No one really knows her name just yet, or recognizes her face, so actress Sarah Pidgeon and I walk like two friends recording a “Spend a Day in New York City’s West Village With Me” TikTok. We duck into a basement-level crafts store where she holds up different colors of yarn to her face for a scarf she hopes to make. I offer suggestions that seem to match her bright-blue eyes. When two shopkeepers chime in, she goes with their advice and lands on a steely gray.
We continue our easy stroll up picturesque Hudson Street, where November leaves fall in slow motion like paid extras, and we eventually sit down at Anton’s, a wine bar and café, where the head waiter does know Sarah by name (she’s a regular) and who interrupts our meal three times with reminders to eat the bread. Pidgeon and I chit-chat about where she grew up (Birmingham, Michigan, a Detroit suburb); her first adult pet (Tinky-Winky, a kitten that now lives with her mom in Ann Arbor because filming got too busy); her recommendations as an Anton’s aficionado (definitely one of the pastas). It’s all so normal that I almost don’t want to draw attention to why we’re really here: the project with the potential to blow up Pidgeon’s entire spot.
