The Netflix drama series Ozark is about Chicago financial advisor Marty Byrde (Jason Bateman, who also executive produced the series and directed four episodes), who has been quietly laundering money with his business partner Bruce (Josh Randall) for a drug kingpin (Esai Morales) working for a cartel. After discovering that $8 million of the money is missing, Marty finds himself having to move his family to The Ozarks, where he must find new ways to get the money laundered, in order to save the lives of his wife (Laura Linney) and children (Sofia Hublitz and Skylar Gaertner), all while avoiding the FBI.
During this 1-on-1 phone interview with Collider, actress Laura Linney talked about what attracted her to Ozark, the potential she saw in the character of Wendy, what she found most exhilarating about the shoot, whether she sees Wendy as an active participant in all of the criminal activity, why it took something so drastic to bring this family together, what Jason Bateman was like as a director, her hope to return for a possible Season 2, and what she looks for in a project.
Collider: How did Ozark come about for you, and what was it that made you decide to sign on? Could you see all of the potential in this character?
LAURA LINNEY: Yeah. When I got the script and read the script, you could see the potential not only for the character of Wendy, but for the narrative, as well. It just had tremendous potential. That was obvious, right off the bat. I wasn’t looking to do a series, but I’ve always really, really admired Jason [Bateman]. I’d met him a few times, socially, and I’d always really liked him. I’d always suspected and inherently known that he had a much larger range than he’s been able to explore, so I was just very excited for him, that he was going to let himself venture into another genre. I’m at the point in my life where I basically make decisions based on the people, and people that I want to spend my time with. I thought about it for awhile and I talked to my husband about it, and then I just thought, “Why not?” It was a very good decision to make. The whole company was wonderful and the production was wonderful. I really feel like I fell into a pot of honey. It was really fun.
Were there specific things that you got to do in this woman’s shoes that you hadn’t done before, that you found particularly exciting or scary?
LINNEY: I think it was all the stuff on the water, driving boats, and the real outdoor life that these people now have, after living in a place like Chicago where half of the year, you’re forced to hide. The fact that they’re outside all the time, and they’re on water as opposed to being on land, it’s liberating in ways, but also frightening to them. I’m a New York City kid, so I haven’t spent a lot of time on large bodies of water. I found it really exhilarating.
Marty is an interesting guy who initially was guilty by association, but in convincing the drug cartel to spare his life, he becomes a top money launderer. Do you see him as a criminal, or is he just a guy in a really bad situation that seems to just keep getting worse?
LINNEY: Well, his choices are criminal in nature, so if you do something that’s criminal, you’re a criminal. But I think he’s self-justified it, as a lot of people do. Because he’s so removed from the actual hands-on dealing of the drugs, as far as he’s concerned, he’s just crunching some numbers for a client. The numbers just happened to be crunched for a drug control. So, is he involved in that or is he not? I think that’s where people get into a lot of trouble. There is something about big business that deals with a lot of money, that gives you permission to make very shady ethical decisions and to behave very badly. Business is business. For some reason, it allows you to behave very, very badly. It’s justified because it’s under the umbrella of, “I’m just making a living.”
And that trickles down to his wife and kids. Did you see Wendy as an active participant in all of this?
LINNEY: She’s certainly involved. She allows it. She’s not totally innocent, but it’s completely justified. You’re dealing with ethics on a very interesting level. It’s ethics in America and ethics in dealing with money. What do you put aside ethically, in order to survive? In a country where everything is based on money or success, your only reward is if you have money or you’re making money. Money is success in this country. What does that do to you? What does that do to the small decisions you make throughout the day?
Because we meet Marty and Wendy when their relationship is not on the best of terms, did you ever wonder why she hadn’t just left him, prior to that, or do you think she was getting close to doing that?
LINNEY: I think she stayed for the reason that many people stay together. They’ve invested a lot of time, they’ve created a home, they have children, and to disrupt that is a very, very big thing. I think a lot of people just coast and keep themselves occupied in whatever way they can, whether that’s having an affair or just doing what they do.
Why do you think it took something like what this family is going through to actually bring them closer together?
LINNEY: Because I think they’re shocked into having to deal. They have to deal. These are four people who actually don’t know each other very well and they don’t know themselves very well. There’s something that happens when you’re not sharing experiences with someone and you’re just functioning. It’s all about getting things done and checking off a list. You’re not actually living together. And I think a lot of families fall into that pattern. There’s so much to do and so little time to do it. How can you spend time doing that when you have to go make money? It’s systemic in a lot of households. People stop living and they just start functioning, and then they grow apart because of that.
How did you find Jason Bateman, as a director?
LINNEY: This is Jason’s show, and we are all just very lucky to be in it, honestly. And he set the tone so beautifully, for the first two episodes, and let us out on the other end with the last two episodes. When someone is as invested as Jason is with this show, it ups the quality, all the way around. Everyone wants it to be good, and everyone wants it to be good for him. He’s a wonderful director. I knew he was going to be a good director, but he just completely blew my expectations out of the water. He was really, really skilled. He has a lifetime of experience working in front of the camera that it just comes to him so easily. He’s great with narrative and he’s great with cinematography. The crew loves him and the cast loves him. He’s doing what he should be doing. It’s always wonderful to be around someone who’s experiencing that.
The way things are left, at the end of this season, there’s some resolution to things with his family, but you also wonder what could come next for them. Are you game to further explore what paths this family could go down next?
LINNEY: I hope we get to. I really do. I had such a wonderful time doing the first season that I hope we get to do it for a long time. We’ll see. We’ll see where it goes. I’m certainly not in on those decisions. I’m not sure. Hopefully, we’ll have a chance to figure that out. It’s just not obvious. We just don’t know. It’s a contemporary show. It’s a show where people are dealing with very contemporary challenges and issues in our culture, at the moment. At least, I hope.
You play such interesting characters and you do such tremendous work. When you play a character like this that is just so great, does it excite you about finding the next one, or does it make you nervous that you won’t find another one that lives up to the last one?
LINNEY: None of us believe that we’re ever going to work again. It’s one of the things with being an actor. It’s always wonderful when you’re given another opportunity, and then hopefully you can find something unique to that character, fulfill it as much as you can, and serve a story. I’m the daughter of a playwright, so for me, it’s always story first and how the character aids and abets the story. You’re responsible, not just to your character, but to everybody else. That’s what I love about what I do. It’s a cooperative effort, with everybody looking in the same direction, hopefully.
Do you always look for something very different from the last thing you did?
LINNEY: No. I wish I was strategic like that. It really is if I read something and I can’t help myself, but I start working on it before I finish reading it. If my mind gets going and my imagination gets turned up and I start working on it before I finish it, then it’s something that I really have to pay attention to, regardless of the medium and regardless of the size of the part. If it starts to come alive in front of you, in a way that just happens spontaneously on its own, that’s something you have to take very seriously.
Have you found that next project yet?
LINNEY: No. I just finished a run on Broadway, so I’m putting my feet up for a bit. It was a good year and a half of solid work, which I loved. I went from The Dinner right into Ozark, and then into The Little Foxes. I’m just going to exhale for a bit, and then hopefully go back to Ozark, if we’re able to.
Ozark is available to stream at Netflix.
