Five years ago, few people would have pictured
She came to HBO’s “Big Love” with a pedigree in
underground fashion and indie film, having appeared in edgy movies like
“Kids,” “Boys Don’t Cry,” “American Psycho” and the infamous “Brown
Bunny.” The series offered Sevigny a chance to ditch her
hipper-than-thou image with the role of
the manipulative daughter of a polygamous prophet trying to find a
place for herself alongside two sister wives in the Henrickson family.
Nicki does things that make viewers gasp: She lies,
she steals, she spies, and early in this final season, she even brawls
with a small boy. She’s always been stranded between the
But in this final season, as her husband Bill’s
political ambitions unravel, Nicki cuts off her long braid and comes
into her own. She starts speaking out about the horrors perpetrated on
young girls in her sect and channels her energy into making sure the
same traumas don’t befall the teenage daughter she once abandoned.
“I’m a bigger person now,” Nicki announces to her family, “and I won’t go back to being small.”
Sevigny may not have been an obvious fit for the part, but “Big Love” creators
“Nicki has this disconnect about who she is; she’s a
very insecure girl, but on the surface she’s this manipulative haughty
liar,” Scheffer says. “And in a way, Chloe tries to present herself as
this ultra-chic fashionista, but when you get to know her, she’s a
down-to-earth, good girl.”
Sitting in a
like moths to a quirky flame. She often plays passive roles, but that
deadpan quality disappears in person as soon as she lets loose her
delightfully goofy laugh. Sevigny keeps darting glances at a cute guy
in the next booth, convinced that she saw him at a movie premiere a few
days before. Later she announces disappointedly that it’s not the same
guy. Which is just as well, since as soon as “Big Love” wraps, she
plans to return to her home in
Sevigny’s origin myth has her being “discovered” as a teenager in
followed by years of prestigious roles magically dropping in her lap.
“I think almost every film I’ve gotten has been an incoming call,” she
admits.
But it’s not as if she merely stumbled into acting: As a child, she went to theater camp in
At 36, she worries that she’s trapped in a ghetto of
cool and will never make it in mainstream movies. Sevigny originally
took on “Big Love” “because I was getting all these small parts and
wanted to be able to show off a little bit.” She stops herself with a
snort. “Does that sound completely narcissistic?”
The other motive was financial security. She quotes rock star
who said recently that “being poor and famous is hell,” recalling all
kinds of odd jobs he did after his band Twisted Sister peaked.
“Oy,” she quips, “let’s hope it doesn’t come to that for little Chloe.”
Yet Sevigny flirts with
like a woman trying not to get hurt by a someone she likes. Even during
the many years of filming “Big Love” in L.A., she rented a place on a
month-to-month basis, fleeing to the
“I really try hard not to think about how (
thinks of me,” she offers with a shrug. “I want to make movies, but
it’s not the most important thing in my life. If it doesn’t work out,
I’ll figure out something else.”
She says she often finds herself shrinking into the
wallpaper on sets, describing her experience on her one big-budget
movie to date,
intimidated by the other actors and the director and by the scale. I
felt like when I was playing the part. I did this thing I do at parties
where I just inverted.” She scrunches up her shoulders at the memory.
“I have to learn how to take the confidence that I have now on ‘Big
Love,’ where I feel so safe, and figure out how to do that when I’m
working in films.”
In the final season of “Big Love,” Olsen says that
Nicki matures enormously, “dramatized through her relationship with her
daughter and her insistence that her daughter will never be like her.
And anyone who’s watched any movie from the 1940s — whether it’s
‘Stella Dallas’ or ‘Mildred Pierce’ — knows that’s a recipe for a lot
of problems.”
Sevigny, who got into trouble in the press last year
for criticizing the show’s melodramatic fourth season, says with a
wheezy laugh, “Yes, this last season is all about her daughter. And I
want it to be about me!”
As her days of playing Nicki come to a close,
Sevigny seems determined to forge her own luck on multiple fronts. She
designed a clothing collection for trendy boutique Opening Ceremony,
plans to brainstorm “a great
film” with pal Tara Subkoff (her collaborator on the fashion line
Imitation of Christ) and is developing a TV movie project about a
female historical figure.
wore onscreen for five years? Not much, but she says she will miss her
“Big Love” sister wives,
“It was kind of us against everybody else a lot of
the time, and we were so lucky to have that. You hear about other sets
where the girls are … ” She meows loudly to indicate cattiness. “But
there’s not much competitiveness between any of us. When I come to L.A.
in the future and I’m pounding the pavement, I’m going to stay with
them.”
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