Anna Baryshnikov Brings Chaotic Joy in Idiotka

Here at Who What Wear, we’ve coined our fair share of quirky fashion trends. See ’80s nonnacore, blueberry milk nails, and pumpkin pants. But actress Anna Baryshnikov has given us a new one to ponder: shtetlcore. The New Yorker is affectionately referring to her character Margarita Levlanksy’s design aesthetic in the hilariously heartfelt film Idiotka, the indie debut from writer-director Nastasya Popov that premiered at last year’s SXSW festival and is in theaters February 27. In the opening scene of the comedy, aspiring fashion designer Margarita describes her design POV as “old-world trash and treasure. She’s milking a cow at 5, but she needs to be at the ballet at 5:10. Loves a bargain bin.” As far as style descriptions go, it’s wonderfully weird and chaotic. She’s a designer after our own hearts.

Set in West Hollywood’s Russian district, Idiotka follows Margarita as she competes on the high-stakes fashion reality competition show Slay, Serve, Survive to help her down-on-their-luck family keep their apartment. As the competition intensifies, her family’s struggle takes center stage, forcing Margarita to decide between playing along and forging her own path. With Baryshnikov’s stellar performance as the struggling seamstress—along with Camila Mendes as Nicol, the show’s savvy producer, and an ensemble of rising comedy stars, including Owen Thiele, Benito Skinner, and Julia Fox—the film is an absolute delight.

Fish-out-of-water characters, it seems, are Baryshnikov’s sweet spot. She was a bona fide scene-stealer in supporting roles in the bloody crime thriller Love Lies Bleeding, Manchester by the Sea, and Dickinson and proves herself a worthy leading lady in Idiotka. Here, we chat with the actress about bringing the indie project to life, her love of Project Runway, and the layered-headwear look she’s obsessed with right now.

I read that Nastasya Popov sent an early draft of the script to you through a mutual friend. What were the pieces in that script that made you want to sign on?

In retrospect, I read such a super-early draft. It was called Dochka at the time, “daughter,” and it was in some ways a much more not-traditional first indie, but it stayed with the family a lot and was very personal, but she also had this commentary about L.A. that was woven in there. I’m a New Yorker, and she knew about parts of L.A. that I had never ever experienced. There was a lot of vernacular in there that I had never heard. [Nastasya is] such a funny combination of incredibly stoic and incredibly dry but then also is making a manifestation board and very earnest. I just loved her worldview, and it was clear that she wanted to write about the process of trying to become an artist but also really cared about it being a film that anyone who has any job would enjoy.

We started having a lot of great conversations, and she was talking a lot about her sister who has a brand called Mimchik out of L.A. It was clear that her sister was a big inspiration, so together, we were like, “What if it’s actually a designer?” The story is by both [our producer] Tess [Cohen] and Nastasya. They are old, dear friends, and Tess really loves unscripted work and reveres reality TV. We started thinking about that as a medium of how to put this character under a magnifying glass, and then we made this little, very scrappy teaser. I loved how she was on set, and I love how that teaser came out in the edit. That gave me a lot of confidence in her, and I think she gained confidence in me. Then very critically, Camila Mendes read the script and also just instantly loved it, and that’s when the train really got on the track.

Being involved so early on, you also got to play a hand in really building out your character Margarita. What did you bring to the table in terms of who she is?

Oh, that’s such a good question. Nastasya has such a good feel for this kind of irreverent sense of humor, and I tend to lead with a lot of vulnerability. I think [Margarita] ended up somewhere in between the two of us, and that was even a negotiation on set all the time. There were moments that I thought [Margarita] would be openly emotional, and Nastasya was like, “She’s Russian American. She’s not crying right now. That’s not how we do it.” And I was like, “Sorry, sorry! I cry seven times a day.” Yeah, it was just a constant conversation, but being in someone’s first feature, I consider it a huge honor. In other circumstances, you have a question about the character, and you know that it’s up to you a little, but with this, whenever I was trying to figure out who she was, I just looked at the person in front of me. Nastasya just embodied the spirit of Margarita in a lot of ways.

Nastasya described the casting process as a real grassroots movement. Did you offer any suggestions early in that process?

Well, it’s important to note that Owen [Thiele] was attached before I was. That role was written for him, which really set the bar. … This sounds very Marty Supreme of me, but Nastasya really taught me to dream big because she always was like, “I would love Julia Fox for this character,” and I was like, “But who would you love when we don’t get Julia Fox?” Her and Tess were just very optimistic and very determined. As a New Yorker, I love Julia, and I was really rooting for her and was so excited when that worked out. But no, I think some of those conversations were also at a certain point when I really switched into actor mode, and by the time some of those casting decisions were falling into place, I was just focusing on that. Everyone was a treat and surprise—like Saweetie was so exciting to me. When we were shooting, “My Type” was really everywhere, and actually, we were like, “Should we play it in the background of one of the party scenes,” and Saweetie was like, “No, that’s awkward.” But she was so sweet. She arrived to set and was like, “Girl, I loved you in the teaser.” I was like, “What do you mean you watched our 50¢ teaser?”

The cast includes comedy standouts, including Thiele, Benito Skinner, and Julia Fox. Shooting in L.A. with this group must have been the most fun.

Even though we were shooting in L.A., it almost felt like we were shooting on location far away because we were really shooting in the actual neighborhood. We were shooting at Nastasya’s grandmother’s old apartment, and Nastasya was sleeping on set at night, and I was sleeping a block away. That was really beautiful because I feel like we got the time with the family for the first two weeks of filming, and then we shot in a studio to do the reality TV show. That was also amazing because Benny and Saweetie and Julia and Owen showed up, and it felt like all of these celebrities had entered our small family space, and I felt appropriately starstruck by them. It was great. Especially for the crew, I wish more things filmed in L.A. I think it’s really nice for people’s families and lives, and it was during the writers’ strike, and everyone was having a really hard time, so everyone was very happy to be there. I felt very grateful to be shooting there.

The film is a satirical look at the fashion industry and reality competition shows like Project Runway and HBO’s The Hype. Are you a fan of those shows?

Huge. I’m a huge Project Runway fan forever. My entire family was, and also just that era of reality TV—like America’s Next Top Model, the competition-based shows—I always really loved. There’s been so many seasons that it’s very active and there’s so many people out in the world who have been through that process that I had a lot of people to talk to about the role. Actually, crazily on a different job, I recognized my makeup artist, and I was talking about Idiotka, and she was like, “I was actually on Project Runway,” and it was [Kathleen “Sweet P” Vaughn] who I really remembered! That was just such a fun, crazy coincidence. It felt like the perfect medium to skewer a little bit how it feels to be put on the spot to sell yourself. I loved how Camila played her character because Nicol, the producer, is very invested in making good work just like Margarita is. She wants to inspire people. She wants to make something truthful. She wants to shine a light on artists, but she also knows what makes good television.

Did it change how you look at those types of shows?

Of course. And it has completely changed how I think about designers. I just have unlimited respect for how hard it is, especially when you’re starting out. … You really need money to make things in the beginning, and where does that come from? Just like an actor, you’re trying to figure out what your identity is, and at the same time, you wanna arrive as a finished package and be able to sell yourself, and you don’t even know who you are yet.

One of my best friends from high school is a designer, and Mia, who has Mimchik, was on set as well. I did a lot of nerdy actor research. There used to be a lot of references in the [Idiotka] script of Vivienne Westwood, so I read her book, which was incredible. I took a bunch of sewing classes in the garment district. I really enjoyed it. I was very inspired. For Nastasya and I, it was an interesting process to figure out how to weave both of our identities as Americans with families from Russia who immigrated. The war broke out while she was writing it, and we actually drew very immediate inspiration from Demna’s Balenciaga F/W 22 show when the models were braving the blizzard, and the last two models were in blue and yellow for Ukraine. Obviously, Nastasya and I and both of our families are absolutely horrified by the war. Both of our families immigrated for more freedom. Both of our families hate Putin. And figuring out how to weave that in, in a way that felt like it made sense in the world of fashion actually just opened up my eyes to how much designers are putting their identity in their work.

Talk to me about creating Margarita’s fashion identity as a designer and her personal style.

We had two incredible costume designers, and one of them, Natasha Simchowitz, lives in New York, so she actually was, in some ways, my earliest collaborator on this because I would go to her apartment, and I would try [stuff] on. She has a big, amazing personal collection of vintage pieces. We started figuring out what Margarita would have gravitated toward, and we pulled a lot of Jean Paul Gaultier. She has a lot of those iconic pieces that made it into the movie, and then there’s a lot of babushkacore. We pulled in a lot of knits and were inspired by an amazing Ukrainian designer, Anna October, who has a lot of beautiful crochet work. The harder conversation was figuring out what [Margarita] would try to make herself because I felt strongly that it wasn’t a script about a savant who deserves to win, but it’s actually someone at the beginning of their career who’s trying to figure out who she is. So we didn’t want her to be a slam-dunk winner.

When I watch the movie, I’m blown away by the work of the actual designer who wins, the character Jung-soo. What he’s wearing is actually a look from Central Saint Martins student Emily Grey’s thesis collection. It’s unbelievable. When we both came out, Julia Fox was like, “Well, we really picked the right guy to win.” But I think Margarita is figuring out how much of what she calls her shtetlcore identity actually makes it into her designs. And then her final dress has all of those different logos that she’s been falsely [attaching to her garments]. I think more than anything, beyond what her clothes look like, she’s figured out what she wants to say and has pushed through feeling like a fraud, which, to us, was the most important thing.

Margarita describes her design aesthetic as “old-world trash and treasure.” How would you describe your personal fashion aesthetic?

Oh, God. I feel like I tend to lean toward nostalgia. I really love the ’60s. I really love Old Hollywood. I tend to lean pretty feminine, and if I was applying to a show, I would come up with a good [tagline]. But Margarita’s line of “Old-world trash and treasure. She’s milking a cow at 5 and needs to be at the ballet at 5:10,” a lot of that was inspired by the fact that Nastasya has a lot of her own grandmother’s clothes, and I wore a bunch in the movie. Actually, on the last day, I said to the costume designer, “Do you mind if I keep this bathrobe? I just really love it.” And she was like, “I’ll ask Nastasya because that’s her grandmother’s.” Every little piece in the movie, a lot of it was very personal. I would probably describe myself as “Zoo Be Zoo Be Zoo.” I’m always trying to look like someone who had one episode on Mad Men.

What about your winter fashion vibe right now?

I found this headscarf company that I love a lot called Besa, and it’s a really perfect babushka scarf. I’m a very new but passionate Knicks fan, and I can model it for you right now. I really like wearing my Knicks hat and then putting the scarf over because I am a sun protection–obsessed person, so I still like wearing a hat.

You play such fun and interesting characters. I was such a big Dickinson fan. What do you hope to sink your teeth into next?

That’s such a great question. Sometimes, I feel like I don’t know it until I see it. Idiotka was really fun because I had been doing a lot of projects that rode the line of drama and comedy. I really love comedy, and Idiotka felt slightly more squarely there; although, I would say my character really lives in the middle. I’ve always really loved these fish-out-of-water comedies.

Your next project is Cape Fear, which is coming to Apple TV June 5. What can you tell us about the series?

I play the role of an overeager local journalist who gets too involved with Max Cady, who is played by Javier Bardem, and that was a real dream because that’s such a particular genre and an iconic piece of work, but everyone was very loose and open to what it could be. Javier was the world’s best scene partner. He’s the nicest man alive. Turns out, the nicest man alive plays the worst man alive. I really can’t wait to see how it came out.

Idiotka is in select theaters February 27.