Alma Ha’rel’s Lady in the Lake is this year’s most beguiling mystery. Two women, played by Moses Ingram and Natalie Portman, find themselves in each other’s orbits in 1966 after two disapperances change the course of their lives forever. As they grapple with privilege, racism, and antisemitism, they must confront their own identities as they try to keep their heads above water. Ingram’s Cleo Johnson refuses to lead a life of quiet desperation.
Right before I hopped on a Zoom with Ingram, I discovered that she is actually from Baltimore. I couldn’t help but think about visiting the faded past of the city where you grew up, but Ingram was thrilled to be transported to a vital, thriving time in her hometown’s history.
“I heard so many stories about the kind of place that Baltimore was and used to be,” Ingram says. “It was just so hard to imagine that people look at Baltimore like New York City, in a sense, when we think of New York today. That was wild to me. Getting to see it, though, under these lights and so done up was just gorgeous. Beautiful. It’s nice to know that I’m part of such a legacy of that city. My whole family is still there and getting to bring my parents to the set and see things that they remember from when they were really little was really cool for me.”
Johnson has a job as a window model of a department store, and, in the first episode, she has the clothes taken right off her back when Portman’s Maddie Schwartz needs the garment in an emergency. At work, Johnson has to put on a show, and it speaks volumes about how she has to pretend in certain spaces. I kept thinking of the silence in that window.
“For Cleo, I think, of the days that you have to be smiling and putting that on when you don’t reall want to, but it’s quite literally a job,” she says. “To even get that job, you gotta look good, and you have to go to the interview looking like robbing Peter to pay Paul–to look like something even though they are going to put you in their clothes. I also imagine that it was really cold in the wintertime in those little boxes. Cleo doesn’t have time to thing about it. It’s the job.”
Ingram’s narration is delicious. She reveals that it gave her a further insight into the season’s arc when she had the opportunity to record the voiceover after filming ended. It feels like she is floating over the entire season, just out of our determined reach.
“The gift of the voiceover is that it wasn’t something that we knew would exist until post-production,” Ingram says. “When I went back in for ADR, we essntiall had a whole other vision of the story to tell. Having the memories of making those moments as I watched and did a voice performance was really useful, because I had already done it. I think it would’ve been different if it was the other way around. You get to watch your performance and add other layers on top of it, and I really enjoyed that part.”
There is a theme of sacrifice running through Johnson’s story as she has to consider maintaining her dignity while providing for her family. She represents countless women who have had to do the same. ‘I ain’t got time for dreaming,’ she says early in the season, a line that stays with you through the season’s end.
“I think dreaming is something that Cleo has given up on, and that sense of futy has taken place of the idea of freedom. She has kids to take care of and that’s the thing that she has to be most focused on while she’s surrounded by people who might be doing it exactly how they should be doing it. For better or worse, they are living their lives. I feel like that’s not an opportunity Cleo has ever had and doesn’t really get it until the end–but not without a cost.”
In one of the last interactions between Cleo Johnson and Maddie Schwartz, Portman’s character has the audacity to ask Johnson if there is any way that the two could keep in touch. I love that Ingram doesn’t let the moment breathe between them. She doesn’t give Maddie an inch. Was there any possibility that Cleo Johnson’s answer would change? Ingram doesn’t think so as she reflects once more on her connection with the show.
“Not at that point,” she says quickly. “Cleo is forced into this position, because of Maddie’s entitlement. She tells her that she wouldn’t be there anyway if she could’ve just stayed dead. In that moment, Cleo has gone through the wringer to bring her documents, and she has the nerve to ak if they could be friends? No, ma’am.
Lady in the Lake, in a very particular way, was such a part of me and my home. It was special to me to watch and experience, because, here I am, in a place where I thought I had to leave to ever make something about myself in my life. To have this momentous moment that was sort of meta was very special to me.”
Lady in the Lake is streaming now on Apple TV+.
