TV WEEK: Memory BlankDichen Lachman stars in a darkly comic taleDichen Lachman has built a career wi

TV WEEK: Memory BlankDichen Lachman stars in a darkly comic taleDichen Lachman has built a career with tough-as-nails roles in superhero series such as Agents of SHIELD, cyberpunk fantasies such as Altered Carbon, and acclaimed dramas like Animal Kingdom. But when the Australian actress found herself recently on a stark business-office set, sitting still, and wearing a conservative suit while delivering deadpan lines in thriller Severance, she loved it. “I couldn’t put the scripts down,” Dichen, 40, tells TV WEEK. “I stayed up all night because I just had to get to the next episode.” In Severance, employees on a special floor of Lumon Industries have undergone a procedure where thy have no memories of their life outside of work, but once they leave for the day, their regular selves have no idea what they did at Lumon. Dichen plays Ms Casey, the counsellor who doles out bits of info to workers about how their other half lives. “She’s very curious, Ms Casey,” Dichen teases. “But when you’re memorising lines, like an argument or something the character cares about, your mind can write a story to help you remember what your character’s feeling and thinking. When it’s a list of random stuff? It took me six months to memorise, because it doesn’t make any sense!”Dichen, who got her start in acting as rebel Katya Kinski in Neighbours in 2005, was waiting to film her part in Jurassic World Dominion when she met with director and executive producer Ben Stiller over Zoom. “He was so passionate about this project,” she recalls. “And Ms Casey is so different to what I have been doing the last few years. It’s nerve-racking to do something different, but I think that’s when you grow, and I know that Ben wouldn’t have kept going if he didn’t think I had ‘it’.”Months later, when she arrived in New York to film Severance, she hit the ground running opposite Christopher Walken and John Turturro. “On my first day, I come in right at the end and call for John’s character to come into the room,” Dichen says. “I had one line! I was on the other side of the door, where the camera operator was, so I could watch the scene play out before Ms Casey walks in. It was electrifying to see these two incredible performers.”In her own outside life, the Los Angeles-based star and six-year-old daughter Mathilda were in London visiting family when her husband, actor Maximilian Osinski (The Walking Dead: World Beyond), booked a role, delaying their return to California, and Australia. “I hop all this instability in terms of Mathilda’s environment isn’t messing her up,” Dichen says. “No-one does a perfect job of parenting, and we love her so much. I hope she remembers all these trips and all the travel.”More career adventures await Dichen, office setting or not. “I do like being thrown around and getting rough and tumbled,” she confesses with a laugh. “But in terms of where I started and the kind of work and people I want to be working with, it’s been extraordinary. I’m so grateful.” -- source link

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