It’s an overcast morning in Los Angeles, and Natasha Lyonne is thinking about heterosexuality. “Having a baby with a guy, getting the picket fence, putting an American flag on the f***in’ front lawn – that’s definitely not my fantasy of winning at life. If that’s what we’re calling ‘straight’, like… f***in’ keep it.” Lyonne has played gay so often and so well, most significantly in the cult conversation camp comedy But I’m a Cheerleader and in the Netflix smash Orange Is the New Black, that today she’s more or less the LGBT community’s favourite straight person. But, Lyonne says, it’s not quite as simple as that.
“I don’t know that I fully identify with the quote-unquote ‘straight’ experience,” she says. Her distinctive rasp is in evidence – imagine the love child of Joe Pesci and a New York City steam grate – but it’s softer since she quit cigarettes earlier this year. “Though I also don’t want to claim anyone else’s experience that I’m not actually living. Like if a hot guy walks through the room… baby, I’m lookin’. So I guess that makes me straight?” Still, her identity is a little more nuanced. “I look at sex more as… ‘hmm, what’s this mischief I can get into?’ I’m in this third category. My sexuality and gender is more like… merry prankster.”
