Parker Posey: ‘I didn’t think I would work again – so I wrote a book

Being an arthouse darling became something of a curse for Parker Posey, as Hollywood consigned her to ‘little parts in big films’. Now, her new comic memoir charts her struggle to survive in an ageist, sexist industry

‘I’m just too tired to put on mascara’ … Parker Posey in New York, July 2018
‘I’m just too tired to put on mascara’ … Parker Posey in New York, July 2018. Photograph: Christopher Lane
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 postpartum kind of feeling, like: ‘What was that all about?’” she says. “It still feels like it’s going on.”

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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?”). Posey is a hugely engaging presence, but perhaps also a confounding one for demographic-obsessed Hollywood execs looking for someone easier to define.

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“Are you one of those interviewers that has, like, a list of questions that you wanted to ask me?” she asks as we nip into the local pharmacy to pick up some lightbulbs. She jokingly suggests that I make a note of the brand for the piece and, throughout the day, she often parodies the idea of a celebrity profile, offering up amusingly silly ideas about how I might frame the interview (“Ben are you going to quote this? I’m just too tired to put on mascara,” she says while preparing for the photographer, affecting a faux-diva character).

“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. If anything, she’s more in the mood to just hang out and have fun, and there’s a delicate, gentle wrestle between us as we try to reconcile our two goals for the day.

Deena Martin, Michelle Burke, Joey Lauren Adams and Parker Posey in Dazed and Confused

“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
She is, after all, a survivor of a difficult, ageist, sexist industry and knows how easily people in the public eye can fall. Until recently, she was being offered roles for scale, the minimum an actor can get paid, and was often expected to fly herself out to far-flung locations “to do these kind of parts you would expect from someone with less experience”. She sighs, “It was just kind of wild.”

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In the book, she describes being offered a role in an exploitative, torture-porn thriller, and she tells me about recent offers involving nudity “in a very retro, Porky’s kind of way” that she didn’t perceive as “grown-up”. But the publishing deal coincided with bagging a key role in Netflix’s splashy remake of the 60s sci-fi classic Lost in Space, the second season of which she will start shooting in Vancouver in September. She is passionate about her character (the original series was a favourite as a child) and it is the sort of dependable role she has been grafting for (she is also easily the show’s most compelling element).

I see her that night at the event, at a members club in midtown, surrounded by friends who she mentions throughout the book. In her speech, she talks about the titular airplane acting as a space “between nostalgia and reinvention” and she is visibly overwhelmed while looking out on those who have supported her throughout a tough career. She told me that writing the book was her way of taking matters into her own hands and it is filled with ideas for new stories, characters, shows and movies that she has continued to pitch to agents, producers and even advertisers. Hollywood might have struggled to know what to do with Posey but instead, she has figured out what to do with herself.