“It’s like my movie posters have come to life,” her character said in Judd Apatow’s Covid comedy The Bubble, where she played a concierge at a hotel hosting a parade of A-listers. Since starting work in English language film, Bakalova has played this kind of role a lot: the outsider looking in slightly overwhelmed. Lambs to the slaughter: Bakalova and Amandla Stenberg in ‘Bodies Bodies Bodies’ (Gwen Capistran/A24) She’s keeping all the secrets, which she shouldn’t, because secrets get you nowhere.” I think her problem, though, is that she tries to be somebody she’s not. “At some point of our lives, we all feel like we don’t fit in the circle, even if we want to belong somewhere and be appreciated. You feel personally affronted when she’s thrown out of the house after being suspected of being the killer. In a crowded, brilliant ensemble – which includes Davidson, Shiva Baby’s Rachel Sennott, Industry’s Myha’la Herrold and professional tall person Lee Pace – Bakalova shines. It comes as a relief when the group begins dropping like flies – if only to break up the pass-agg tension bouncing off the walls. She is an earnest compliment to their bitter disdain. Bee’s gift of zucchini bread goes down like a cup of cold sick, and she’s frequently out of her depth when it comes to conversation and the gang’s mutual self-loathing. She plays Bee, a timid foreigner accompanying her new girlfriend (Amandla Stenberg’s shifty Sophie) to a party of her rich pals. I might be fearless today and tomorrow I might be cryingīakalova is the closest thing Bodies Bodies Bodies has to a hero. Look beyond all the Trump-baiting and what you get is a heartwarming feminist parable. Transforming Tutar from a clueless, cage-dwelling teenager into a crusading journalist, she imbues her with an unwavering vulnerability that slowly morphs into steely strength. But the entirety of Bakalova’s performance earned her that Oscar nod. “And everybody can see it!” The scene stole the movie, understandably. “I don’t know anything about that person except that meeting we had in that room,” Bakalova tells me over Zoom from New York, wincing a little at the memory. “She is too old for you!” To this day, Giuliani swears he did nothing untoward. They retire to the bedroom – rigged with hidden cameras – where Giuliani asks for her phone number and lies back on his bed, ambiguously tucking his shirt into his trousers. Tutar gives him a Kazakh picture book of a girl being swallowed whole by her vagina. Playing Borat’s industrious 15-year-old daughter Tutar, the Bulgarian actor is alone with Giuliani – the former mayor of New York and one of Donald Trump’s top aides – in his hotel room, made up in Republican anchorwoman cosplay and interviewing him for a right-wing TV network. It was that encounter with Giuliani – a skin-crawling display in which he touches her waist and her arms and rummages around his lap – in Sacha Baron Cohen’s 2020 sequel Borat : Subsequent Moviefilm that anointed Bakalova as one of the bravest actors in Hollywood. Until then, though, Bakalova stands alone. Unless, of course, Meryl Streep decides to get really ballsy in her twilight years. Maria Bakalova will go down in history as the only actor to receive an Oscar nomination for playing a feral, monkey-eating Kazakh who discovers feminism via a rendezvous with Rudy Giuliani. ‘At some point of our lives, we all feel like we don’t fit in the circle, even if we want to belong somewhere and be appreciated’ (Getty for IMDb)
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