Actress Shawkat doesn’t fit mold
Alia Shawkat swears the baby grand piano in her living room isn’t for show, just as the paint splatters on her orange corduroy jeans aren’t a fashion statement. She’s a classically trained pianist who’s learning to play jazz and a selftaught artist who shows her work at small galleries in Los Angeles and New York.
“They’re not props, but I understand why people might think they are,” she says and laughs. “I was a child actor. I’m on a (sitcom). We’re in Hollywood. It all must be for effect.”
Normally, yes. But Shawkat, 28, who got her start as Maeby Funke on the beloved Fox show “Arrested Development” and is now the star of TBS’ sleeper hit “Search Party,” didn’t forge her career by acting like, well, an actor.
Shawkat and her “Search Party” character, Dory, often appear reticent to draw attention to themselves, even if both stand out with their dramatic black, curly hair, intense gaze and smattering of freckles. Neither fit the traditional mold for a showstopping star or character. But that’s Shawkat’s charm — turning the awkward and understated into memorable characters that rise above the fray.
“There’s always a new wave of starlets or a new type of ‘It’ girl they want to represent, and I wasn’t either of those,” Shawkat says of her early introduction to acting with a role on “Arrested Development” at age 14. “I was cute, but not that typical pretty, straight hair, skinny thing. I was a little different. Now that’s all the rage. It’s almost commoditized: ‘You’re different. We love that!’ ”
Thanks to TV’s embrace of weird, “Search Party” has found its niche as a slow-growing mystery comedy for disaffected millennials and jaded Nancy Drew fans. The half-hour series is in its second season.
The show, with a cast of relative unknowns, follows four self-centered friends through New York City and up the East Coast as they try to solve the mystery of a missing woman.
Dory leads the charge, which we learn is entirely uncharacteristic for the recent college grad whose aimlessness is topped only by her ability to remain practically invisible in plain sight. No wonder she’s bent on finding a woman no one else seems to remember even existed at their old college.
She’s flanked by her pragmatically boring boyfriend, Drew (John Reynolds), and her narcissistic friends Elliott (John Early) and Portia (Meredith Hagner). The friends, who are all more familiar with martinis than magnifying glasses, each add a level of dysfunctional hilarity to the mix.
“The show is making fun of millennials in a very specific way,” says Shawkat, sitting in the living room of her Hollywood Hills home. On the far wall hangs an oil painting of the “Search Party” four, done in the style of an old Nancy Drew book cover. “The characters are unlikable, but you end up caring about them because you begin to see why they are who they are. There is more to them than what you first see, or don’t see.”
A role like Dory wasn’t easy to find, says Shawkat, who was disillusioned by the parts available to her after “Arrested Development” was canceled by Fox in 2006 when she was 18. She struggled to make the transition from child actor to an adult with nuanced roles.
Her career kicked into gear when she co-starred in the immigrant tale “Amreeka,” then with Ellen Page in “Whip It,” and in more indie films and critically acclaimed projects before “Search Party” came along.
She was a bit surprised when the show got picked up.
“I had low expectations because everything I think is good doesn’t get the right attention,” Shawkat says. “The pilot was so great, I was worried. But it’s grown really naturally.”