For Coolidge, the symptoms of motion sickness — namely nausea and dizziness — helped set the tone for his somewhat bizarre and unsettling death scene in Season 2. After all, filming on a boat had a lot of upsides that, well, just had to be taken advantage of, both from an acting and a production perspective. “There’s nothing more vulnerable than being on a boat with a group of people who don’t want you to survive,” Coolidge told THR. “If we had shot it on a soundstage, it wouldn’t have been the same, because I didn’t even have to imagine much. I already felt vulnerable.”
Knowing that Coolidge suffers from motion sickness – something that I, your writer friend, also suffer from – adds a whole new layer of skill and intelligence to his performance in Tanya’s pivotal death scene in Season 2. It takes a lot to put those feelings at bay to get into a character’s headspace, but it takes a whole set of distinct skills to actually to use the unpleasant forces that seem to invade when motion sickness takes over and turn them into a performance. Not to say that Coolidge is acting sick on the boat, but knowing that she was actually somewhat uncomfortable during filming really brings out the feeling of a woman on edge, which she was probably into. some extent because of his condition. Acting is a really messy skill set and it’s amazing how different performers bend and shape it to their liking. There’s a reason Coolidge is simply sublime.