Saoirse-Monica Jackson is having a medieval moment
2024-07-25T20:52:34.747ZTony Hale as Sirisco and Saoirse-Monica Jackson as Misia in “The Decameron.” (Netflix)“What is the plan you bloody idiot?”It’s Italy in the year 1348. The bubonic plague is sweeping Europe. And in “The Decameron,” Kathleen Jordan’s black death black comedy, Misia (Saoirse-Monica Jackson), a doting lady’s maid, is asking the question of the hour.Jackson has a penchant for playing characters who come into their own as history unfolds around them. First, there was Erin Quinn, a spirited teen growing up in Ireland during the Troubles, in “Derry Girls.” Now, there’s “The Decameron’s” Misia, an aggrieved maidservant riding out the plague with a group of nobles in the Italian countryside. Both characters — a lesbian peasant and a teenage girl — embody underrepresented points of view.“I think both characters are sort of on a quest for independence in very different ways,” Jackson says from her New York City hotel room. The Irish actress, 30, is fresh off an appearance on “The Late Show With Stephen Colbert” and about to explore more of the city with her mom.Jackson’s first TV role was in the 2016 British mystery “The Five,” but her big break came in 2018 with the premiere of Lisa McGee’s wildly popular coming-of-age comedy “Derry Girls.” She slips on the character, an overzealous girl grappling with the onslaught of adulthood, like a well-loved jumper. Jackson inhabits her latest role — and the potato-sack-esque wardrobe and Lord Farquaad wig that accompany it — with similar ease.In “The Decameron,” Misia is the downtrodden servant to Pampinea, a demanding noblewoman played by Zosia Mamet. It was their toxic employer-employee relationship that Jackson found most engaging about the role. “I think most women have experienced friendships like that,” Jackson says. “We as females have a tendency to be maternal, probably before our time, and to be extremely empathetic and open with each other. Often that can be manipulated and sort of villainized against us.”Though the series is ostensibly a comedy, Jackson set out to mine the pathos of Misia’s servitude: “Often, we see this example of someone in a more oppressed or lower social status role rolling their eyes and sort of more annoyed by the situation, and the joke’s on the noble.” She doesn’t play Misia as someone who is in on the joke, she plays her as someone who knows that, if she can’t take one, she risks losing her security.We see Misia navigating emotional extremes, mourning the death of a lover in one scene and playfully throwing cheese into her mistress’s mouth in the next. Jackson compares these abrupt transitions to being consumed by a fight at home but all smiles the minute someone knocks on the door. “It’s not that you’re trying to make Misia funny to land these deeper moments,” she says. “I feel like it’s grounded in that it’s her trying to mask the pain and vulnerability she’s experiencing throughout the show.”Saoirse-Monica Jackson as Misia, Zosia Mamet as Pampinea and Tony Hale as Sirisco in “The Decameron.” (Giulia Parmigiani/Netflix)In Jackson’s view, vulnerability is the key to comedy — exposing the humanity of her characters. “There has to be a lot of humiliation,” she says. With Misia, she walks the line with a level of indignity that flirts with being too sad to find humorous, but she always cuts back just in time. For example, after being forced to commit murder, Misia breaks into song. “I just thought it was so sad but also so wildly, insanely funny,” Jackson says. “If you were someone that cared about Misia, you would only find it funny in hindsight.”“The Decameron” presents an obvious parallel to the coronavirus pandemic. Like all of us, Jackson has already method-acted pandemic isolation, so she understood Misia’s drive to find comfort in the known. Jackson spent lockdown with friends in London, she says, but longed to return to Ireland. “So many times in the show Misia says, ‘Please, can we just leave this place? Please, can we go home?’”The series, which debuted last week on Netflix, represents a departure for Jackson. The tight “Derry Girls” script didn’t give the cast much freedom to improvise. “You could feel the beat landing with Lisa’s jokes because it was so strictly assembled,” she says. “But ‘The Decameron’ feels so expansive.” With an ensemble cast of comedians who had palpably great chemistry, Jackson leaned into improv’s “Yes, and … .” Jackson is particularly proud of an improvised moment in the first episode, as a steward chases her character down the expansive Villa Santa staircase. The bit felt like a childhood game to Jackson, so she petulantly yelled, “I’m a leader, so follow me!”“The Decameron” is about finding humor even in perilous circumstances, a challenge Jackson took in stride. “I think every light has a shadow,” she says. “As an actor, when [I] get to play those two, the darkness and the light intrinsically woven through together, [it’s] such a privilege as a performer.”
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“What is the plan you bloody idiot?”
It’s Italy in the year 1348. The bubonic plague is sweeping Europe. And in “The Decameron,” Kathleen Jordan’s black death black comedy, Misia (Saoirse-Monica Jackson), a doting lady’s maid, is asking the question of the hour.
Jackson has a penchant for playing characters who come into their own as history unfolds around them. First, there was Erin Quinn, a spirited teen growing up in Ireland during the Troubles, in “Derry Girls.” Now, there’s “The Decameron’s” Misia, an aggrieved maidservant riding out the plague with a group of nobles in the Italian countryside. Both characters — a lesbian peasant and a teenage girl — embody underrepresented points of view.
“I think both characters are sort of on a quest for independence in very different ways,” Jackson says from her New York City hotel room. The Irish actress, 30, is fresh off an appearance on “The Late Show With Stephen Colbert” and about to explore more of the city with her mom.
Jackson’s first TV role was in the 2016 British mystery “The Five,” but her big break came in 2018 with the premiere of Lisa McGee’s wildly popular coming-of-age comedy “Derry Girls.” She slips on the character, an overzealous girl grappling with the onslaught of adulthood, like a well-loved jumper. Jackson inhabits her latest role — and the potato-sack-esque wardrobe and Lord Farquaad wig that accompany it — with similar ease.
In “The Decameron,” Misia is the downtrodden servant to Pampinea, a demanding noblewoman played by Zosia Mamet. It was their toxic employer-employee relationship that Jackson found most engaging about the role. “I think most women have experienced friendships like that,” Jackson says. “We as females have a tendency to be maternal, probably before our time, and to be extremely empathetic and open with each other. Often that can be manipulated and sort of villainized against us.”
Though the series is ostensibly a comedy, Jackson set out to mine the pathos of Misia’s servitude: “Often, we see this example of someone in a more oppressed or lower social status role rolling their eyes and sort of more annoyed by the situation, and the joke’s on the noble.” She doesn’t play Misia as someone who is in on the joke, she plays her as someone who knows that, if she can’t take one, she risks losing her security.
We see Misia navigating emotional extremes, mourning the death of a lover in one scene and playfully throwing cheese into her mistress’s mouth in the next. Jackson compares these abrupt transitions to being consumed by a fight at home but all smiles the minute someone knocks on the door. “It’s not that you’re trying to make Misia funny to land these deeper moments,” she says. “I feel like it’s grounded in that it’s her trying to mask the pain and vulnerability she’s experiencing throughout the show.”
In Jackson’s view, vulnerability is the key to comedy — exposing the humanity of her characters. “There has to be a lot of humiliation,” she says. With Misia, she walks the line with a level of indignity that flirts with being too sad to find humorous, but she always cuts back just in time. For example, after being forced to commit murder, Misia breaks into song. “I just thought it was so sad but also so wildly, insanely funny,” Jackson says. “If you were someone that cared about Misia, you would only find it funny in hindsight.”
“The Decameron” presents an obvious parallel to the coronavirus pandemic. Like all of us, Jackson has already method-acted pandemic isolation, so she understood Misia’s drive to find comfort in the known. Jackson spent lockdown with friends in London, she says, but longed to return to Ireland. “So many times in the show Misia says, ‘Please, can we just leave this place? Please, can we go home?’”
The series, which debuted last week on Netflix, represents a departure for Jackson. The tight “Derry Girls” script didn’t give the cast much freedom to improvise. “You could feel the beat landing with Lisa’s jokes because it was so strictly assembled,” she says. “But ‘The Decameron’ feels so expansive.” With an ensemble cast of comedians who had palpably great chemistry, Jackson leaned into improv’s “Yes, and … .” Jackson is particularly proud of an improvised moment in the first episode, as a steward chases her character down the expansive Villa Santa staircase. The bit felt like a childhood game to Jackson, so she petulantly yelled, “I’m a leader, so follow me!”
“The Decameron” is about finding humor even in perilous circumstances, a challenge Jackson took in stride. “I think every light has a shadow,” she says. “As an actor, when [I] get to play those two, the darkness and the light intrinsically woven through together, [it’s] such a privilege as a performer.”
