Margo Martindale has a lot in common with BoJack Horseman's Character Actress Margo Martindale

By
Tyler Aquilina
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Tyler Aquilina
Tyler Aquilina is a former digital writer at Entertainment Weekly. He left EW in 2022.
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Published on October 3, 2020 11:00AM EDT

To certain TV viewers, Margo Martindale will always be known as Character Actress Margo Martindale, after her onscreen counterpart on Netflix's animated series BoJack Horseman. (BoJack parodied many Hollywood stars and celebrities over its six seasons; for instance, the show absolutely eviscerated Jessica Biel, with the actress's approval.) Obviously, the two Martindales share a lot of similarities—including their sense of style—but those similarities go even deeper than you might think.

"What they wrote and who I was, and stuff like that, was so parallel with what I had done," the Mrs. America star says in the latest episode of PeopleTV's Couch Surfing. "[On the show], they said that I had disappeared into regional theater to get out of the limelight. And I had gone to the Old Globe [in San Diego] or La Jolla to do some play, and the play was directed by Craig Noel. Now, I worked with Craig Noel at the Old Globe [in real life], I did go down there."

There were some notable liberties the show took, however. As Martindale notes, "I wasn't nominated for an award down there, but Margo Martindale, Character Actress, was." But also, her animated doppelgänger is a hardbitten criminal... who is also an acclaimed character actress. (As another character says, "She's on the FBI's Most Wanted list! And The A.V. Club's list of 20 actress that always make everything better!") The real-life Martindale wants to be very clear: Art was not imitating life in that regard.

"I wasn't in jail for armed robbery, which was in my Wikipedia after BoJack," the actress says. "So I had to get that taken down, 'Margo Martindale has spent the last year in prison for armed robbery.'" Disappearing into a role can only go so far.

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