With Marty Supreme, Odessa A’zion Proves She’s in a League of Her Own

You have a starring role in Marty Supreme, Josh Safdie’s upcoming film about a table tennis champion named Marty Mauser, played by Timothée Chalamet. What drew you to the script?

I could see the character that Safdie wrote so clearly in my mind. The script was long, but I never got bored reading it. The story is about having—not to sound cheesy—a dream, feeling like you’re destined for something, and executing that, not letting anybody or anything get in your way.

Was there anything about working with Safdie that surprised you?

My mantra is: “I want a director to work with me, not on me.” That’s exactly what he does. It feels like a full collaboration. I don’t take anything too seriously. It was fun doing serious scenes with him and fucking around between takes, because that helps me. If you’re like, “Okay, get in the mindset,” I’m like, “Shut the fuck up,” because that doesn’t work on me. Let’s just do it when you say “Action.” On my first day, for my first scene, it was already chaotic as fuck—as you would imagine a Safdie movie set would be. We were filming outside on Orchard Street, in New York, and there were so many people watching and taking pictures. I’m like, “Are we going to block it? Do you want to rehearse?” Safdie runs past me with the monitor, and he’s like, “What? No, we don’t block here,” and just kept running. Honestly, I love that. I don’t want to practice it—it takes away from the real moment.

What was it like acting with Chalamet?

He was on my list of top-five actors I would love to work with. We’re very different actors, which I think worked for the movie. He was a scene partner that I felt understood the fuck out of the assignment, knew how to do improv when we needed to improv, let me challenge him, and challenged me back. He had a fuck-ton of dialogue. He took it very seriously. I’m like, Maybe I should take things a little more seriously, because it helps.

You’ve acted in a range of projects, from the horror movie Hellraiser to the Netflix drama Grand Army. Is filming a horror movie a very different process from working on, say, Marty Supreme?

Working on a horror film is the most stressful thing in the world. It’s months of night shoots where you’re barely seeing any sunlight. Everybody’s exhausted; everybody’s stressed out. There’s always some blood-rig malfunction. Most of the time, you’re working 16 hours a day. It’s emotionally exhausting too. In real life, if you cry for 10 minutes, you have a headache for a few hours after that. Imagine crying in almost every scene, every day. It really takes a toll on your body. So I would like to not do another horror movie for a long time—unless it’s with the guys who made Bring Her Back or Barbarian.

You co-star in I Love LA, the upcoming HBO comedy written by and starring Rachel Sennott. The series follows a group of 20-somethings who reunite after years apart and features Josh Hutcherson, Jordan Firstman, and True Whitaker. What was shooting it like?

That cast chemistry is one of the best I've ever worked with. Everybody on the set was a fucking comedic genius, knew their characters so well, and knew how to do comedic improv as their character. In a cast, there's always some kind of something going on. Not with that cast.

Do you get nervous starting a new project?

When I started working, my heart would be racing: Am I doing the right thing? Who should I be looking at or talking to? But the more you do it, it’s just going to work every day. But, bitch, I was so goddamn anxious my first day on the set of Marty Supreme. There were so many people taking pictures. I can’t even have a still photographer who’s working with the set taking pictures because that’ll throw me. I get too distracted.

Who was the first person in your life who made you realize that you could break the rules?

I was definitely a rule breaker. I ran away when I was 15 and couch-surfed. Maybe it was one of my elementary school friends. I remember one time we climbed the fence to ditch class. The teachers found out and, the next day, applied those plastic sheets on the fence grooves so you couldn’t climb them. I was like, Okay, motherfuckers.

Where in the world are you happiest?

I’m an island girl. I love being around umbrella plants, palm trees, and anywhere I can watch the sunset. I would also like to be with all of my junk that I’ve collected, so I can sit down and finally scrapbook. I have everything organized in folders, but I never have time to do it—and I want to do it so bad!

Photo Assistant: JORDAN ZUPPA; Fashion Assistant: TOri López; Tailor: Lindsay Wright.