Emmy-winning actress Alex Borstein has serious comedy chops on display in her new comedy special, “Corsets and Clown Suits,” not to mention her acclaimed role in “The Marvelous Mrs. Maisel,” both on Amazon.
Not one to stay idle, Borstein has also been hard at work developing a screenplay she wrote while listening to the Australian folktronica singer/songwriter Sophie Payten, professionally known as Gordi, on repeat. Gordi’s 2017 debut LP Reservoir was Borstein’s companion while she wrote, and she and Gordi even became friends through the process.
More: Actress Alex Borstein on “Corsets and Clown Suits”
This segment has been edited for length and clarity.
It's one of those things [where] music hits you at a certain time and it just kind of becomes a part of you. It starts running through your veins, and I spent a lot of time writing to [Gordi’s Reservoir] album, particularly [to] this song called “Long Way.” It really helped inspire a script that I wrote, a feature that I'm currently trying to get off the ground.
That was a huge inspiration. I'm a creature of habit: I play things over and over and over.
[Gordi and I] became “friends” during the lockdown. I think I tagged something and mentioned I liked her, and she's like, “Oh my God!” I said, “If you ever need a backup dancer or something silly…” Then she had a new album come out, and she asked me to make a video in my own apartment in Barcelona, and so my little piece is part of her music video for a song called “Unready.”
I love her work and was so lucky then to get to sit down with her in New York at some point and tell her – I don't know if she believed me.
Music, to me is… I can't write without it. It's like breathing and walking. And this was coursing through my veins, kind of came out through the computer, and hopefully you'll get to see on the screen what it inspired.
When my film is finally done, I do want her music to be sprinkled throughout it, because it's gotta be. It's such a part of it.