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How Natasha Lyonne and Lizzi Bougatsos Became Best Friends
Fifteen years after the wild child days that made them famous, the actress and the musician find themselves sharing something entirely new: maturity. (Sort of.)
Natasha Lyonne, the 39-year-old actress best known for her Emmy-nominated role as Nicky Nichols on the Netflix hit “Orange Is the New Black,” has been friends with Lizzi Bougatsos, the 44-year-old lead singer of the experimental art-rock band Gang Gang Dance, since, well … they’re not sure, exactly. Sometime in the early 2000s, they were introduced, almost definitely by their mutual best friend, the actress Chloë Sevigny — on this point they agree. Not long afterward, they moved in together with other friends in a townhouse on 18th Street in Manhattan, and since then, they say they’ve shared everything from opera box seats to late-night visits to a 24-hour spa in Koreatown. (For her birthday, Lyonne insisted Bougatsos get something called a “gyno spa cure” there.)
Almost two decades of friendship later, 2018 is an auspicious year for both women. Last week, Gang Gang Dance released “Kazuashita,” its sixth full-length record and first after a seven-year hiatus. And Bougatsos has, in recent years, turned to acting, including in the experimental music mockumentary “Tour Without End,” which came out in April. She’s gotten more involved in activism, too, especially after her self-confessed heartbreak when Bernie Sanders, for whom she rallied, didn’t win the 2016 Democratic primary. “J-TREE,” the opening song on “Kazuashita,” features a sample by Shiyé Bidziil, a member of the Standing Rock Sioux Tribe, which gained prominence after its protests of the Dakota Access Pipeline; Bougatsos also said she’s particularly inspired by the Poor People’s Campaign, a group of anti-poverty activists led by the Rev. Dr. William Barber II.
Meanwhile, the sixth season of “Orange Is the New Black” is out next month, with a seventh already on order. Lyonne is juggling her longstanding role in that show with a brand new one in a coming Netflix series called “Russian Doll.” She stars in the show, and also cocreated, wrote and executive-produced it alongside Amy Poehler and Leslye Headland. (Lyonne was tight-lipped about the details, but did offer that it’s a sort of “existential adventure show.”)
On a recent summer afternoon, Lyonne and Bougatsos spent about an hour and a half on the phone, reminiscing and reflecting — and, mostly, cracking each other up.
Natasha Lyonne: I don’t remember how we first met. Do you?
Lizzi Bougatsos: No. Was it during the blackout? I feel like it was before you moved in, because you always tell everybody this story of how we met at the blackout [in New York City, in 2003], and you were shooting hoops or something. Basically, we met through Chloë [Sevigny], right?
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