NEW YORK, May 30 (UPI) -- Lena Hall says Ali, the open-hearted, mentally ill woman she plays on Your Friends & Neighbors, couldn't be more different than the tough chanteuse she depicted on the post-apocalyptic Snowpiercer.
"This is like the polar opposite of what Miss Audrey was. I went from 22-inch corsets to no corset at all. It's just sweatpants [to play Ali]," Hall, 45, told UPI in a recent phone interview. "It's a lot less time in the makeup and hair chair, which is nice."
The energy of the characters is also very different, she noted.
"Miss Audrey was so knowing and wise beyond her years and had 'queen' energy and Ali is the opposite. She's just trying to survive day-to-day," Hall added.
"I guess they were trying to survive day to day on Snowpiercer, but Ali's just trying to survive day-to-day in the regular world built for someone who is not like her and she's got a great sense of humor about herself," she said. "She's very intelligent and she knows her flaws, but she hides everything with a big dose of humor and I like how real she is. I love how real she is and how down-to-earth she is."
Wrapping up its first season on Apple TV+ Friday, the dark comedy series follows Coop (Jon Hamm), an unemployed hedge fund manager who turns to robbing his rich neighbors to keep up with his former lifestyle.
Hall plays Coop's sister, a struggling musician who moves in with him because he can no longer pay for her to have her own apartment.
Amanda Peet plays Coop's cheating ex-wife Mel and Olivia Munn plays Sam, the married woman with whom Coop is now having an affair.
"I love that, in this show, it's like she's the one who's supposed to be broken, but she is probably the most normal one out of everyone," Hall said.
Because Coop is always busy with his extracurricular activities, he doesn't have much time to spend with Ali, so she is closest to Coop's troubled son, Hunter (Donovan Colan).
"She sees a lot of herself in her nephew," Hall said.
"He is highly creative, musical, but also is having a hard time fitting into the world and he feels unseen. He says that in the show. He's feeling like he doesn't fit in and Alice sees that, for sure. She's there to kind of nurture him and make sure that he's protected in a way," she added. "They're connected."
Unfortunately, Ali's naivete sometimes puts herself and her family in awkward situations.
"There's a child-like innocence to her," Hall said of her character, who has a restraining order preventing her from stalking an ex-beau.
"She's very smart. She's an adult, but she still holds this trust in everyone that most people don't have when they're older. So, she's not bitter," Hall added. "There's not a sense of, 'Everyone's trying to screw her over, right?'"
So, of course, Ali blithely attends Mel's birthday bash with no resentment toward her because Mel left her brother for another man.
"She's just like: 'You're cool and I still love you no matter what. We're still friends,'" Hall said of Ali's relationship with her former sister-in-law.
"I'm going to be here, even though I don't fit in at all," she said of Ali's way of thinking. "Ali doesn't fit in anywhere. So, she's very much her own little microcosm and the one person who really understands her well is her brother and I think she probably had a really good relationship with Mel."
One of the most memorable moments from this season is Ali singing an acoustic version of the Thompson Twins' "Hold Me Now" at Mel's party, which Mel and Coop listen to from afar while they jump on a trampoline and remember better days together.
"It's so cool to have this music that you're singing be a part of a scene and help lift it emotionally into a place that it needs to be," Hall said.
"Ali is singing really about her own missed opportunity when she was supposed to get married. That was her wedding song. And [Coop and Mel's] marriage is falling apart. It's just a double meaning there."
Hall said she sometimes is cast in roles that have a musical component, while other characters are tailored to her talents.
"A lot of times, my comfort level of singing is much higher than my comfort level in acting," she said. "So, being able to sing in my comfort level then helps me walk into a character much better."
