Flack Season 1: Interview with Anna Paquin

Flack Season 1 Updates: Flack actress Anna Paquin speaks about her Amazon Prime Video project, making behind the scenes, and bringing to life complicated women.

In Flack, Anna Paquin is a woman in charge of everything but herself. The British import, which arrived on Amazon Prime Video on January 22, has already screened for two seasons before becoming more widely available outside of the UK.

Paquin plays Robyn in the drama, a PR director (known as a ‘flack’) who can fix the outrageous issues of any customer but struggles to confront her own.

But Paquin, who has been in the industry since she was a kid and appeared in cult classics such as True Blood and award-winning movies such as The Irishman, knows exactly how to run the show offscreen and on.

She had a hand in every aspect as an executive producer for the film, from casting to location scouting alongside showrunner and head writer Oliver Lansley.

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In advance of the wide release of the first season, the actress and director recently spoke with Screen Rant, along with many other press outlets, which will accompany the second shortly afterward.

She shared a few specifics about her own relationship with her real-life publicist, gave insight into Robyn’s dynamic relationships on the television, and while making a series, she explained her process.

Flack Season 1: What was your interest in doing this series as an actor with a publicist?

Anna Paquin: I mean, really, Robyn and the type of clients she works with are absolutely nothing like my experience with advertisers and my publicist.

This is a beast I witnessed and saw—I was around it—just it’s not my beast. My publicist doesn’t have those kinds of customers, really; that’s not her vibe. Could you have suggested any of the stories you’ve heard to Oliver Lansley, the writer?

Anna Paquin: He’s a goldmine of beautiful, warped little jewels. He chose a little bit of it from here and a little bit of it from here. On that front, we do not need to send them any notes.
You’ve got such an eclectic variety of positions that don’t fit in one package.

Flack Season 1: How are you picking your projects?

Anna Paquin: To me, it’s just about the content and the quality of writing, and who the talented people around and interested in the projects are. If you press on them or not, whether you’re motivated by them, and you’re on the same page.

It’s one of those kinds of chemistry stuff that you can’t even legislate about, or regulate absolutely. If you have it or you don’t have it with people, and I’ve been really grateful that through my career I’ve been on the stumbling road of a lot of extremely smart, brilliant people. I had to play with some very awesome human beings.

In order to do their work properly, we also have the four core PR ladies and the various stages of cognitive dissonance they go through. Can you speak a little about how Robyn sees her role relative to how newcomer Melody does it?

Anna Paquin: What is unique about the business is that on the food chain you have a lot of different locations. Currently, she and Eve are sort of at the same stage, but Eve is the first one to say that because daddy plays
golf with the right people, she got there. Robyn is a hustler; she’s been working her way to the world.

She’s not privileged, she’s not, per se, out of some sort of money. There’s no safety net available, so the stakes for her
all the time are very, very high. She wants to be successful, and she yearns for success.

And then you’ve got Melody all the way down, who’s vibrant and different and modern. We feel protective of her, but with a pair of impartial eyes, I still feel that the viewer gets to see our insane world.

Since she’s like, “what the fuck” Cuz, with the “WHAT?!” aspect of some she notices, that’s how the people are heading, you know what I mean? It’s a genius device, like a story structure, doubled by the fact that Rebecca Benson is such an extraordinary actress.

But it’s just a very fun dynamic like a shark tank kind of thing. The one that will not be eaten alive wins. They’re on the same team, but they’re kind of not. She thinks Melody’s protective, but she still hands out a lot of tough love. It’s a land of cutthroats.

Flack takes part in the world of the internet and cancels culture and viral sensations like it. How risky is doing something anonymously on the internet for celebrities, and how strong is canceling society with PR today?
Anna Paquin: For what you bring into the universe, you’re accountable.

That’s your business, if you mean it, because it’s your real truth, and you’re able to stand by whatever comes with it. It’s all crazy Cancel society.

We don’t have the time to get into the nuance of how and when this has been anything like that, but fundamentally, it doesn’t sound all that different from bullying in schoolyards. There’s everything someone does, and so

Everyone learns, and they get embarrassed. Ultimately, we’re all living in the village square; it has just gone global. As a species, it doesn’t appear to be something that is going anywhere anytime soon. It just gets quicker and
more instantaneous.

But finally, as I bring things into the universe, I realize that some of them will be received in some respects by certain people. And with my eyes open, I’m making this decision. I live my life that way.

What would you talk to us about season 2?

Anna Paquin: What am I allowed to tell you? With Robyn’s vortex of personal and technical devastation and turmoil, we pick up where we left off. It just doubles down on how far down the Robyn rabbit hole we’re headed, if anything, so she’s in a state of emotional turmoil, you know, and existential crisis. As far as Will she makes it?

Oh, who knows? She’s on the self-destruction death front, living a very, very fine line. That’s why she’s so good at her work because she doesn’t have a real sense of self-preservation in the end.

So what comes at the end of the day as you run out and torch your bridges, and you’re going, “What’s left?”In season2, that’s what we’re getting into.