The first challenge with Chloë Sevigny is figuring out how to describe her, as no single epithet feels quite right. “I guess people think of me as a strong individual, and strongly individual,” she says. “I don’t want to say it outshines my acting, but it’s always been: ‘Oh, she’s the fashion girl, she’s the New York girl,’ instead of, ‘Oh, she’s the actress who’s done a string of very different, diverse, odd characters.’”
Looking back across her three decades in film and TV, though, if I were forced to sum Sevigny up, it would be as one of the greatest character actors of her generation. That was what she wanted to be, all the way back when she was a Connecticut teenager taking the train into Manhattan, where she caught the eye of Harmony Korine in Washington Square Park and landed her breakout role in Kids. “I’ve always had an urge to just disappear into a character,” she says. “I think some actors play themselves over and over—and there’s a lot of charm in that, but the characters I’ve played have been so varied.” At this, Sevigny breaks out into a hearty, self-effacing laugh. “I think I just want a bit more credit for that, you know?”
Yes, Jay McInerney’s infamous 1994 New Yorker piece branding her “the coolest girl in the world” and her evergreen status as a fashion icon may have led to a certain strain of snooty Hollywood gatekeepers overlooking her at times. (On which note, good luck finding a breakout film ingenue today without some kind of contract with a major fashion house.) But Sevigny took the high road, putting in the work and establishing herself as a director’s actor, appearing in films by the likes of Lars von Trier, David Fincher, Jim Jarmusch, and Whit Stillman. Over the past five years alone, she’s appeared in no fewer than 13 films and five TV shows.
It feels like Sevigny’s most pivotal role was her late-’00s, Emmy-winning turn on HBO’s acclaimed Mormon drama Big Love, which launched an impressive career on the small screen, arguably the medium where she seems most at home. From Sky’s Hit & Miss, in which she played an Irish contract killer, to Luca Guadagnino’s criminally under-watched We Are Who We Are, which cast her as an American colonel posted to Italy, TV has proved endlessly fertile ground for Sevigny, rewarding her slow-burn approach as an actor. “Once there was a big distinction, but today, we have a clearer idea of what a rewarding form TV can be, and how much freedom it can provide,” she says. “I think television is still so far ahead of Hollywood, as far as celebrating and telling stories about and putting people in positions of power who are women, or people of color, or queer people—anyone who is marginalized in some way. It’s still a far more progressive space than the movies, unfortunately.”
Which brings us to Sevigny’s latest role, in Hulu’s The Girl From Plainville. Based on the real-life case of Michelle Carter, the Massachusetts teenager convicted of involuntary manslaughter after encouraging her long-distance boyfriend, Conrad Roy, to commit suicide, the miniseries stars Elle Fanning as Carter, while Sevigny plays Roy’s mother, Lynn. Sevigny remembers—in passing, at least—seeing the trial play out in the tabloids, and feeling skeptical about Carter. “Honestly, I remember seeing photos of Michelle on magazine covers and on newsstands, and instantly judging her just by the way that she looked, and the scowl on her face,” Sevigny says. “I think I automatically presumed she was guilty. I presumed all kinds of things about her by the way she looked. Just like everyone else, I was totally complicit in jumping to conclusions.”
Sevigny’s performance as Lynn is sensitive, devastating, but ultimately hopeful. It’s a portrait of a grieving mother working to turn the senseless loss of her son into something meaningful, even as the trust between those who were supposed to be supportive of Conrad while he was alive constantly shift. Despite the profound betrayal Lynn felt after Carter’s initial attempts to cozy up to the family after Conrad’s death, her approach was always one of forgiveness and humanity. “I was really struck by the way Lynn spoke about her son, first and foremost—how she was adamant about keeping him alive and present and working on passing this law in Massachusetts,” says Sevigny. (Lynn’s proposed legislation, “Conrad’s Law,” would impose a state prison penalty of up to five years for anyone convicted of pressuring another to take their life.) “There was just something very grounded about her, and I knew that I wanted to do her justice when telling her and her son’s story, and to try and capture something of her essence.”
While Sevigny didn’t meet with the real-life Lynn Roy during production, fearing that the pressure to mimic her perfectly would stymie her performance, she had a wealth of resources from which to draw on. That included the research of the Esquire writer Jessie Baron, whose 2017 article served as the basis of the show, as well as smaller details, like the efforts of the costume designers to source pieces that matched those Lynn wore. “It was important to us as storytellers to try and stay as authentic as possible, and I felt like the most important thing was to capture the spirit of her,” says Sevigny.
The Girl From Plainville also arrives as the latest in a spate of TV shows examining recent true-crime stories—some more successfully than others. What distinguishes it from the rest of the pack is the absence of any neatly packaged takeaways; it doesn’t ask you to reconsider the hero-and-villain dynamic within the thorny, tragic situation surrounding Roy and Carter. Some have criticized the series for that ambiguity, and how it leaves the viewer to decide what, exactly, prompted Carter to do the unthinkable. Yet Fanning’s exceptionally realized portrayal does provide certain glimpses of insight. Was she struggling with her sexuality? Was she just seeking attention? Every time you think you might be nearing the truth, Fanning’s Carter reflexively shuts you out again.
For Sevigny, it was both that ambiguity and its relevance to the challenges faced by teenagers in this “very online” age that reeled her in. “I think that it tackles a lot of issues that a lot of young people, and frankly, people of all ages, are dealing with: navigating these new means of communication, isolation, depression, anxiety,” she says. “How do we recognize that in ourselves and others? How do we ask for help? Where do we get help? How do we differentiate between someone that needs real help, or a kid who’s just going through something? With a teenager, is it just normal adolescent mood swings, or is it real depression? I don’t have the answer—but I think it’s important to keep these conversations going, to keep opening and examining them.”
The series also speaks to another through line in Sevigny’s career: her interest in projects that tap into the zeitgeist. Not themes that are trendy, necessarily, but ones that serve as a temperature check on the culture. “I think I’m drawn to directors and showrunners that want to challenge the status quo, and want to talk about things within themselves that are important, or things within society that they’re seeing happening,” she says. “I think it’s just a byproduct of what I’m interested in as a person. It’s not like I’m actively seeking a story like this, but I know when it’s important. It does make me think back to projects like Kids or Boys Don’t Cry. Those were films that, when I read those scripts, I thought, I’ve never seen this film before. I’ve never seen people talk about this story in this way. I do always want to be a part of challenging audiences and finding new languages of storytelling.”
It was only natural, then, that over the past decade, Sevigny should become a filmmaker in her own right. Her three short films—2016’s Kitty, 2017’s Carmen, and 2019’s White Echo—all offer a sideways, darkly fantastical take on womanhood and female friendship. What’s next on her agenda? “I mean, to be honest with you, I actually haven’t been offered anything since The Girl From Plainville,” she says. “But I think we’ll just have to see what comes along, and what that means in terms of taking Vanja [Sevigny’s two-year-old son] on the road or being away from his dad.” She is, however, developing a feature script, and is also in the process of pitching a handful of TV series; one as a director, the other two as an actor. There are fashion collaborations in the pipeline, including a mystery project with the legendary drag artist Lypsinka. Meanwhile, the sophomore season of her best friend Natasha Lyonne’s Netflix show, Russian Doll, will premiere on Netflix later this week, in which Sevigny’s role as Lyonne’s character’s mother is more significant. “The show is so, so great,” she grins, keen not to give away any spoilers. “Although I don’t want to say it’s better than the first season—it’s just as good!”
As Sevigny points out, though, the new obligations that come with being a mom have started to weigh on her more heavily. The shoot for The Girl From Plainville, which took place last fall, was especially grueling, given it marked her first extended period of time away from Vanja. But it also prompted some important and long-overdue decisions about how Sevigny hopes to continue her working life as a parent. “I do think the formative years are really important,” she says. “Everyone’s like, ‘Oh, you have to travel in the first few years before he’s in school, so you can take advantage of not being tied down.’ But I also think there’s something in building permanence in the first few years, and creating a sense of security.” She pauses. “I don’t know. Maybe I should do a poll with all my friends who are mothers to see what people’s experiences are. I think to me, it’s important to provide my son with that sense of stability and familiarity and tradition. He loves going to his grandma’s house—he calls her Nina—and even just now, he was playing with the babysitter, and he said, ‘The trucks are going!’ She asked, ‘Where’s the truck going?’ And he said, ‘To Nina’s house!’ It might seem like such a small thing, but it brings me so much joy. That's important, I think.”
Sevigny’s wedding—she officially married her husband, gallerist Siniša Mačković, at City Hall in 2020, but is planning a proper celebration this summer—is the next priority. “It’s been pretty all-consuming,” she says. The pandemic, she explains, hasn’t shifted her approach to the projects she’ll be taking on next, and the travel they might involve, so much as the birth of her son has. (With his role as director of Karma gallery in the East Village, Mačković is firmly rooted in New York.) I also have to ask, given the giddy response it prompted from Vogue’s fashion team, about the delightfully bonkers take on bachelorette style she opted for while going away to the Cayman Islands with her bridesmaids a few weeks ago. “Oh my god,” she says. “I read the Vogue article and it said ‘Chloe and her stylist,’ and I was like, wait a second! I styled it all myself, thank you very much!” At this, she erupts into a gleeful cackle. “Look, I was really trying to impress Haley [Wollens, Sevigny’s stylist] with the looks I put together, so that’s the only reason I’m bringing it up.”
With Wollens’s oversight, Sevigny’s style over the past few years has remained as effortless as ever, but she’s also gently turned the dial toward something more romantic—you might spot a ruffled, puff-sleeve dress by Simone Rocha, or a hint of the studied flamboyance of Jonathan Anderson’s designs at Loewe. But Sevigny still has an eye firmly trained on fashion’s next wave, too. Just take her look for the Poetry Project event she showed up to last week, which came from Bror August’s cult fashion project All-In, or the outfit she wore in the Caymans, by Hungarian designer Fabian Kis-Juhasz. “I really was trying,” Sevigny notes. “Because you know the clichés of the hen party, the lingerie and all that. I knew we were gonna be in the Caribbean, where it’s hot, and you can be wild and have fun with fashion. So I just wanted to bring it. It’s also my last foray into provocative dressing…? I don’t know if that’s necessarily true, come to think of it, but symbolically, at least.” Whatever the weather, it’s nice to know that Sevigny is still enthused by—and always ready to champion—fashion designers she cares about, even those at the very beginnings of their careers.
Sevigny seems so contented, so fulfilled, that when I cast my mind back to the idea of trying to define her career, it feels a little reductive. She very genuinely doesn’t seem to care what the outside world thinks, now that she’s happily ensconced in her world of husband and son (and bridesmaids). It was a revelation, she says, to step away from her role in The Girl From Plainville and move back into her personal life without holding on to any baggage from the character. “I really had to detach myself from that shoot,” she says. “I think I’ve learned now how to shake it all off and walk away.”
But the most monumental change of all? After Sevigny’s lockdown TV binges—her own shows not included, she hastens to add—the infamous cinephile has finally starting to watch movies again. “Look, I feel so guilty and I don’t know what shifted or how it happened, but it’s so much easier to sit down and commit to watching an entire series than it is to commit to watching two hours of a movie,” she says, whispering conspiratorially. “I’ve got to get back to watching more movies. Of course, I have a kid now, so that’s a little more difficult. You know what I need to do? Get my nighttime babysitter in order.”
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