Odom Jr., wife star in quarantining miniseries
Leslie Odom Jr.'s Los Angeles kitchen is ready for its close up.
The “Hamilton” star and his wife, actress Nicolette Robinson (“Perfect Couples”), star in Freeform’s miniseries “Love in the Time of Corona,” playing a couple who are finally getting time together in quarantine now that Odom’s character is no longer traveling for work. Odom and Robinson also are executive producers on the show, created by Joanna Johnson (“Good Trouble”).
The fourpart series, which aired Saturday and Sunday then moved to Hulu, tells the interwoven stories of people in quarantine, for the most part featuring actors who have been staying together, including Gil Bellows (“Ally Mcbeal”) and his wife, Rya Kihlstedt (“The Bold Type”), as parents afraid to tell their daughter (Ava Bellows) that they are actually separated.
As to whether what we are seeing of the actors’ lives is actually how they live, well, it’s Hollywood. According to The New York Times, actors gave costume and production designers online tours of their homes and closets, and then were sent some items to use in the show.
“I actually spent quarantine like a lot of people, in the same black sweatpants and black T-shirts, and that wasn’t quite as interesting for television,” Odom told the Times.
Odom and Robinson, who were married in 2012, met in the theater while working on the show “Once on This Island.” Their daughter, Lucille, is 3, and, although the couple they are playing also has a young daughter, she isn’t on camera.
In an interview earlier this summer to talk about the Disney+ premiere of “Hamilton,” Odom spoke about his real-life quarantine, which, like his character’s, was keeping him closer to home than usual.
“We’ve found our rhythm in it, but, yeah, it’s tough,” he said. The reality for parents of a young child is that “you can’t take them to the park, they can’t play with their friends and you can’t run errands with them . ... Your options are super limited. That is the hardest part.”
As for his daughter, “once every couple of weeks, she’s like, ‘I miss my friends.’ Really, it breaks your heart to hear that from your 3-year-old.”