1 of 5 | Tatiana Maslany’s “Maximum Pleasure Guaranteed” premieres Wednesday. Photo courtesy of Apple TV
NEW YORK, May 20 (UPI) — Orphan Black and She-Hulk actress Tatiana Maslany says Paula, the single mom she plays in the dark comedy thriller, Maximum Pleasure Guaranteed, is too impulsive for her own good, but she’s working on that.
Premiering Wednesday on Apple TV, the show follows Paula (Tatiana Maslany) as she investigates the murder of Trevor (Brandon Flynn), the handsome, young cam-boy with whom she was having an online relationship.
The killer begins stalking her as she tries to work, take care of her daughter Hazel (Nola Wallace) and navigate a nasty custody battle with her wealthy ex-husband Karl (Jake Johnson) and his new wife Mallory (Jessy Hodges).
“A few things play into her circumstances. I think she definitely has a reckless tendency to act before she’s really thought things through,” Maslany, 40, told UPI in a recent Zoom interview.
“But, at the same time, she’s a fact checker. So, she’s really good at thinking things through before she publishes something,” she said. “She’s also got a really strong eye and is very smart.”
What’s working against her, Maslany explained, is that she is insecure because she doesn’t have as much money as Karl and Mallory do and can’t spoil Hazel the way she would like to.
“She has to ‘prove her worth’ and I say that in quotes because I think it’s a strange ask on someone to prove her worthiness as a mother, prove her worthiness as a worker, who can be relied on, all of these things that are kind of expected of her, while she’s also navigating the murder of this cam-boy,” the actress said.
“That balancing of so many different things is very central to her.”
While Mallory destroyed Karl and Paula’s marriage and undermines Paula at every turn, Paula has to remain civil toward her because she is helping to co-parent Hazel.
“Mallory and Paula are both very protective of the people that they love,” Maslany said.
“If we were looking at this show from Mallory’s point of view, we’d probably understand very much what she sees, which is like a reckless, unreliable person who is trying to fight for sole custody owner of this child,” she added.
“That’s a huge responsibility and I don’t think Mallory sees her as responsible and capable of doing that.”
Paula’s dynamic with Karl was also really interesting to explore, Maslany said.
“There’s, obviously, a deep love there and there’s also a massive gulf between them and I think that’s been there for a long time,” she said. “Paula has kind of been coasting on, ‘Nothing’s going to change,’ and then, when it does, it’s a big wake-up call for her.”
Helping Paula find out who Trevor was and why someone killed him are her nosy co-workers Geri (Kiarra Hamagami Goldberg) and Rudy (Charlie Hall).
“I was like, ‘Oh, we’re, suddenly, like 12-year-olds on a sleepover, trying to get into the neighbor’s shed,’ or something like that,” Maslany laughed.
“It felt like there was a lightness and something very fun and sort of a throwback about that dynamic to a nostalgic mystery,” she added. “What’s cool about those characters is you can kind of read them as one thing and then you start to unravel them and you see that there’s these other motives and these other lives that they have outside of the dynamic.”
