Inside Job is Netflix's latest venture into animation. The show is filled with all of the essentials required to make a solid adult animation series: recognizable voice actors, conspiracy theories, and dysfunctional humor.
Playing the antisocial tech genius Reagan Ridley is the renowned actor Lizzy Caplan, best known for playing Janis Ian in Mean Girls and Annie Wilkes in Hulu's Castle Rock. Describing her character, Caplan exclusively shared with us, "Reagan Ridley is a genius, a tech genius. She works at Cognito Inc, which is basically the shadow government and she's very ambitious. She wants to climb to the top of the corporate ladder in the shadow government."
Gushing about her character, Caplan added, "She deserves to be at the top of the corporate ladder. She's the smartest one in every room, but unfortunately, her people skills are not so great. She's very impatient with other humans and I guess other non-humans as well. She's easily frustrated and easily flustered." Nonetheless, Caplan's fondness for Reagan, her first lead role in an animated series, rung true throughout our conversation. She continued to share, "She's got some character defects to work on. But she's a totally wonderful, exciting genius who in my mind is actually kind of perfect. I love her."
Throughout the first episode, it's obvious that Reagan has many complications in her life. She has a volatile relationship with her alcoholic father Rand Ridley, voiced by actor Christian Slater, and an enemies-turned-friend relationship with her coworker Brett Hand (Clark Duke). But despite that, Reagan's pure intentions shine throughout the series, she simply wants validation for her hard work and for her coworkers to take her seriously. Caplan continued to tell Game Rant about how she relates with Reagan and all of her chaotic goodness. She expressed, "Unfortunately, yes, there are many things that I can relate to with Reagan. I, too, could stand to take a deep breath before reacting."
Game Rant: Your character makes many key observations about the patriarchy and white privilege throughout the series. What was your reaction when you first read the script?
Lizzy Caplan: I immediately liked it. I'll be honest, I'm not educated enough in the animated realm to know if there's been another character like this played by a woman, but it felt really fresh to me. I find that I'm constantly looking for that type of material in the live-action world. For it to be in the animated world does feel sort of groundbreaking and new, at least from my very limited animated knowledge.
You've starred in many major projects, I'm thinking Freaks & Geeks, Mean Girls, and Castle Rock. What's the biggest lesson you learned towards the beginning of your acting career that you continue to apply to your roles today?
I think one of the things that took me a minute to learn and I wish that I had known then is that you really are just a member of a very vast team. I didn't really need to learn the lessons of, you know, being nice to people and treating crew members with the same amount of respect that you're treated with. That one seemed obvious to me from the beginning.
One thing that took me years to learn was that no matter how hard you work on your little "piece of the pie" in a project, you really are just one piece of a much larger machine. You have to be zen about the finished product, because you really have very little control, especially as an actor.
What was it like recording Inside Job? Did you record from your own at-home studio or were you able to meet with your cast members and build that chemistry in person?
I got a little bit of everything on this one because of shutdowns and crazy scheduling. It started off in what I imagine to be a more traditional way. We were able to have table reads together and we actually got to be around each other in the flesh. The producers and director would be in the studio with us giving notes, and we would just be in our booth and then that morphed into something else.
I would leave town and I would be doing it remotely. I'm in London now, but I would be doing it remotely from LA in a recording booth. I was able to do that all through COVID, which was amazing. They set it up so that it was a very safe environment. Just to be able to do any work during that time was wonderful.
Then I went back to Los Angeles and my recording booth, as you generously called it, would be my closet, stuffed with a bunch of towels to try to mute the sound. And the lights were off because the lights made noise. So, just a dark little cave in my room. We did every version of it and the fact that it's possible to create this part of the show anywhere under any circumstance was exciting. I found it really refreshing.
Yeah, that's awesome. It always amazes me to hear about the at-home recording process and how all those bits get put together and then thrown onto Netflix.
I know some people have really great studios in their homes. That is not my reality. Maybe if this show goes many seasons, I'll invest in something that isn't my closet.
What was your audition process like? Were you scouted for this role?
I was sent the scripts and then I had a conversation with Shion Takeuchi [creator] and I choose to believe her when she says that she wanted me to do it from the beginning. I wanted to do it as soon as I read it, so it was a very seamless, easy process. I'm very glad I did, mainly because I think she owned it. She's an incredible showrunner and I'm so happy I get to work with her.
Where did you look for inspiration to play this role?
I feel like I've been plopped down into this world that I have no real business being in. I'm not a huge animation junkie at all. To me. I just read it as if it were any job. I mean, I can't even think of the one show that I'm watching now: The contemporary animated show Rick and Morty.
It feels like there's that. I know some people think that this is reminiscent of that. And I think it's very different, but I think that if you liked that one, you'll probably like this one a lot.
That's what I was thinking. It's definitely a different territory, but I think it could have a very similar audience, which is exciting because Rick and Morty has blown up to be such a huge, cultural phenomenon.
There's something about animated shows that make people very passionate about them. The fans of them are very, very passionate and that's exciting. My husband told me that people get tattoos of animated characters. I look forward to seeing a tattoo of me, that would be iconic.
Where do you see yourself going from here? Now that you've explored this newer passion into the animation world, do you see yourself leaning more towards those roles?
I don't ever see a reason why you'd have to give one up for the other. But yeah, the more animated stuff I can do coming off of this, I would be very happy to do it. It's like a whole different side of this job, so it's exciting.
To wrap up our conversation, what was the most enjoyable part about voicing Reagan?
I just finally watched some of the completed episodes. It takes so long to get one of these episodes out, especially our circumstances recording it in a bubble — hearing like bits and pieces of other people's dialogue to kind of cue you every once in a while and seeing a little rough animation — but seeing it all put together, it was just incredible to me.
It really works so well. And again, because this is sort of a newer world for me, I'm just amazed that it's possible that you take all of these, you know, different bits and pieces, and you can create something that feels so cohesive.
Inside Job is currently streaming on Netflix.