Anna Paquin is a woman in control of everything but herself in Flack. The British import, arriving January 22 on Amazon Prime Video, has already aired two seasons before becoming more widely available outside the UK. In the dramedy, Paquin plays Robyn, a PR agent (known as a "flack") who can solve every client's outrageous problems but refuses to face her own.
But Paquin, who has been in the industry since she was a child and starred in cult hits like True Blood and award-winning films like The Irishman, knows how to the run the show offscreen as well as on. As an executive producer for the series, she has had a hand in every aspect from casting to location scouting alongside showrunner and head writer Oliver Lansley. Without a doubt, her dedication to the project is reflected in not only Robyn's nuanced characterization, but the layers present in the myriad of women who make up the series.
The actress and producer recently spoke with Screen Rant, along with several other press outlets, in anticipation of the first season's wide release - which will be followed by the second shortly thereafter. She shared a few details about her own relationship with her real-life publicist, gave insight into Robyn's complicated onscreen relationships, and explained her process when producing a series.
As an actress yourself with a publicist, what was your attraction to doing this series?
Anna Paquin: I mean, honestly, my relationship with publicity and my publicist is absolutely nothing like Robyn and the kind of clients that she deals with. That is a beast I have witnessed and have seen - I've been around it - it's just not my beast. My publicist doesn't really have those kinds of clients; that's not her vibe.
We've been together since I was 13. I work hard, I promote my work, and I don't really have time to have much of an exciting life outside of it. I've been brought up in front of everybody's eyes anyway, so if it happened, you already knew about it.
Have you been able to suggest some of the stories you've heard to the writer, Oliver Lansley?
Anna Paquin: He is a goldmine of twisted, beautiful little gems. He has picked a little from here and a little from here. We don't need to give them any notes on that front.
You have such an eclectic range of roles that don't fit into any one box. How do you choose your projects?
Anna Paquin: For me, material and quality of writing, and who the creative people around the projects and involved in it are, is everything to me. Whether or not you click with them, and you're inspired by them, and you're on the same page. That's one of those sort of chemistry things that you can't really legislate for, or completely control. You either have it or you don't with people, and I've been very fortunate that I've been in the stumbling path of a lot of incredibly talented, brilliant people over my career. I've gotten to play with some really amazing humans.
But as far as the eclectic or random nature of it, I've been growing up this whole time. Obviously, what I did at 11 is gonna be different from what interested me when I was a teenager, or what interested me when I was in my 20s or 30s. Now, I'm thankfully leaving that all behind and becoming like an actual adult and getting to play actual adults. I've been rounding my age up to 40 for a while now. But I've told those stories. I'm sort of done with that phase of my life, and I love really digging in and exploring juicy, meaty underbellies of humanity. But once I'm done with it, I want something new. I want something fresh.
What do you think makes your character Robyn so relatable to people who are going to be watching Flack?
Anna Paquin: She's a deeply damaged human being. She has this really flashy, showy life. But the more you learn about her, and the more you find out about her past and her mother, her family and all those things - it all just comes from a place of being really wounded.
I think everyone's got pain underneath, no matter how perfect their life looks on the exterior, and it does inform how people live their lives. What's interesting is you've got the two sides of the same coin with her sister. They both both obviously grew up in a single-parent dysfunctional household with a mentally unwell mother who ultimately takes her own life. One sister does the perfect marriage, and she's got everything [down]; she has fixed the family of origin. Robyn has kind of done the exact opposite, but she's still fixing it. They're just trying to fill this hole that has been left by a psychological absence of a true caregiver.
I think whether it's firsthand, or family of origin, or just relationships in your life - I think a lot of people can relate to the damage, frankly. We all live in much more morally gray areas a lot of the time than a lot of people want to admit. She's just quite open about it.
We also have the four main PR ladies and the varying levels of cognitive dissonance they go through in order to do their jobs right. Can you talk a little bit about how Robyn perceives her work versus how newcomer Melody does?
Anna Paquin: What's interesting about the company is that you see a lot of different places on the food chain. She and Eve are actually kind of at the same level, but Eve is the first person to admit that she got there because daddy plays golf with the right people. Robyn's a hustler; she has fought her way into that world. She is not privileged, she is not from any kind of money, per se. There's no safety net, so the stakes are very, very, very high for her all the time. She wants to be successful, and she craves success. Ultimately, I feel like if you were to really break it down, she craves the approval of Caroline; that approval that she never got as a child. She's found herself a new heroine who is tough and successful and smart and brilliant, and she's modeling herself on that.
And then you have all the way down to Melody, who is shiny and fresh and new. We feel protective of her, but I also feel like the audience gets to see our crazy world through a set of neutral eyes. Because with the "what the fuck" factor of some of the things that she notices, she's like, "WHAT?!" Cuz that's how the audience is going, you know what I mean? As a plot structure like, it's a brilliant device doubled down by the fact that Rebecca Benson is just an extraordinary actress. She's nothing like Melody in real life. She's so talented, it's stupid - as are all our women. We've got a crazy lineup of amazing women; I'm so excited about them.
But it's just a really interesting dynamic of kind of a shark tank. The one that doesn't get eaten alive wins. They're on the same team, but kind of not. She feels protective of Melody, but also dishes out a lot of tough love. It's a cutthroat world.
What type of roles give you the most joy as a performer: comedic or dramatic roles? Do you find Flack appealing because of the varying degrees of female performances it exhibits throughout the season?
Anna Paquin: That's a really interesting question. I am generally more drawn towards the dramatic, but mostly because my humor is not particularly conventional or straightforward as far as what I personally find funny. I'd love at some point to do a super, super broad comedy that was the right thing at the right time with all the right people, but hasn't happened yet. Because I like stretching my acting muscles and being challenged, that would be a new thing for me.
This is kind of a delicious combination of both my very twisted sense of humor with lots of fun showy client excitement stuff, but also an overarching real character piece within it. It's kind of all the things as for me as a performer.
The ensemble of women is a huge part of what appealed to me about this, because you're seeing women in their power in their lives existing and inhabiting the world with ownership and competence at the different levels that they are in their careers. Everyone's at a different place. I love telling stories about interesting, complicated women.
Flack takes place in the internet culture, and with that comes cancel culture and viral sensations. How dangerous is it for celebrities to do things freely on the internet, and how powerful is cancel culture with PR today?
Anna Paquin: You're responsible for what you put into the world. If you mean it, and it's your actual truth, and you're willing to stand by whatever comes with it, that's your business. Cancel culture is just wild. We don't have enough time to get into the nuance of how and why that became such a thing, but it doesn't ultimately feel all that different from schoolyard bullying. Someone does something, and then everybody knows, and they get humiliated. We're still ultimately living in the village square; it's just gone global. That doesn't seem to be, as a species, something that's going away anytime soon. It's just getting faster and more immediate.
But ultimately, when I put things into the world, I know that some of them will be received by some people in certain ways. And I make that decision with my eyes open. That's how I live my life.
Robyn seems to save a lot of people from that with her PR genius.
Anna Paquin: Oh, yeah. And sometimes people who don't deserve it at all. It's like, you did nothing to deserve the degree to which you just got your ass saved. Or how that was spun into something beautiful, because you really dropped the ball. But then, life is not fair. Fame and meritocracy and being decent people don't always go hand in hand. Some terrible people have done some really amazing artwork; that's just the reality.
The women are really the selling point and the heart of the show, but there are a couple of interesting male characters as well. I was surprised that Robyn had a boyfriend at all, and their dynamic only gets more complex as the season goes on. Can you talk a little bit about where she is in her relationship with Sam at the start of the show?
Anna Paquin: Sam, for Robyn, is this completely viable, beautiful version of a life that she should want. But she's ultimately a bit too damaged, and he's gotten to the point where his party days are done: "Let's settle down."
And he's not boring. She's not settling for something that's not exciting, or her intellectual peer. He's fantastic, and that's kind of the point. You want the audience to be going, "But you have it all right there. What are you doing?" But again, that is human nature. People do make wildly self-destructive choices, even when the massively easy choice is waiting for them at home. without judgment.
Also, what was sort of important is that he's not a pushover. Yes, the story of Flack centers largely around the women, but our men aren't doormats. It's just not where the focus of the show is. He's every bit an appropriate alpha match for Robyn, and it's kind of that parallel universe thing where. It flips, where you're like, "Oh, I know nothing about this person." It's really fascinating, and we obviously see how that tracks throughout the seasons.
Robyn is a complex character surrounded by many female characters with their own shades of grey, as well. What conversations did you have with Oliver about her depths?
Anna Paquin: The honest truth is, yes, he created this show entirely. He is the sole creator and writer. But we collectively have been in development and in community with him and his creative team around him for so long, that it's not like there was ever a concrete conversation. It's more that just as we built the project, and as the pieces started to come together, what was really important floated to the surface. When we're casting, obviously, a lot of those conversations [were] about the dynamic and whose energy plays against whom and how that mix has to come together.
It wasn't so much like we were having conversations about the nuts and bolts of the script, because we all knew the scripts inside and out. It became more about fitting the correct people into the correct spots. And through that process, you obviously end up having lots of detailed discussions about the minutiae of why this is just a little bit more right than that. It was very organic, as far as that's concerned, but that is kind of how development and production works. You've already kind of had the conversations even though you never had the conversation.
You're credited as an executive producer, as well. How involved were you in the collaboration process, and how do you balance the producing side with being the lead on the show as well?
Anna Paquin: I have produced a decent number of projects, and this was always something that was set up with me as one of the hands-on exec producers. So, it's not a title. It's my job. I am involved in absolutely everything.
You can either have your actor turn around, or you can do your other job as well. My priorities involve my other job, and for me, that's worth it. I don't want to be a producer in name only. I know plenty of actors get [credited] as a producer, because they are only being credited as producers. They don't really do anything other than attach their name to the project. If I'm producing something, you have all like me, for better or worse. And I'm a lot! But I've been doing this a really long time, and I'm a team player
I think there was literally, like, one tech scout I had to miss because I was in hair and makeup. I'm a control freak as well. I'm not gonna put my name on something and then let somebody else do the work. That's not how I roll.
What can you tell us about season 2?
Anna Paquin: What can I tell you? We pick up where we leave off with Robyn's whirlwind of personal and professional destruction and mayhem. If anything, it just doubles down on how far down the Robyn rabbit hole we go, because she's in a place of personal crisis, you know and existential crisis.
As far as: is she gonna make it? Who knows? She's living a very, very fine line on the self-destruction mortality front. Which is why she's so good at her job, because she ultimately has no real sense of self preservation. But at the end of the day, what happens when you run out and burn your bridges, and you're like, "What's left?" That's what we get into in season 2.
The dynamic between Robyn, her sister Ruth, and Ruth's husband Mark is fascinating. How does Robyn view this family unit of hers, and how does it evolve over the course of the season?
Anna Paquin: Robyn is used to taking care of everybody and not necessarily asking their permission first. And she has done that with her sister, whether her sister appreciates it or no. She's taken quite a lot of the hits emotionally, which as usual, the people in your immediate family are always grateful for.
She comes from a well-intended place, as far as what she wants. She wants a better life for her sister. She doesn't want her to end up a damaged shell human. She worked so Ruth could to go to college. But again, no one appreciates the personal sacrifices that somebody right next to them is making while they are also struggling.
Ruth thinks that she's the one who's got it all together and takes care of everyone, but neither of them. So when Robyn kind of tries to pull the strings behind Ruth's back in her own marriage, it doesn't go so well. Because they're cut from a similar cloth; they've just taking very different life paths. It is an interesting dynamic, where ultimately the younger sister does have to assert her place in their life, and what she is willing to accept and put up with, and what is no longer acceptable. God, haven't we all been through that in various stages of life with relationships? Of like, "Actually, this is not okay."
Ruth obviously loves her deeply, and they know that they are connected and understand each other in a way that absolutely nobody else can or ever will. But everything has its limit. And Genevieve [Angelson] is just a dream. I think we actually are secretly related. I don't know how; we have yet to figure that out, but I think she's actually related to me. This is our theory.
Flack's first season will be available on Amazon Prime Video starting January 22, with the second following soon after.