'Orange' star Schilling stays 'Overnight'
NEW YORK — She's been stuck behind bars for three seasons of Orange is the New Black, but Taylor Schilling is ready to make her big-screen jailbreak.
In offbeat sex comedy The Overnight (opening Friday in New York and Los Angeles, expanding June 26), Schilling plays one half of a married couple (with Adam Scott) whose lives are turned upside down when a freewheeling husband and wife (Jason Schwartzman and Judith Godrèche) invite them over for dinner. What starts as a few glasses of wine escalates into much more once their kids are tucked into bed, and the bongs, genitals and secrets are free to come out.
"It was really exciting to me, this idea of taking this story that has parts that are raunchy and wild, and telling it through the lens of something raw and very loving," says Schilling, 30. "Even though it was wacky, (the characters) came to a greater level of self-acceptance at the end."
Produced by Mark Duplass and Scott, The Overnight made a splash at Sundance Film Festival for, among other things, its jaw-dropping nudity. (Erotic breast-pumping videos and rear-end paintings aside, a full-frontal poolside dance is especially cringeworthy.) But Schilling was drawn to the authenticity and "kind core" of filmmaker Patrick Brice's script, she says, and was ultimately the one who convinced Schwartzman to sign on after a chance encounter at a L.A. Pilates studio.
Schwartzman's role was the last to be cast and Schilling knew he had been sent the script. "She introduced herself and said, 'Let me tell you. The actors get along so well, and Patrick Brice is so nice and so funny,' " Schwartzman says. "There was just something in her voice and the way she was talking about it that gave me a good feeling about the project."
The film was shot in just 10 nights at a house in the Hollywood Hills, which gave the set a wonky, secluded atmosphere much like the one on screen (minus the booze and marijuana).
"I don't even remember some of the stuff that happened, because a lot of things we'd be shooting at like 4 in the morning, buzzed out on caffeine or just completely dead," Schilling says. "It really added to the strangeness and there was a camaraderie to it. Making something in the middle of the night, you kind of feel like troopers working on a secret mission."
It was a world away from the massive production and sprawling cast of Netflix smash Orange, which returned to the streaming service last weekend. In the new episodes, Schilling's pernicious, fish-out-of-water inmate starts a black-market business selling used panties and gets mixed up in a love triangle with her ex-girlfriend (Laura Prepon) and a new jailbird (Ruby Rose).
"For a long time, her life was very status quo and now she's really seeing a lot of shades of gray," Schilling says. "She's being stretched and learning that pleasure and pain coexist simultaneously, and she's actually starting to enjoy that. There's a lightness to it where she's investigating some new parts of herself with glee."
Schilling has earned an Emmy Award nomination and two Golden Globes nods for her TV turn. Though her limited film work has mostly been filled with critical duds (Nicholas Sparks romance The Lucky One and Atlas Shrugged: Part One, among them), The Overnight has so far been embraced, with a 92% approval rating on review aggregate site RottenTomatoes.com.
It could signal a new chapter in Schilling's career moving forward, as she hopes to maintain a steady balance between big- and small-screen projects (she hasn't signed on for her next movie, although Netflix has already renewed Orange for a fourth season).
"My hope and prayer and desire is that I can continue to bridge both worlds, because the experiences are so vastly different for me," Schilling says. "If the stars continue to align, that's exactly where I hope I am for a long time."