Zazie Beetz interview: 'My German identity is really important to me'

Zazie Beetz broke through with FX's Golden Globe-winning Atlanta. She has also appeared in Deadpool 2 and Netflix anthology series Easy, and is currently filming Pale Blue Dot, which co-stars Natalie Portman and marks the feature film directorial debut of Fargo showrunner Noah Hawley. We caught up ahead of Atlanta Robbin' Season's US broadcast to discuss her German-American identity (which would end up being utilised in Fasnacht-centric episode 'Helen'), her blossoming career and the nuance of improv.

Zazie, what are you up to this week when you're not talking to people like me?

Um, what am I up to? I've had a bunch of downtime recently which has been lovely because last year was incredibly busy. Mostly just hanging out in my house, feeding my cat.

What's your cat's name?

Coco! She's very cute. But yeah, really just reading a bunch of scripts and having a few meetings with different directors and trying to figure out what I want to work on next.

I've just been watching rough cuts of the first few episodes of the new season of Atlanta, have you seen them yet?

I haven't seen anything at all yet!

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They're looking great, I like that they've kept that low key vibe to the show, where each episode is just a little capsule, a little day-in-the-life of these characters. There's no rush to advance the plot or anything, that's one of the main things I like about the show.

Yeah, me too, I feel like it explores the minutiae of people's lives, the reality and the comedy and the darkness of everyday life.

You were born in Berlin, right?

Yeah, I was. My dad is German, he was born in East Germany, and then after the [Berlin] Wall was brought down he came to the States for the first time and met my mom. They got pregnant in Germany, got married, stayed and had me there and then when I was 8 years old we moved to the States more permanently. But I was back and forth growing up, I went to pre-school over there but did all my proper schooling in New York - I still got to head back to Germany for summer camp.

That must have been a trip moving between New York and Berlin all the time - two very different style of life.

Yeah, I mean it was wonderful, I'm truly so grateful that I've had that experience. I may not look particularly German but my German identity is really important to me and is a big part of who I am. At home I speak with my father basically exclusively in German and his whole family doesn't speak any English. It's important to me to be able to pass that aspect of my identity onto my children. I was lucky to spend so much vacation time in Germany, it was a gift - I still crave it a lot and go back when I can.

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Berlin's such an idiosyncratic city and it's got this very specific vibe to it, I always think it feels quite lawless, like people just do what they want in Berlin; I like that.

I think that has a lot to do with history. Berlin's changed a lot in the last 20 years, especially since the Wall came down. I remember as a child there was still a lot of reconstruction and renovation after World War II going on, whereas now I think the city's sort of found its footing again and its so international and so many young people and artists are meeting there. It's a bit like how I pictured New York in the past, kind of grungy, kind of dirty, a little wild; very cultured and alive. I spent a year living in Paris and I didn't feel that way about that city - I love Paris and was very enamoured with it in a romantic way, but I feel the French are very, very captivated by their history and want to hold onto it, while I think in Germany people are more afraid of their history and want to let go of it and move it forward.

Yeah, that's an interesting observation, It was my experience too with Paris, that you have this idea of it in your head, a very romantic one, and it didn't really stand up for me when I visited. Whereas Berlin doesn't really have that expectation and seems more just a place of great opportunity. There's such a mass exodus at the moment, the amount of people I know leaving London to move to Berlin is crazy.

There are so many people doing the same thing here too, including people I wouldn't have expected it from. It's intriguing, I don't find German culture necessarily wildly interesting or entertaining or anything, but Berlin I think is a special place.

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So, pre-Atlanta you're living in New York, auditioning for shorts, learning to act - what's the goal for you at that point, is it film, is it TV, is it stage?

Well my childhood dream was probably stage, I very much liked musicals. I did theatre through college, I didn't study it but it kind of followed me throughout my life since I was a girl and then I sort of did a very stark, sudden switch to film and television that took a lot of adjusting. I actually feel like I'm still adjusting to that and finding the nuance and the differences. I guess acting is acting, truth is truth, and you can find truth wherever, but the energy you get from a camera is very different to the energy you get from a room full of people. Stage is a lot more cathartic than being on camera and that's something I've had to come to terms with and find a way to still achieve emotional fulfilment and blah blah blah! I really loved movies so I had more of an affinity with film than I did with television and originally wanted to work on movies more, but then I think television is rapidly changing and improving, and so I feel really lucky to have been on this show [Atlanta] that I think is smart and interesting and unique, not just in terms of subject matter but in how it approaches tone and what it looks like, it's slow and beautiful.

So I guess before you landed the role in Atlanta you were working on a lot of low budget or no budget projects and then suddenly you're in this major FX show. Low budget stuff is often quite ramshackle in terms of production and comes together pretty last minute, but with a network show/studio movie you've got way more time to do everything, even just in terms of getting to set and being able to do prep, did you feel like working with a bigger budget enabled you to do your job better and give a better performance, or was the jump not that significant?

Definitely [the fomer]. Depending on what you're doing too you're also being paid to prepare. That's one of the privileges of being where I am right now - for example with Deadpool I spent two months before shooting just training for four hours a day, just working out, and I would not have had that stamina and time had I not had been able to be compensated for that. I have the opportunity now more than I ever have before to choose the projects I want to do and pass on others and be more engaged in what my body of work should look like, whereas before you have to kind of say yes to everything. I do think all this has definitely allowed me to engage and research more and have more fun with characters. Not that I necessarily get to do as much as I would still like to!

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Yeah, I guess you can always do more! I'm a really big fan of Easy as well, the Joe Swanberg Netflix series, and I was thinking your characters on Atlanta and Easy aren't that dissimilar but obviously the process must have been very different because I'm guessing the way Donald works is more scripted whereas Joe is all about the improvisation so I was kind of wondering how those two roles felt different for you and which was more difficult. I spoke to Marc Maron who's also in Easy and he was saying he found the improv actually surprisingly fine. Did it all comes together for you quite easily or was it a challenge?

Yeah, they were really, really different. In Atlanta I do a bunch of improvisation as well but in very different fashions, there's a lot of like, story building, and I think it takes a lot more training than people realise. I don't think I'm necessarily very good at it [laughs] but I think there's an art to it and you can often tell a bad improviser. Often they don't shut up and just talk and talk and talk because they feel pressure to fill the space with words. I think it does take a comfortability not to grab attention and take a step back and just let somebody else shine. It's definitely become easier as I've gone along, and you also end up shooting so much more, a lot of the scenes get cut down a ton because they're just trying to cover different ground and figuring the scene out, so you do a lot of work that is great for exploring the character and finding what you think is important but then also when you watch the finished, edited, scene you're like 'woah, this completely changes the story.' I think a big thing with improvising is you have to know your partner and feel comfortable and know they can lift you up and you can do the same for them, and so doing season 2 [of Easy] was much easier for me because I felt more comfortable with the family of people I was working with.

And I guess living in New York as well though situations are familiar to you so it's easier to jump into them, young people hanging out in bars etc, It easier than if it was improvising something off the wall.

Yeah, exactly, and also there's a huge improv scene in New York, I go to a lot of show so I like to think I know what good improv looks like, sometimes I'll watch a show and be like 'ah she's really good and I'm kind of shit!'. Improv is hard but I think everybody should do it.

Thanks for your time Zazie, enjoy your downtime.

Thank you! Take care.

Atlanta Robbin’ Season airs on Sundays at 10pm on FOX.