‘Ponies’ Star Haley Lu Richardson Has “Always Been Partial To The Underdog” & Has Thoughts On Who Should Be U.S…

“Destined” may be a dramatic adjective to use about a casting, but it seems apt for describing Haley Lu Richardson’s close personal affinity for Twila, the spunky and charmingly idiosyncratic secretary-turned-CIA operative in Peacock’s Ponies. In the show, Richardson stars opposite Emilia Clarke’s by-the-book, Type A character of Bea. To get into 1970s Moscow spy mode as Twila, Richardson joined forces on a thrifting expedition with costume designer Anastasia Magoutas. Here, she talks passionately about finding her unapologetic and “uninhibited” character, why a woman should be U.S. president and her love for Heated Rivalry.

DEADLINE: What was most rewarding when collaborating with hair, makeup and costuming for Ponies?

HALEY LU RICHARDSON: Collaborating is one of my favorite things about what I do. I feel like it’s how I learn and get better and get inspired and really find the deepest, most interesting, specific things about different humans that I try to embody and really bring to life. With Twila, particularly, she’s a really specific, wild, one-of-a-kind, uninhibited woman, so there was a lot of places that we could have gone with her, but we really wanted to make everything intentional and feel really informative of the woman she is and this journey that she’s on.

Anastasia [Magoutas], the costume designer, was super collaborative and down to actually have so much fun figuring out this woman. And we went thrifting together. On our first phone call, she found a perfect pair of cowboy boots with butterflies and flames, and we ordered them on that call. So, it was kind of like that the whole time.

DEADLINE: You previously said you couldn’t have played this character six months beforehand, due to your own personal evolution. How did the similarities between you and Twila inform your process, if at all?

RICHARDSON: Often, I feel like I’m trying to search to find the one or handful of core things — or a feeling I felt before, an experience I have, or someone I’ve met — that really connects me to a character I’m embodying. But with Twila, I was like, ‘Oh my gosh, there’s actually so many deep personality and core parallels, it’ll be so fun and freeing to express that through this woman.’ But also, I don’t just want to be fully playing myself. I was actively finding ways we’re different.

The big thing for me was the way she talks. I think that I also have a slightly unrefined, weird way of enunciating and speaking, but I wanted hers to be very different and really unrefined, but with a weird confidence to it. Her voice, her accent, her way of speaking, and then her mannerisms, the way she sat. I feel like she’s maybe a bit more masculine than me. So, I had fun with that, man-spreading everywhere.

DEADLINE: How does Twila’s speech — and in particular her accent — inform the front that she puts on?

RICHARDSON: The psychology behind it that [dialect coach] Christine Grace Szarko and I talked about at length was: She does carry a lot of shame and regret, and she is very vulnerable, but vulnerability takes strength, in a way. And she’s had to really suppress that part of herself because of her upbringing and her 10-year horrible marriage — RIP. I think she’s deeply aware that she’s unrefined, and maybe some people would look down upon that, but she almost plays it up — her unrefined, uneducated, smalltown-ness. She plays it up and throws it in people’s faces so that they can’t bring her down first, because she’s so unapologetically, loudly all of these things that people could judge. But I do think, also — and this is something I deeply related to — it’s not all just a front. She really is a confident, unapologetic, bold person.

DEADLINE: David Iserson and Susanna Fogel have talked about how other actors might have played Twila as more one-dimensional, but her grief grounds her to someone real. Bea and Twila are positioned as opposites, but by the end they learn from each other. How do you feel they both change each other?

RICHARDSON: First, before I answer the actual real question you were asking, I can’t imagine someone playing Twila that wasn’t me, because I was born to play her. I’ve never felt that about a character before; I was just like, I have to play this woman, there’s no other choice.

There’s so much deeply festering inside of her that is bursting to come out, and I felt that from that first argument with her husband — you can tell just how shaming of a relationship that is, and she’s biting, and she’s mean, and she fights back.

It’s just really so beautiful that within this whole crazy spy world, it’s really about the story of these two women and their friendship and them being seen in a safe space by a female friend for the first time, really ever in their life.

We need to make a woman the president, and all the problems will go away. You can quote me on that.

DEADLINE: What did you take away from the show in terms of women in positions of power and working within a system that might not allow them to be who they are?

RICHARDSON: Gosh, isn’t that crazy that that’s still a thing? It’s still something we’re, like, trying to beat over people’s heads. I’ve always been partial to the underdog, because I feel that it’s actually within the unexpected that the most success can happen. I’m thinking of the same actors we see all the time in these big roles, but what’s more exciting is when Heated Rivalry comes out.

DEADLINE: I love that you mentioned this. I was literally going to bring it up.

RICHARDSON: Hudson [Williams] and Connor [Storrie]. It’s like, who are these guys? But they’re the best. Sometimes you gotta bet on some unexpected person that hasn’t been proven. And that’s what we need to do as a society with women. We need to make a woman the president, and all the problems will go away. You can quote me on that.

My childhood friend’s dad told me once that every strength overplayed is a weakness, and that means that every weakness is born in a strength. You look at Twila and Bea and they just look like a bunch of weaknesses, but the specificity that only they could bring as women are actually what make them, in the end, get as far as they do. And hopefully in Season 2, we’ll continue.

DEADLINE: Have you heard anything about Season 2?

RICHARDSON: I was just at this NBCUniversal luncheon, and I cornered [NBC production executives] and I was like, “Just letting you know, every time the show is mentioned, I knock on wood that there’s a Season 2.” And I just stared at her unblinking. And she just smiled and nodded, so I don’t know what that means. I would be really sad to leave Twila.

DEADLINE: We also see Twila embark on a romance with Ivanna (Lili Walters). Knowing that Tom held her infertility against her, how do you see Twila coming into her own in terms of her sexuality outside of all these rigid tabooed boxes of womanhood?

RICHARDSON: The love already died a long time ago [in her marriage]. She has been moving through the world as this independent woman, and there’s a hardness to that that’s obviously not widely acceptable and beloved. But now, throughout the season, she is allowed to explore her softness, she’s allowed to, with Bea and with herself and with Ivanna, explore her real desires and vulnerability and softness in an honest way that transcends gender and what a woman is supposed to be.

DEADLINE: You shot on location in Budapest for six months. There were long shoots; you and Emilia got sick a bunch of times. Despite those challenges, what did you find most gratifying?

RICHARDSON: It was extremely healing and freeing. I turned 30 in Budapest while playing this woman who was going through this big transformation and release and time in her life, like I was going through, so that was cool.

Sometimes I just blacked out, and then I’d be like, ‘Wait, did we film the scene?’ And the AD would be like, ‘Barely,’ but we just laughed a lot. It was a really good group of people.

DEADLINE: What are some valuable lessons you learned from Twila?

RICHARDSON: I feel like I’ve played a lot of Type-A characters that are more quiet, that I’ve had to actively — not in a bad way — make myself smaller or less animated or less loud. It was just so validating and freeing to be able to go to work and play this woman that I loved. In trying to love Twila, I saw things in her that I’ve carried shame about in myself. But through loving her — I’m gonna start crying — I was like, wait, I’m like that too. I can love that about me, and I don’t have to be embarrassed or cringed out at the end of the night because I said some inappropriate joke, and no one laughed. I love when Twila does that. I can be nicer to myself.

It gave me an opportunity as an actor to be able to be more free and bring myself and my true instincts to things. I felt like I could switch things up and fail and look dumb, or try something different, and really be present.