F  L  A  U  N  T

Sitting in a booth at the Silver Skillet in Atlanta is a woman taking in the atmosphere. The scene looks like it is right out of a movie set in the 1950s. Because it is. You can see it in films like The Founder and Taken 3. There’s a list of television shows featuring the joint, including What Would You Do? with John Quiñones. But why this place? Well, because everyone aches to experience the past, even if that experience might be hiding Quiñones and a gaggle of sound technicians.

As we age, we see clearer the issues that plagued the past and that still plague the present. Nonetheless, we are nostalgic creatures. We long for the 70s and its disco balls. The 50s and its poodle skirts and muscle cars. The 2000s and its Paris Hilton... But stop the longing! Time travel is not real. Unless you are Odessa Young, that woman sitting in the Silver Skillet’s booth.

“They have the most incredible fried catfish,” the actor tells me about the diner during our Zoom chat, “It’s making me hungry just thinking about it.” While the actor fantasizes about the Silver Skillet’s offerings, we can be confident she’s stuck in 2021 with the rest of us. But when she works, she floats through the years, with numerous roles set in previous decades and eras. Last year, she starred alongside Elisabeth Moss in Shirley. Set in the 40s, the film chronicles the prolific life of Shirley Jackson, a horror/mystery writer whose vast output included six novels and over 200 short stories.

Young has featured in the 2000s. The 90s. The 80s. Her first role ever, before she even hit double digits, was set in 1888. “I think it is just a coincidence,” she responds when asked about this unique range of periods, while most of her peers are acting out Gen Z ennui and exploration in the 2020s. She doesn’t seek out these roles, though. Somehow they come to her. And she finds them delightful. For Young, the biggest joy in being a part of a story told in another decade is tapping into the mannerisms of the time. “I enjoy doing the accent,” the Australia-born actor says excitedly. “There is something about taking on a period role—there is such a distinct difference in the way people held themselves and the way that people talked.”

One of Young’s newest projects, Mothering Sunday—a 1920s romantic drama adapted from the novel of the same name by Graham Swift, which stars Olivia Colman, Josh O’Connor, Colin Firth, and Glenda Jackson—meant adopting a British accent. “It was very hard for me to wrap my mouth around a lot of the British sounds,” she laughs, “because I would just find myself falling back on Australian sounds.” In experiencing Mothering Sunday, you wouldn’t guess that tapping into this particular period’s accent and mannerism was difficult for Young. She is fantastically immersive, and instead you’re lost on who this accent is attached to: Jane Fairchild. A maid. Or more so a writer working as a maid.

“There is a similarity between being a writer and being an actor,” Young reflects on the creative impulses of her character. “Like Donald [played by Sope Dirisu] says to her, ‘You’re an occupational observer of life.’ I do feel that is one way to talk about what it means to be an actor. I feel watchful. Inwardly, I feel like I have more conversations with myself, in my mind, than I do with the external world.”

Sometimes, of course, these worldly observations manifest into extreme character preparation. Adrien Brody drops tens of pounds to play a pianist. Jared Leto gives the entire cast of Suicide Squad a dead hog to become one with the Joker. Kate Winslet isolates herself in a freezing cabin. Young’s approach to embodying a character navigating forbidden love with her soon to be married employer? “I was like, Jane’s a maid,” she shares. “I’m going to clean my whole house every day and wake up at the crack of dawn and gruel. I obviously didn’t do any of that. Even if I had done that, I don’t think that would have made a difference. I think ultimately, Jane isn’t a maid. She is doing maid’s work.” And she adds, “I did try to feel the same kind of numb repression that Jane had developed to get through a day.”

Following a glowing debut at Cannes, Mothering Sunday is set to release in the US in February of 2022. In the months leading up to its premiere, Young is working in Atlanta. It’s not her first time working here, and this time, she’ll spend six months. Some weeks she has three or four days off and can meander through the city and outskirts, which is how she ended up in the Silver Skillet. “I want to try all of the restaurants in the world,” she says. “That’s something I feel sad about not having enough time to do.”

With a busy schedule, there is indeed a lot that Young does not have time to do. She hasn’t been back to Australia since Christmas of 2019. The pandemic complicated traveling like it did for so many, which made the US even more a permanent home than it had already become. But the image that forms in her mind when she thinks of home isn’t skyscrapers and seas of people. “I spent two years living on a dairy farm, which we didn’t take care of,” she recalls. “We were tenants in this little house on the farm. And that was in this area that was truly idyllic. It is a couple of hours away from Sydney, which is where I was born, and then like a half-hour inland from the coast. It was just this beautiful rolling hills, super green, luscious place. I have very idyllic memories from there. I miss the sounds of the birds. It is just different here.” Young explains that if you go beyond Atlanta’s metropolitan area and branch into the rest of Georgia, you can capture something of that Australian essence. “As soon as you get out of the city limits, you feel like you’re in farmland, and it’s really lovely.”

While some of Georgia’s vast spaces may fill an internal longing for home, a wider void exists. That of missing family. Young explains that when you walk into her home, you see a photo of her aunt placed atop her piano. A timeless way to remember a loved one. But, it is not a shrine. “My aunt, each year,” Young says of the memento, “she’s a stage manager for a theater company in Sydney, but for a while, she was also an actor in theater productions. Every year she gives me a signed copy of her headshot. It has become a wonderful tradition.”

Where is one to put numerous copies of their aunt’s headshot? In shrine-like formations, I suppose. But surely receiving the same gift from someone every year might be a little... burdensome? “I like gifts that become a burden on the person you give them to,” Young chuckles. “That might be sentimental or emotional but eventually become burdensome. What am I supposed to do with these framed headshots that are exactly the same?” And she laughs, “Sometimes she’ll sign it with the phrase, ‘be more like me.’”

While in Atlanta, and while not exploring the coffee shops, pubs, and greenery of Georgia, Young is filming The Staircase, an HBO Max true crime mini-series, based on director Jean-Xavier de Lestrade’s 2004 docuseries by the same name. The Staircase chronicles Michael Peterson and his murder conviction of his wife whom he alleges fell down a flight of stairs. Alongside Colin Firth, Sophie Turner, Toni Collette, and more, Young will play Martha Ratliff, a child in Peterson’s custody. “It’s not weird when I’m doing it,” Young remarks of portraying a real person. “It’s not weird on the day. I think what’s weird about it is that we will inevitably become part of the canon of this story, and that is a story about real death. And that’s strange.” Young then attests there is a level of sensitivity and mindfulness you have to have when playing a real person who has experienced a traumatic event. “I believe that the story that we are creating—the fictitious elements of it—are sensitive and scrutinizing and not exploitative whatsoever,” she says.

Young goes on to explain that the film team received permission from several of those affected by this case to tell this story. Even with that “go ahead,” dealing with such subject matter can feel taboo. “It still feels strange that we are speculating on the kind of real-world consequences of a horrific thing happening. I think it’s a necessary evil.” Still, being a part of a story like this is important to Young. As the true crime genre continues to grow in popularity, sometimes the podcasts, films, and commentary videos that amass after a horrendous death neglect part of the story, and very often the impact the case had on the people closest to it—people who are often still alive, watching trailers with themselves and their loved ones featured. “These are stories that are very helpful to be told,” Young says of The Staircase. “The way that I see this one is it’s not necessarily about the murder—it is about these people’s existence within this horrible story.”

This story matters. In fact, all of Young’s projects matter. But in the grand scheme of things... do they? “The greatest gift that life has given me,” Young says with a bit of a laugh, “is the understanding that nothing I do will really matter. It sounds very nihilistic, but I think that it actually gives me a lot of hope.” After only 23 years on the planet, already working with a vast range of reputable actors and directors, you would hope that for Young, the best is yet even to come. She might agree, but she’s content with where things are at this very moment. “Maybe the greatest gift of life,” she cheekily concludes, “is the shortness of it.”

Photographed by Christopher Schoonover
Styled by Chloe Hartstein at The Wall Group
Hair: Takuya Yamaguchi at The Wall Group
Makeup: Tyron Machhausen at The Wall Group
Flaunt Film by Jonathan Schoonover