Mischa Barton – Double Indemnity at Theatre Royal Brighton 10th-14th March
A thrilling masterpiece of murder, deceit, and mystery. One of the greatest crime novels of the 20th Century comes to life on stage starring Hollywood icon Mischa Barton (The O.C).
‘I think she’s got a soft spot for men in general and tends to get herself into quite a bit of trouble,’ says Hollywood star Mischa Barton with a laugh. She’s talking about her explosive new role as the ultimate femme fatale ready to hit the UK stage. ‘But at the end of the day, she knows what she’s doing and she’s not going to let any man take her down.’ How juicy!
Sitting at her family’s house in the Cotswolds with a cup of tea on the go, Mischa is talking about one of the most iconic movie roles of all time: Phyllis Nirdlinger, the seductress/murderess/man-eater from the timeless film noir, Double Indemnity. Thought of as perhaps THE classic film noir, with a screenplay by Raymond Chandler based on a novel by James M. Cain and multiple Oscar nominations into the bargain, Double Indemnity was directed by Some Like It Hot’s Billy Wilder with Phyllis unforgettably played by Barbara Stanwick. The character is arguably the baddest bad girl in movie history. Something Mischa can relate to? She laughs.
‘Well, I think she’s multi-faceted and I can relate to that,’ she says, taking another sip. ‘I think she’s got a lot of different sides to her and has strong opinions about not being tied down as a woman in a man’s world and that leads her to do all sorts of things… like murder.’ And she laughs again. ‘She really is ruthless when it comes to not simply being the pretty thing that sits on the couch.’
We might know Mischa more for her TV roles – she was literally one of the biggest stars of the 2000s when she was in The O.C. – while she has been in blockbuster films like The Sixth Sense and Notting Hill, both when she was a hard-working pre-teen actress as well as, more recently, Neighbours and a series of movies called Invitation to a Murder. But it is on stage where it all started in a series of critically acclaimed plays like Tony Kushner’s Slavs! and playing the lead at New York’s prestigious Lincoln Center in James Lapine’s Twelve Dreams, getting New York Times reviews calling her ‘chillingly authoritative’ at the grand old age of eight. So, this is no Hollywood movie star trying her luck at ‘real acting’.
Mischa Barton – Double Indemnity
And she’s worked with Hollywood royalty such as Christopher Plummer and Shirley MacLaine as well as with our own legendary Sir Richard Attenborough. ‘Richard really took me under his wing,’ she says of one of the most revered players in British film history. ‘He put me in RADA, had me round his house, had me close to his family. I think that was one of the most important things that happened to me in my 20s. He really saw that I needed that and that I was being put in a funny position in Hollywood and in the spotlight… and someone should come in and try and bring things down to some level of normalcy.’
Back to Double Indemnity and you wonder with such an iconic role whether she avoided the original book and the movie so as not to be influenced by them but that’s clearly not Mischa’s process. ‘Quite the opposite,’ she says in an accent that sounds American to Brits, but which apparently sounds very trans-Atlantic to Americans (well, she is part English having been born in Hammersmith in west London, something she loved talking about with her Notting Hill co-star Hugh Grant, who was born there too).
‘The first thing I did when they handed me Double Indemnity was go and watch the movie to remind myself what it’s like and watch Barbara Stanwyck’s performance,’ she says. ‘It’s got very little to do with what Oscar [Toeman, director and literary associate at The Old Vic] and I are going to try and achieve with Phyllis but it is an iconic role so it was definitely worth looking at the novel, the play, all of the material and then deciding which bits we’re going to concentrate on and what doesn’t really serve the purpose of the play now in 2026.’ There is currently a debate on whether the iconic ankle bracelet, which instantly tells us that Phyllis is a little on the trashy side, and whether they can translate that to the stage.
Dating back to the 1930s in the case of the book and the 1940s for the film, you wonder if the story feels dated in any way but not according to Mischa, who thinks that there’s a feel about it that’s very much now, especially in the new adaptation by award-winning writer Tom Holloway. ‘Double Indemnity is one of those cornerstones of film noir,’ she says. ‘It takes place in Los Angeles after the Great Depression and, because there’s this air of desperation in all of these characters in as far as what they’re going to do and why they’re going to do it, you could relate it to now. We’re going through an interesting time in the world, and I think it translates well.’
As for touring the UK, Mischa is looking forward to it. ‘I’ve done it before,’ she says. ‘My whole life is living out of a suitcase, so it’s not going to be a shock to the system. But it is going to be interesting because some of the places I’ve never been to.’ Plus, she’s not one to just sit at home, waiting for roles to come to her, even the more interesting roles she’s being offered now.
‘A lot of the roles that are interesting and resonating with people are for women in their 40s and 50s… 70s even,’ says the former teen star. ‘That whole thing of you have to be 19 is less the case these days, which is really good because I think people like to see themselves reflected in the characters that they watch.’
Looking back on that career-making role as Marissa Cooper in The O.C., Mischa says it feels like a different person altogether. ‘I think I went through a small phase of being mildly annoyed by the attention The O.C. always gets and now that’s completely gone because I look back fondly on it now. It was a great time, we had a lot of fun, and it was a really iconic time for better or worse.’
The fact that she was getting perhaps the most attention of anyone on TV outside of Friends was, she thinks, partly her fault. ‘I’m a very private person, I have always been that way,’ she says. ‘And I think that led to an even greater fascination… the fact that you don’t want it. There are so many people out there literally begging for fame and attention, and so what I found was that the more you resist, the more you’re going to get it.’
Because, ultimately, The O.C. was ground-breaking, leading to a bunch of similar shows like Gossip Girl and eventually to reality TV franchises like Real Housewives. ‘It did open up a whole world of peeking into rich people’s lives and glossy places,’ she says. ‘It’s like people just want to see into these lives, these pockets of California that people don’t feel they understand or can get close to.’
Her stint in Neighbours, meanwhile, was perhaps the hardest thing she’s ever had to do, mainly for the ridiculous workload. ‘They had written that role for me and they were really sweet people,’ she says of the offer, which she originally passed on but which they kept on making. ‘And I literally just thought to myself, “OK, they’ve written you a role again and you can go and live in Australia and see what that’s like…” But it’s bloody hard work, like television gymnastics, it’s not a normal…’
But for the time being, thanks to Double Indemnity and Phyllis, she gets to enjoy the life of an independent British woman, instead of landing on her sister’s doorstep for a couple of weeks then staying months. ‘I’m a big tea drinker,’ she says to reaffirm her British credentials, which also run to always have some Roundtree’s Fruit Pastels in her bag. ‘In New York everyone has their coffee and I’m the one getting tea.’ She takes a sip, then comes back with, ‘I get really annoyed when Americans slander British food. It gets on my nerves.’
So, for the foreseeable future it will be tea-drinking, Fruit-Pastel-guzzling, British-cuisine-defending lady by day, American femme fatale with a taste for murder by night. Lucky old Ciarán Owens who plays insurance salesman turned bad Walter Huff opposite her. ‘It is very intimate,’ says Mischa of being thrown together with the Small Axe/Last Kingdom star in a passionate play like this. ‘They’re in love almost from the second they meet and have this thing for each other. It’s a magnetic duo, they kiss every night on stage, she slaps him, they have this very heated energy to them.’ And she laughs. ‘Poor Ciarán,’ she goes. ‘I’m not sure if he’s ready to get slapped every night. But we’ll see.’
Mischa Barton – Double Indemnity at Theatre Royal Brighton
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