Actress Natalie Portman, 43, has shared her experience exploring the history of her grandmother and great-grandmother while filming her new noir thriller Lady in the Lake in Baltimore, US. She had previously worked on a family tree for her mother Shelley.
Natalie revealed that her grandmother was from Baltimore and grew up in a Jewish community.
“My grandmother was in her 40s in the 1960s. I really got to explore what her life was like, what challenges she might have faced, what feelings she might have had that frustrated her. And it was just fascinating to imagine,” she said, as quoted by PeopleFriday (12/7).
Portman then shared how she also made surprising discoveries regarding some of her family members.
“I was actually doing a family tree for my mom’s birthday, and it was really wild to find my great-grandparents’ immigration papers coming from Eastern Europe to Baltimore, to find census records of them living in Baltimore,” she said.
Tracing her family’s roots in Baltimore, Natalie recounts walking into a Jewish deli that has been open for 100 years. She imagines her great-grandmother walking in.
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“I never really had a connection to the place because my family was in a different city every generation, often a different country every generation. So it was really wild to experience that for the first time,” he continued.
Lady in the Lake, a 2019 TV adaptation of Laura Lippman’s novel of the same name, stars Portman as Maddie Schwartz, a Jewish housewife who leaves her husband to pursue a career in investigative journalism.
She becomes obsessed with the death of Cleo Johnson, played by Queen’s Gambit star Moses Ingram, following moving to a predominantly black neighborhood where she can afford to live without her husband. The ensuing mystery raises broader questions regarding race and class in 1960s Baltimore.
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In June, Portman told People that it was interesting for her to explore how someone who is oppressed can also be an oppressor through the series.
“Maddie becomes blind to the impact her actions have on others because she’s too caught up in her personal journey,” the Black Swan star also told Vanity Fair of the role.
The series is produced by MountainA, a production company co-founded by Portman and Sophie Mas. Last year, MountainA released the film May December, which earned Portman a Golden Globe nomination.
Portman and Mas both serve as executive producers on Lady in the Lake. The first two episodes of Lady in the Lake will premiere on AppleTV+ on July 19. (Z-3)
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