Hall of Fame baseball player Rickey Henderson once declared, “If my uniform doesn’t get dirty, I haven’t done anything in the baseball game.” Odessa A’zion isn’t the biggest sports fan, but she can relate.
“I love having a super dirty script,” she enthuses late one afternoon in early November at a Mid City cafe. “The dirtier the script, the more loved it is.” The 25-year-old actress has been working for about a decade in horror movies, indie comedies and crime thrillers. But this fall, she is breaking through in a new way thanks to “Marty Supreme,” the highly-anticipated new film from “Uncut Gems” co-director Josh Safdie.
In this early-1950s epic, A’zion plays Rachel, a married pet-store employee having an affair with her lifelong best friend and unscrupulous ping-pong champion Marty Mauser (Timothée Chalamet). But Rachel is no shrinking violet, holding her own against lowlifes and schemers while navigating the movie’s unexpected turns, shocking violence and wrenching tension. A’zion saves all her scripts, but the “Marty Supreme” one is especially meaningful to her.
“I call myself a memory hoarder, so the dirt and buildup on the script are memories,” she explains. “‘Oh, there’s a fingerprint on this page with blood on it — I got [fake] blood on my hand and needed to check something on my script. This [page] corner was ripped off because I had to put my gum in it before we started filming.’ I like seeing the work that was put into it.”
“Marty Supreme” opens on Christmas, but is already generating substantial Oscar buzz. In the meantime, A’zion is also earning raves for her performance as Tallulah, the hopelessly shallow, endlessly entertaining influencer on Rachel Sennott’s zeitgeist-y HBO series, “I Love L.A.” But unlike these two strong-willed, aggressive characters, A’zion in person exudes the warm, infectious energy of your most fun pal, the one you want to spend all day goofing off with. She’s a hugger and a high-fiver; she laughs easily and swears up a storm. Dressed in jeans, boots, a concert tee and a jacket, A’zion doesn’t behave like a rising star. And even though she hates when actors talk in such woo-woo terms, seriously, she knew she was destined to be Rachel.
“When [Safdie and co-writer Ronald Bronstein] were writing it — before knowing that I was going to end up playing her — they were writing it for me,” she insists with absolute conviction. “I felt like I knew her really well — what she was going through, what she’s been through. Not that I’m as manipulative and calculated, but I can really see her. She’s someone that I’ve always wanted to be able to play and explore. If somebody was going to talk down [to] me, I’m not going to say, ‘Don’t f— talk to me like that, you piece of s—!’ I don’t do that confrontational s—. I’m a defuser. But Rachel’s a f— hardheaded go-getter. I really admire her — I feel like I have that in me, but in a different way.”
Acting has helped A’zion develop that more assertive side. In interviews, she is fond of sharing her mantra: “I want a director to work with me, not on me.” She formulated that mission statement when she was starting out, dealing with teachers, directors and castmates who didn’t respect her because of her thin résumé. “It took a really long time for me to create boundaries,” A’zion admits, “because I was so young and it’s so important to me to be kind to everyone I’m working with, no matter how they’re treating me.”
She’s become just as committed to establishing boundaries while discussing her family. A’zion’s parents are filmmaker Felix O. Adlon and “Better Things” co-creator Pamela Adlon, who loosely based the acclaimed series on her relationship with her three daughters. A’zion, who chose not to use the Adlon name professionally, is the middle child, the one stereotypically known for being the peacemaker. When asked if her defuser tendencies stem from her place in the sibling birth order, it’s the only point in the conversation in which she’s not effusive.
A’zion in “Marty Supreme.”
(A24)
“I’m not really good at talking about family stuff,” she says politely but firmly. “I will say I felt very misunderstood when I was younger and was more of the trouble child. Now I feel more like the peacemaker.”
Because Adlon rendered “Better Things’” three daughters so vividly, it’s tempting to wonder how much of Frankie (who was played by Hannah Riley) is in A’zion. Do people meet A’zion expecting her to be like that free-spirited, searching character? “I’ve never commented on it before,” A’zion replies. “But I will say that that’s a character, and it’s something made from one person’s perspective.”
When A’zion was younger, she shot her own short movies, eventually channeling her creative instincts into her auditions. “Once the industry started allowing self-tapes, I would always do something really out there,” she says. “I’ve done self-tapes in my car. I’ve done self-tapes at the beach. I’ve done self-tapes in the ocean, in a pool, in my bed, in my bathtub. Why would I do it against a f— white wall?”
On the way to the New York Film Festival premiere of “Marty Supreme,” “I thought, ‘I’ll be fine,’” A’zion says of her occasional bouts with anxiety. “And then I’m like, ‘I’m going to throw up.’”
(Christina House / Los Angeles Times)
In fact, a self-tape got her the “Marty Supreme” job after an initial Zoom with Safdie made him worry she might be too young to play Rachel. But A’zion ended up doing a self-tape in the middle of the night in Bucharest in the midst of filming the horror movie “Until Dawn.” It was an intense phone booth scene from “Marty Supreme,” and A’zion took it upon herself to find a phone booth and recruited castmate Belmont Cameli to run the camera.
“[The scene is] a lot calmer in the movie than my audition was,” she recalls, laughing. “But I was so happy that I got a self-tape versus an in-person thing. You can make it entirely your own — you can really make it look like how you feel like it would look. If you want somebody to pay attention to your tape, make sure that you stand out and take a risk.” Needless to say, Safdie was convinced.
A’zion has occasionally gotten anxious in the lead-up to the movie’s release. On the way to the New York Film Festival premiere, “I thought, ‘I’ll be fine’ — and then I’m like, ‘I’m going to throw up.’ I wish I smoked weed so that I could [calm down], but I don’t smoke weed anymore — that would do the opposite and make my heart race even more.” Still, she’s trying to focus on her excitement about the doors that “Marty Supreme” could open for her to have, as she puts it, “a career that I always saw myself having, doing roles that I have always wanted to do, instead of taking a job because I need more work and to financially get by.”
A rising star? A’zion has heard those predictions before, so she’s wary about being anointed the next big thing. After all, she remembers all the auditions that went nowhere. She remembers being behind on her rent. She remembers almost being evicted. She remembers getting fired from gigs. Simply being cast in a Josh Safdie film doesn’t make those old wounds disappear. “To all of a sudden be like, ‘Okay, I’m done [worrying about my career]!’ — I don’t see that feeling coming anytime soon.”
She takes a moment to enjoy the beautifully orange fall sunset in the distance. “People tell me that [‘Marty Supreme’] is going to be a moment, but it’s still hard to process.” A’zion has held onto her dirty script, and its happy memories, but she confesses, “I still don’t feel like it’s real. It’s like, ‘Did I really do that?’ It’s just a crazy thing to be a part of. I’m pinching myself the whole time.”
(Christina House / Los Angeles Times)