Tell the truth
Rising star Tara Lynne Barr on pain meds, portraying a “real” teenage girl and those sex scenes she’s “getting away with.”
usually when you ask someone how their day is going, you get some variation of “Fine.” Not so with Tara Lynne Barr. In fact, pretty much the first thing the 22-year-old actress says over the phone from Los Angeles is “I’ve been high as a kite for the past few days. Now I’m just in pain.” (It’s worth noting here that Barr had just had her wisdom teeth removed about a week earlier.)
Of course, if you’ve seen Barr’s work on Hulu’s Golden Globe-nominated Casual— she plays a refreshingly relatable teenager—finding her to be so delightfully open in real life isn’t a surprise. Barr plays Laura on the Jason Reitman-helmed comedrama, who, alongside her newly divorced mother (played by Michaela Watkins) and her socially inept, possibly sociopathic uncle (played by Tommy Dewey), navigates the world of relationships in a way that’s sometimes awkward, often cringe-y and always emotionally resonant. And, yes, that includes sex scenes—quite a few of them.
“It feels like we’re getting away with something we shouldn’t be,” says Barr. “Michaela and I talked about it; neither of us looks like a gym rat or a Victoria’s Secret model, and for some reason I’ve always had it in my head that I shouldn’t be doing sex scenes because I don’t have a perfect body.” Barr, whose previous work includes smaller roles on television shows like Aquarius, realizes that she’s part of a pretty special project in that respect: “Our show is committed to a real depiction of real people living real life; I don’t think it’s intentional—not like ‘Oh, let’s hire her because she’s not super-beautiful’ but more like they want to have the best actors for the job, and if that actress has a little belly fat or doesn’t have perfect skin, so be it.”
The way women are depicted on TV (i.e., unattainably, improbably beautiful at all times) is something Barr thinks about a lot. “You think ‘How are these beautiful women existing and I’m just this potato-like thing wrapped in a blanket burrito and sitting on my couch binge watching for six hours a day?’”
Barr got into acting as a hobby when she was 11. She had a few small roles but didn’t take it seriously until she graduated from high school. She credits her “normal” childhood and really good parents with her unusual comfort in her own skin—especially in an industry that almost actively discourages it. “I think there’s something in you that gets stripped away when you succumb to the status quo of ‘beauty.’ This is my face, and it’s what I’ve got to work with.”
That kind of unretouched realness is what Barr feels her show, just renewed for a third season, gets right in its portrayal of teenagers—their sexuality in particular. “They do it in a sensitive but not condescending way,” she says. “They portray teenagers having sex: They don’t need to be these doe-eyed virginal princesses who are deflowered, but they also aren’t these slutty, bitchy cheerleader girls who are a punchline.”
Which is why Barr doesn’t mind doing those sex scenes: “I think it’s amazing that every time there’s a sex scene with my character in it, it feels like she’s in control—like you’re not watching Laura as an ‘object’; you’re watching a human being with agency. That’s a small step in the right direction.”