Waves actress Taylor Russell’s quarantine recommendations

Every morning and every night during lockdown, Waves actress Taylor Russell practises her handstands. She holds them for ​“like a minute and a half”. It’s something easy, she says, that anyone can do (uh huh) – a skill she can perhaps show off during all of the auditions she’ll be attending after things return to normalcy. For now, she’s holed up as a house-sitter for a friend’s apartment in Brooklyn, watching films, reading books and shooting off memes to her Waves co-star, Alexa Demie. Oh, and she’s taken up embroidery. None of her clothing is safe from a DIY design now.

Russell, 25, has been on a steep trajectory since Netflix’s Lost in Space introduced her to living rooms and iPads everywhere. She’ll next be seen in Escape Room 2 and Words on Bathroom Walls, a teen drama based on the Julia Walton novel. Here’s how she’s keeping busy during quarantine…

“I [first] watched My Dinner with Andre a very long time ago. I was probably too young to appreciate it, process it, take it all in. And then I was talking to my friend, because she met Andre Gregory and his wife. She was telling me about that. She was like, ​‘Yeah, that movie’s so great.’ I rewatched it. And it’s been probably the most uplifting and impactful thing I’ve seen in quarantine because it’s just such a great film. I feel like it’s so indicative of what’s happening right now in the mind state of the world. And you can also be Wallace Shawn and Andre Gregory. In points in my life, I’ve identified as having been both people, or both perspectives at least, because that’s really what it is, is posing different perspectives about the world. It reminded me how big everything is. It helped me feel less alone. So I’ve been telling all my friends to watch it and I’m probably going to watch it again because it brought me a lot of comfort.

Lately, I’ve been thinking a lot about roles that we have in our families and society. You know, calling your parents ​‘mom’ and ​‘dad’, ​‘brother’ and ​‘sister’, what that really means and how we take on that title. What does it mean to be a brother? This my brain in quarantine [laughs]. There is a scene at the end of the movie where Andre is talking about the role of a son and what that means and [how] it’s just a title. I’m not articulating that verbatim from what he said, but in the last scene of the movie, the last conversation piece is my favourite.”

“I’m not a huge TV person, honestly. I watched Random Acts of Flyness, the Terence Nance series on HBO and that just brought me so much laughter. There’s so much to dissect in that series. It’s really smart and poignant and genius the way that he edits. The whole thing is brilliant. It’s about being black in America. It’s autobiographical, but it’s [made up of] skits basically. It’s truthful and scary and funny and sad and realistic. It made me think a lot about a lot of things that I’ve experienced that I’ve kind of been like, ​‘Wait, was that fucked up? That was fucked up.’ [laughs] Those moments watching it just made me feel less alone, but also, I just laughed!”

“I read this book called Fatherhood by Caleb Klaces, and he’s a poet. The book is kind of like poetic Proust meets fiction novel. It’s a genre all its own. I have no idea. I haven’t read anything like it before. But it was really interesting. It’s about this father who has a baby and he doesn’t love being a father. And so he’s really struggling with that from his point of view.”

“Good Morning by [Yasujirō] Ozu made me so happy. It’s a beautiful portrait of a family and what it’s like as a kid, being so stubborn and really wanting something, and the lengths that you’ll go to to get it. Every frame is beautiful. It’s shot beautifully. It’s so poetic, it’s so gentle, it’s so comforting and heartwarming. So that’s another good one. I’m an Ozu fan. The beginning of quarantine was me watching Criterion probably seven hours a day for maybe twenty days. Recently I’ve been like, OK, I need to take a break because I need to not watch anything. I need my mind to be blank of all images.”

“I’ve read this book called Space Invaders, which was really dope. It’s actually nothing about space. It’s about a group of childhood friends. Their classmate goes missing. And then all these children are thinking about her and recollecting their years with her. And it’s a really beautiful book. I think Patti Smith had recommended it. She had read it. And then my friend told me to read it, and I did. And it was great.”

“Me and Alexa [Demie] send each other videos all the time from @sainthoax. We’re just like, did you see this? Did you see this? There’s that one video of Beyoncé and she has Purell in her hands. And it’s like when you pull out hand sanitiser in front of your friends. She walks down and people are throwing their hands. She basically just looks like Jesus. This is really killing me right now. [laughs] It’s so brilliant.”