from folks in her own orbit. “Margo sees people as a transaction; everything that happens is for her own gain,” observes Cardellini. “And so I tried to think of people in my life who move through the world like that. When something hits me hard, I can stay in that moment and in that grief a little longer than somebody like Margo does. So in that respect, I took it upon myself to look at people I didn't necessarily understand and try to understand. Not necessarily the Housewives, but just in terms of people you interact with in daily life who will cut in front of you in line.”
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Linda Cardellini on 'No Good Deed'Related: Dead to Me star Linda Cardellini is finding it hard to let go of Judy
“You could see her somewhere in L.A., not just on screen," she adds. "I feel like you could bump into somebody like her at the supermarket.” (Waiting in line for a Hailey Bieber smoothie at Erewhon, perhaps.)
The ensemble cast also features Denis Leary, Teyonah Parris, O-T Fagbenle, Abbi Jacobson, Poppy Liu, and Luke Wilson, the latter playing Cardellini's onscreen husband JD Campbell, a morose out-of-work soap opera actor. No objections to the casting here. Wilson and Cardellini previously shared the screen in the 2001 rom-com Legally Blonde, and the mini-reunion marked the first time the two crossed paths since then. There was “definitely a familiarity,” says Cardellini of working with Wilson again. “[I have] a big soft spot for that movie and everybody who was in it.”
Cardellini is excited for audiences to experience the “different energies that we bring to the characters," she says of the star-studded cast. “The show is just really fun to watch. You can tell it’s in the same world as Dead to Me, but it’s a very different show. It’s a fun romp.”
All eight episodes of No Good Deed are on the market now.
Read the original article on Entertainment Weekly
