Olivia Thirlby just added a mighty exciting title to her filmography, and it was a title that was a bit unexpected for her. It’s FX’s Y: The Last Man.
Based on the DC Comics’ series from Brian K. Vaughan and Pia Guerra, the show traverses a post-apocalyptic world in which a cataclysmic event decimates every mammal with a Y chromosome but for one cisgender man and his pet monkey. With the world in disarray, survivors struggle with their efforts to restore what was lost and the opportunity to build something better. For Olivia Thirlby’s character, Yorick’s sister Hero Brown, that means doing what she can to keep herself and her best friend Sam (Elliot Fletcher) safe while juggling the sting of the rift between her and her mother (Diane Lane) and also the weight of a very traumatic pre-event experience.
With Y: The Last Man now well into its Season 1 run, Thirlby took the time to join us for an episode of Collider Ladies Night. Given how much she’s accomplished over the years, there was a lot to cover including her experience making her first feature, The Secret, working with a Diablo Cody script on Juno and addressing the continuing sequel enthusiasm for Dredd. But ultimately we hit a point where it became necessary to compare her past casting experiences with how everything played out on Y: The Last Man. She began:
“Without a global pandemic I probably wouldn’t have been in Y: The Last Man because they were gearing up to film with a slightly different cast in March of 2020 when it feel apart. So the reason that I got to come on board was because that had happened. And the casting process was interesting for it because it happened so quickly. And sometimes things like that do, but this was something that came into my field and then a few weeks later, my whole life was kind of turning upside-down as I was moving to Toronto to shoot this job.”
It wasn’t just about booking a new gig for Thirlby; it was about booking a job amidst significant confusion regarding the future of film and television production. Here’s how she put it:
“It also came at a time when I wasn’t certain what the film industry looked like anymore. I didn’t know if there would ever be more jobs. It came really out of nowhere and so I think there was part of it there too that was surprising because I had doubts about whether I would be working at all again ever. [Laughs] And then I was!”
When it came time to start working on the character, Thirlby insisted it wasn’t difficult to find the appropriate balance between respecting the source material and making the character her own for the show. Here’s why:
“It was actually pretty easy because I think that the version of Hero that Eliza Clark created was already very expanded upon, compared to in the source material. So in the comic books, pretty much the first time we meet Hero, or the second time we meet Hero, it’s the first time post-event. She’s already in the Amazons and we never get the story of what happened to her to get her there. And in Y: The Last Man the TV show, pretty much the entire first season is spent exploring a journey that doesn’t exist in the comics. So the foundation of who Hero is is absolutely laid in the comics, but the depth of her story arc exists independently of the comics. So it was really fun to read the comics because they’re amazing and I loved getting a sense of what we were trying to capture and the scope of the world and the scope of the story while I was reading them. And I also loved knowing that the story that I was gonna get to tell was fleshed out and human in a way that goes beyond what the comics laid down.”
Eager to hear more from Thirlby? Be sure to check out her episode of Collider Ladies Night at the top of this article or catch the uncut version of the conversation in podcast form below. There’s loads more about the beginnings of Y: The Last Man, Thirlby’s thoughts on a significant scene in Episode 6, how she booked her very first roles, what could be next for Anderson if we do indeed get a Dredd sequel and so much more.
FX’s Y: The Last Man is now streaming exclusively #FXonHulu.
This article is sponsored content presented by FX's Y: The Last Man. FX is a trademark of The Walt Disney Company.