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Gus Birney has spent the spring being hated by strangers, and she couldn’t be happier about it. As Portia Cunningham in Netflix’s Something Very Bad Is Going to Happen, the youngest of a family closing in around a doomed wedding, she gave the series its most divisive figure, funny and unsettling in the same breath, cruel in ways that feel uncomfortably ordinary. Critics called the performance “off-putting” and meant it as praise.
It’s the latest turn in a career that has never sat still. The daughter of actors Reed Birney and Constance Shulman, she broke through at eighteen in The Mist and has moved between screens and stages ever since, Broadway opposite Oscar Isaac in The Sign in Sidney Brustein’s Window, the Public Theater, Netflix’s Black Rabbit with Jude Law and Jason Bateman. This summer she’s in The Cannibals of McGower County at TheaterWorks Hartford, sharing a stage, and a house, with her mother.
We talked to her about playing the girl everyone loves to hate, the role she lost at nineteen, and why brunch with her mom is still the best part of her week.
Q: You keep going back to the stage between screen projects, Broadway, BAM, the Public. What does theater give you that film and TV don’t?
Gus Birney: I think theater puts you in touch with your whole body in a way work on film can’t do. You are physically on display in front of hundreds of people, and the vulnerability behind that is a truly different set of skills to master.
Q: This summer you’re doing The Cannibals of McGower County with your mom. What’s it actually like sharing a stage with her?
Truthfully, we only share about ten minutes of stage time together, but this experience has actually been much more about our time together off stage. We’ve been living together out here, and although I already spend an immeasurable amount of time with my mother back in New York, having this uninterrupted life with her where we both are working on the same goal has meant more than words will ever capture properly.
Q: Everyone knows from the title of Something Very Bad Is Going to Happen that something bad is coming. Does playing it that way change anything for you as an actor, knowing the audience is just waiting for it?
I think the goal was to play against that while also capturing a tone and world Haley had created. These people don’t know anything out of the ordinary is going on, so trying to live in the reality of oblivion.
Q: Portia is strange in a way that’s hard to pin down, she’s unsettling and funny at the same time. How did you find her? Was the comedy on the page or did it come out on set?
I’ve been dying to play a character like Portia my whole life. I grew up watching 2000s rom-coms and looking at the mean girl in the films and thinking, “Man, I want to play that girl, but I’m too weird to probably ever be given the chance.” Portia was the perfect balance of being off-centered just enough while also having that cool-girl vibe we all want to emulate. I was allowed to bring my version of the “cool, popular girl” out in a way that didn’t have to be cookie cutter to what we have all seen before.
Q: Critics kept describing your performance as “off-putting” — as a compliment. Do you enjoy playing characters people are a little afraid of?
Absolutely. I want to play people that audiences are divided on, where each person has a different take on whether the character is “good” or “bad.” I love finding the grey between the two.
Q: Haley Z. Boston built the show out of her own fear of marrying the wrong person. Did the show change how you think about marriage, or weddings?
What excited me so much about the concept surrounding the show was I hadn’t ever seen the fear of commitment depicted in such an extravagant way, while also truly encapsulating a real thing we all face — have I picked the right person? I’m still deciding my thoughts on marriage and weddings and the whole shebang, but I’m certain there are many soulmates out there, and how small your world becomes if you believe there’s just one.
Q: You started writing songs at eleven, before acting. Is music still part of your life?
Yes, and I hope it always will be. My music is like my oldest, deepest journal, documenting my life as I grow up!
Q: Is there a role you didn’t get that still stays with you?
Insanely enough, I did a test for Euphoria, for Alexa Demie’s part. How we ever were up for the same role is a very wonderful question. I was 19, and I think as crushed as I was at the time to lose out on the part, I wouldn’t have been able to handle it at that age. I had so much growing up to do, and I would have brought a totally different energy to the show that probably wasn’t right.
Q: What are you watching or reading right now?
I’m actually about to finish Famesick, Lena Dunham’s new book. I know I’m a little late to the party reading it, but man, it’s really good. It’s human and real and rare and human (I know I said human twice).
Q: You said once that you’re a planner and not knowing where you’ll be in a year scares you. Ten years in, has that changed?
You know what, I think it has — to a degree. Growing up, I think I had planned my life up until about 22, and after that I hadn’t thought too much ahead. Turns out my life looked nothing like I had planned at 22, and it went a much more colorful, unexpected, winding route, and I’m thankful every day it did. So I hope it keeps leading me somewhere right, while still being a good person along the way. I think we don’t have control of what life brings to us, but we have control of how we act in accordance to what happens.
Q: What’s something small that made you really happy this week?
Getting brunch with my mother. It is my happy place.
- Stylist Monica Garate @monigarate
- Hair Luca Ala @delucaloco
- MUA Selena Ruiz @selenaruizmakeup
