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Russian Doll’s Greta Lee Breaks Down That Crazy Party, Maxine’s Bold Look

How do you throw a 36th birthday celebration that never ends? Handle lots of raw chicken, wear a crazy costume, and smoke way too many mugwort cigarettes.

By Laura Bradley

February 7, 2019

Russian Doll derives most of its gritty zhuzh from star Natasha Lyonne—but there’s another ingredient that really makes the show sing. Lyonne’s character, Nadia, spends the entire series reliving the night of her 36th birthday party over and over again. She eventually dies each time, before regenerating in the bathroom. And every time she leaves that room to enter the party, she’s greeted by her ebullient friend Maxine, cooing, “Sweet birthday baby!”

Maxine is one of the few characters we see in every iteration of Nadia’s nightmare, and the playful nuance with which Greta Lee plays her elevates a role that could have felt less than crucial. But Lee wasn’t always sure the role was a good fit for her; in fact, in a recent interview, the actress admitted she almost turned it down.

The idea of repeating the same handful of lines over and over again didn’t have much appeal for Lee, she said. But she and Lyonne go way back; they first worked together on an NBC pilot called Old Soul—another collaboration between Lyonne and Russian Doll E.P. Amy Poehler that helped inspire Russian Doll. Since then, Lee and Lyonne have collaborated on other projects, including Lyonne’s directorial debut, “Cabiria, Charity, Chastity,” which starred Lee alongside Maya Rudolph and Fred Armisen.

“I have an inherent and full and complete trust when it comes to working with Natasha,” Lee said, “but yes. That being said, I told her, ‘This is crazy. What actor’s gonna want to do this?’ . . . I think we joked about the trade-off being an incredibly short shoot; we’ll just capture that once, right? One and done. But obviously, that didn’t turn out to be the case.”

Lee didn’t know much about the project when it was first pitched to her—beyond its general concept, and the fact that Lyonne wanted to explore ideas like addiction, hitting one’s rock bottom, and family. It sounded appealingly ambitious; besides, as Lee reiterated, “I will always work with Natasha.”

“She is someone who requires equal parts full-blown honesty and being in the moment,” Lee continued, “and she just requires you to be completely trusting in a way that I find really one-of-a-kind and very special. While also being an incredible listener as a scene partner.” After finding out who else was involved already—an all-female creative team—Lee was sold.

Maxine has a captivating presence from the moment viewers first see her. It starts with that line—“Sweet birthday baby!”—which bores its way further and further into one’s skull each time she says it. And then there’s her look—a translucent, puffy-sleeved, seafoam-colored blouse under a beaded chain vest; geometric-patterned leggings; three chunky necklaces, all topped by metallic blue eyeliner. “I think it makes you kind of crazy,” Lee said of her wardrobe. She and costume designer Jennifer Rogien worked to make Maxine’s vibe trendy, but not too trendy. “We shot this a year ago, so it’s tricky sometimes with the clothes, with the fashion,” Lee said. “We don’t know when it’s going to come out.”

Most of Lee’s screen time is spent at the party, although she does eventually get to leave that setting. As the series continues, it becomes increasingly clear that Nadia’s constant resurrections are not the only thing amiss in this world; Lee pointed out that even at the party, you can see artwork slowly disappear as the loops continue, as well as several party guests. The scene, she said, was shot chronologically—which meant Lee had to handle a lot of raw chickens, most of which eventually got covered in ashes from all the mugwort herbal cigarettes the cast was smoking.

Contrary to what she and Lyonne had joked about, Lee said, “I couldn’t just show up and say the same lines that I had said over and over. We had to really keep track of what was happening to Nadia with each reset.”

Occasionally, viewers get to see Maxine and her not-girlfriend, Lizzy (Rebecca Henderson), having quieter moments the morning after the party. It’s often in these interludes that a warmer, more human side of Maxine emerges—a slightly more grounded version of the blithe-yet-clearly-neurotic girl we meet at the party. By the end of the series, what’s most striking about Maxine is how deep her friendship with Nadia clearly runs. Beneath her loud accessories and cocaine (or was it ketamine?) laced joints, Maxine cares deeply about Nadia and her well-being. That, too, is by design; early in the process, Lee and Lyonne discussed how a person’s closest friends and family can sometimes operate as a sort of mirror. “Under the fun stuff and the jokes,” Lee said, “there was something real there. . . . There’s something that goes deeper than the jokes, and making fun of each other, and the sort of surface-level stuff—the lingo that you can establish with a close friend. But there’s love.”

Lee initially joked with Lyonne that her flair for improvisation might throw off the show’s production schedule. But as the actress recalled, the show’s set turned out to be very collaborative. “They were looking for input,” Lee said. “I got the sense that they were looking for ways to keep the story alive and not be beholden to the framework of a time loop, in a cool and interesting way.” That, she said, felt very special—plus, “I’m so happy with the way that some of the female friendships ended up being portrayed.”

Those friendships are another of Russian Doll’s understated strengths. Several aspects of the show’s believable, often hilariously eccentric relationships came out of conversations about what female friends actually discuss when they’re alone. As Lee put it, “It’s so much more interesting to talk about this sex cult than whether or not Maxine has a boyfriend.”