Carla Gugino is one of those actresses you’ve probably seen around a bunch. Maybe in Spy Kids, if you’re on a nostalgia kick. Maybe in Gerald’s Game, if you’re a Stephen King deep cut aficionado. Maybe in San Andreas, if you watch every The Rock movie, regardless of quality. You would recognize her if you saw her (she’s on the far left). But you may not be acutely aware that she’s making some of the most interesting television out there right now. Her filmography is eclectic, eccentric, schizophrenic. Sometimes she’s in weird art house projects (Sin City) and sometimes she’s in Chicago Hope. All this contributes to a sense that she’s hard to pin down as an actress, hard to know where to expect her to be. But in the end, I think it’s easy to weed out the more commercially lucrative but ultimately just sort of fine (and sometimes bad) roles. When you do that, you’re left with a handful of fascinating, odd gems centered around two ongoing collaborations.
Things Directed by Mike Flanagan (Netflix): One of Gugino’s most fruitful collaborations has been with director Mike Flanagan. Flanagan deserves his own post one of these days, as he is making some of the most interesting psychological horror out there right, and his collaborations with Gugino have consistently been great. He worked with her on Gerald’s Game, long thought to be an unfilmable novel (so even trying it was a huge swing, but it also succeeds so, good job Mike). In that movie, she is tied to a bed for most of the runtime, so there’s nothing to do but act your ass off. But Flanagan’s more recent shows for Netflix have also made use of Gugino, casting her in both The Haunting of Hill House, which is a loose adaptation of Shirley Jackson’s 1959 novel, and The Haunting of Bly Manor, which is a loose adaptation of Henry James’ 1898 novella The Turn of the Screw. Soon, she will also star in Flanagan’s third installment in the Haunting series, an adaptation of Edgar Allen Poe’s 1839 short story The Fall of the House of Usher. These are set up as an anthology series, using many of the same actors to tell different classic psychological horror stories. Flanagan uses Gugino as basically a narrator figure in these, allowing her to hover in the background, her distinctive voice guiding us through the story. They’re hugely ambitious shows, as is Midnight Mass, another recent Flanagan/Gugino collab for Netflix. Flanagan is taking old stories that have frightened us for generations and giving them new life, using them as vehicles to explore trauma and grief. He updates the lexicon of these stories for a more therapy-friendly age, but keeps them frightening and effective. Gugino shines with this kind of material, and if you like psychological horror with a curl up with a good scary book vibe, these are for you.
Things Directed by Sebastián Gutiérrez (Jett (Cinemax) and Leopard Skin (Peacock)): My favorite Gugino, though, is this Gugino: the one making weird sexy shows that no one is watching (but you should be!). The Flanagan collab has produced a lot of interesting content that people are watching, but the collab I prefer even above that is with Sebastián Gutiérrez, who is also Gugino’s partner. I am sure there are people in this world watching Women in Trouble or Judas Kiss but unfortunately what he’s probably most commercially known for is writing the screenplay for Snakes on a Plane. Gugino is the main woman in most of his work and he writes the hell out of her parts. Leopard Skin is about four women who end up trapped in a beach house by some diamond thieves on the run from their murderous boss (Jeffrey Dean Morgan). It’s sexy, very funny, clever, and puzzling. Jett is a noir about an ace thief being forced to use her skills for people she doesn’t respect. Both shows are marked by a wonderful lack of exposition. They drop you into the action, refusing to hold your hand through an expository first episode, and ask you to figure out what’s going on by using your brain. You cannot watch either of these shows with a phone in your hand; they are not background noise. If you like shows that respect your intelligence, have a lot of gorgeous and respectfully-filmed nudity, and drip with dry humor, these are for you.