How Natasha Lyonne Gets Her Own Projects Off the Ground: "You've Got to Get On the Front Lines"

Natasha Lyonne is a force of nature: If she wants a TV show to happen, you'd better believe she's going to make it happen.

Lyonne sits down with Marie Claire for a cover story for our Power Issue, opening up about the work behind the shows she's made.

The actress's production company, Animal Pictures, which she co-founded with Maya Rudolph, is behind the Lyonne-fronted shows Poker Face and Russian Doll, and the Rudolph-fronted Loot.

"I think when we talk about a woman stepping into her power, it does look something like this," Lyonne tells Marie Claire. "You’ve got to get on the front lines."

Being on the front lines means not taking "no" for an answer—like when she and Russian Doll co-creator Amy Poehler were turned down by NBC, only to do it their own way. The series ended up winning multiple awards, so it's fair to say Lyonne's perseverance pays off.

“It was very confusing for us...And I remember [Poehler] sat me in a car and I was chain-smoking and the windows were rolled up, and she said, ‘I know it sucks about NBC.’” Writer Jessica M. Goldstein continues: "But Poehler encouraged her to see the freedom in that no: What would she make if she could make anything?"

That's also how the Orange Is the New Black actress's friend Clea DuVall feels about it. "I think Natasha is never afraid of doing the work," DuVall tells Marie Claire. "And she understands that to succeed in this business, you do have to do the work. It does come down to that, and she really did that. There was no sense of entitlement. There’s no resentment over having to start small and sort of recalibrate."

At 46, Lyonne isn't letting a pesky thing like aging get in the way of her vision. "It’s not actually [true] that a woman has less opportunities at a certain age," she says. "As someone fully entrenched on that other side of that Maxim magazine I never did, now I have more opportunities than I ever did."

The star is not afraid to make a show that's outside the confines of trends—in fact, she's extremely serious about doing exactly that. "So it becomes a question mark for me, at this age or stage: Who is it for? Whose public approval, exactly?" she says. "Is that genuinely a win, if you’re able to hit a zeitgeist of status quo correctly? Or is, actually, the name of the game to push that forward, even if that risks being misunderstood temporarily?"

And that, people, is how we get shows like Russian Doll and Poker Face. You are welcome.