Former ‘Suits’ star Abigail Spencer has opened up about what she’s been doing during lockdown, and like many of us, it involves video calls, binge watching television and some solid self-reflection.
The 38-year-old ‘Reprisal’ actress and good friend of Meghan Markle said the coronavirus pandemic has forced people to “pause and do whatever we can to keep each other safe”, while remaining connected with close ones.
“I’m so lucky I’m so close with my friends,” the LA-based star told HuffPost Australia.
“It’s nice to be in regular touch, the Zoom meetings... I actually just before this [interview] had a Zoom birthday dance party for a really good friend of mine, so those are increasing,” she laughed.
Covid-19 cases in the US have been increasing, and Abigail said social distancing is very important.
“It’s an interesting time, it’s an important time for all of us to take it seriously and to be at home,” she said, “and take this collective pause and do whatever we can to keep each other safe.
“It feels so collected like this connected tissue and yet we’re more isolated than ever, and yet I feel we’re all having this shared experience of sorts.”
This week her latest show ‘Reprisal’ is hitting Australian screens, perhaps serving as the perfect self-isolation viewing, she suggested.
Making a big departure from her ‘Suits’ and ‘Timeless’ characters, she plays Doris, a woman seeking revenge against her brother and his gang.
“I’m blonde on the show, I don’t look like me or sound like me. It was a little bit more of a physical process finding the character and then putting her on and taking her off every day,” she said.
As for her character’s intentions, she added, “Doris is a creation, she was basically left for dead by these evil men in her life.
“She was standing up to them in their small, little world and instead of listening to her, they tried to take her down but she didn’t die. And so years later where the story picks up is she decides to take back what was taken from her.”
While she may be binge watching her own favourite shows like Zoe Kravitz’s ‘High Fidelity’, Abigail said she’s also tried to decrease the amount of time she’s staring at a screen.
“I think too it’s a lot of screen time and I have an 11-year-old son so for me, it’s making sure I still disconnect,” she said. “Even though we’re not going places, there’s still a lot of screen time, a lot of looking at screens so I think it’s important to turn them off for parts of the day as well.”
Reprisal premieres at 8:30pm Wednesday 22 April on SBS and SBS On Demand.