ACT, RINSE, REPEAT

TV’s best actress keeps her hands full making the impossible look easy

EDITOR’S NOTE: Tonight, the Television Academy caught up with what Orphan Black fans have known for years. Congratulations to Tatiana Maslany on a well-deserved Emmy Award!

This article was originally published in June, 2015.

Tatiana Maslany is the best actor on television. Male or female, young or old, comedy or drama — she outshines them all. And if her name is not familiar to you, then you’ve been TV-ing incorrectly.

For the uninitiated, Maslany plays (at last count) 9 of the lead characters on BBC America’s Orphan Black, a sci-fi thriller that follows the adventures of Sarah Manning (Maslany) who comes to find out she is a clone and then teams up with her sisters Alison (Maslany), Cosima (Maslany), Helena (Maslany), Krystal (Maslany) and others (Maslany, Maslany and Maslany … you get the idea) to get to the bottom of the nefarious organization that set this genetic puzzle in motion.

Over the course of its three seasons (the season 3 finale aired this past weekend), the show has oscillated a bit between great and pretty-good. But while the show in general may have displayed some inconsistency, its star has been unwaveringly brilliant.

Double Trouble

The stunt of playing multiple characters in the same show is not new. Plenty of actors have played their own twin (see, e.g., Lisa Kudrow’s Phoebe and Ursula Buffay, Lindsey Lohan’s Hallie and Annie James, and of course Jean-Claude Van Damme’s Alex and Chad Wagner). And plenty of actors have inhabited multiple characters in the same film (Mike Meyers in the Austin Powers series, Eddie Murphy in the Nutty Professor series, Tyler Perry in Tyler Perry Presents: Every Tyler Perry Movie Ever, Featuring Tyler Perry).

But what makes Maslany’s performance(s) singularly impressive is that it doesn’t feel like a stunt.

Normally, when you’re watching one actor play multiple characters, the thought in the back of your head is something along the lines of “that’s interesting, I wonder how they shot that.” If the filmmakers do a particularly good job, you might be thinking “wow, that’s really impressive!” As the mechanics of the scene unfold, the characters will usually look at each other and pass by one another. Occasionally one of the characters will hand something to the other, which is the cinematic equivalent of waving a ring over a levitated woman — the magician is calling attention to his feat of wonder, but in the back of your head you’re thinking ‘that’s a weird thing to do’.

No matter how sophisticated the trickery, though, the one-actor/multiple-character stunt invariably takes the viewer out of the story. It’s a jolt that reminds you you are watching a staged event and not actually experiencing someone else’s world.

At least that was the rule before Tatiana Maslany came along.

Maslany’s small army of wildly different characters are inhabited with such skill and are infused with such unique and engaging personality that the show rockets past the stumbling blocks that normally plague multiple-character performances and presents itself as a genuinely engrossing story unencumbered by the make-up and camera tricks. And it’s not that the producers have come up with some new and clever way to hide the usual smoke and mirrors that accompany the one actor/multiple character format, it’s that Maslany’s considerable talent and charisma render the smoke and mirrors entirely invisible.

As a viewer, it is a truly joyful experience to be watching a scene in which several of the clones are talking and interacting with one another and then, five minutes in, suddenly realize “holy crap, I totally forgot these are all the same girl!” Watch Orphan Black and you will be awed by such a realization with greater frequency than should be legally allowed.

Comparison by Relief

The absurdity of Maslany’s abilities was highlighted in the show’s most recent season when (spoiler alert!) a new set of clones was introduced to the story line. Played by the talented Ari Millen, a group of male counterparts to Maslany’s #CloneClub became a major part of the Orphan Black story that drove the just-wrapped season. The male clones come with their own variety of personalities and styles, but there is a noticeable same-ness to them that creates a hint of confusion and forces you to occasionally step outside of the story for a moment and orient yourself to which of Millen’s characters is speaking.

Millen discharges his task capably and, in another setting, might be praised for his versatility and impressive character work. But, like a talented batter facing an unhittable pitcher, the minor missteps in Millen’s portrayals are exposed when compared to Maslany’s perfection. It’s an exposure that doesn’t diminish Millen’s work as much as it makes Maslany’s accomplishment that much more impressive by comparison.

And the winner is …

The travesty in all of this is that Maslany, who has given the world such abundant brilliance, has received in return only snubs from the awards community. Of the two Emmys and two Golden Globes for which she has been eligible thus far, Maslany has been granted only a single nomination and zero wins. She has won a shelf-full of “lesser” awards, but the establishment stubbornly refuses to acknowledge the fact that, while Juliana Margulies and Claire Danes are fine actors, they are being out played, consistently and thoroughly, by a quiet, young Canadian girl with a talent for bringing characters alive.

Ever the humble artist, Maslany has repeatedly said, when asked about awards, that she doesn’t do what she does for statues or accolades and that she is perfectly happy to be delivering work that she is proud of and that her audience enjoys.

But for those of us who are fans, the fact that the various academies and guilds who make their living by recognizing the best of the best have repeatedly overlooked Maslany’s jaw-dropping work is a fist-clenching frustration and a withering indictment of their qualifications.

Until the hardware catches up to the truth, we Orphan Black fans will have to find solace in the fact that we loved Tatiana Maslany before it was cool.