It’s not that Hollywood forgot about Parker Posey, it’s more that it just didn’t quite know what to do with her. “I felt like I didn’t have a place in the culture of entertainment,” she tells me as we sit in Washington Square Park in Manhattan, her dog Gracie nestled on the side. Her consignment to the sidelines was maddening; this, after all, was an actor dubbed “queen of the indies” by Time magazine in 1997, who had broken out with attention-demanding roles in Dazed and Confused and Party Girl, and displayed an infectious comic energy in everything from Best in Show to Scream 3. And yet, she says, “it was hard to find a job that would pay, so I thought maybe I’d make something”.
That something is You’re on an Airplane: A Self-Mythologising Memoir, a book of warm, witty, eccentric tales from the 49-year-old star’s life, told as if she’s sitting next to you on a flight. It is why we’re sitting here on a sunny July afternoon, just blocks from her apartment in Greenwich Village, but it is not easy for her to talk about — the process of writing is still fresh. “It’s like a post-partum kind of feeling, like: ‘What was that all about?’” she says. “It still feels like it’s going on.”
In the book, Posey often refers to the lives of female movie stars from the golden era (the cover sees her wearing a Norma Desmond-esque turban), and in person there’s something that feels out of sync with the era, from her outsized sunglasses to her shock when I explain what double-screening is (“So you do that? How old are you?”).
“I’m kind of talked out, I’m sorry,” she says early on, before telling me she’s not really in the right mindset for an interview.
We move between the park, a bubble-tea spot, a naan taco cafe and the streets around her apartment. There’s a whole chapter in the book about Posey’s decision to sell her place on Lower Fifth Avenue because she “didn’t want to do a CSI: Neverland” just for the money. She now rents from friends.
In writing, Posey is refreshingly honest about the difficulties she has faced in an industry that didn’t know where to place her. Despite acclaimed arthouse work in Noah Baumbach’s Kicking and Screaming and The House of Yes, that “Queen of the Indies” label became something of a curse.
“I’ve gotten some little parts in big films,” she says. “Something new would come up, like a three-scene part as the wife of Matt Damon in some big movie and I’d go: ‘God, why didn’t I get cast in that, just tell me what the feedback was, what did they say?’ and the response was: ‘You’re too much of an indie queen’. So my brand, or what I was called, just separated me from the work.”
Those “little parts in big films” included villainous, scene-stealing turns in Superman Returns, Josie and the Pussycats and Blade: Trinity. Posey also took small-screen roles in Louie, Will & Grace and The Good Wife, and became part of the Christopher Guest troupe, showing off her improv skills in a string of comedies, including Waiting for Guffman, Best in Show, and most recently Mascots. In the book, she also references the ones she turned down, such as an Anaconda sequel (“I didn’t want to wrestle with snakes or be in wet clothes while at work”) and Girl, Interrupted (“I remember saying, ‘Who cares about a bunch of depressed white girls in the 60s? What about civil rights?’”).
Work became increasingly hard to find. Living in New York, she was isolated from the intense competition of LA.
Despite Posey’s old Hollywood vibe, she also seems to reject of some of the more ostentatious elements of stardom. She tells me she’s never been able to “master” having an assistant, especially a male one. She says she was spoken down to by a previous employee. “I would rather my back was out and have my friends help me than be subtly undermined, especially being a woman,” she says.
Posey wrote her book just as the #MeToo movement was gaining ground, and while it avoids digging into the darker side of the industry, she is no stranger to workplace sexism. “I’m good with denial or moving on because I’m a creative person and I just want to move on to the next thing,” she says. “The stories that I’ve gone through, I’m sure you could ask some of my friends. But I don’t really remember them.”
She refers to the outpouring of women’s stories as “heartbreaking” but remains wary of delving deeper. Just that morning, the New York Post translated a quote of hers about working with Woody Allen into the headline “Why Parker Posey actually likes working with Woody Allen”.
I ask about Allen, the actors who have spoken out against working with him and his status as an industry pariah, and our gentle wrestle threatens to become more of a duel.
“I’m an actor,” she says, upset by the shift in conversation. “I don’t feel like I should be asked these questions and to be political in a way that the media expects.”
She mentions the Post article, her fear of “callout culture” and what she sees as the pervading meanness that surrounds us. “I’ve written something that isn’t mean and I try my best to protect myself and now I don’t feel protected because you asked this question and it feels like a manipulation,” she says, facing me on a now uncomfortably close couch.
“I just feel a little diminished and I’ve had enough of that,” she continues. “I wrote a book because I had to do something else. I didn’t think I would work again.”
