I CAN’T REALLY TELL YOU MUCH ABOUT THE OA.
Netflix has asked journalists to not reveal certain plot points before the second season of its mind bending serialized drama premieres on March 22— but even if it hadn’t, there’s just so much about this show that remains so mysterious.
Like what I’m looking at, right now, in a small screening room on the eighth floor of Netflix’s Hollywood offices, seated next to its co-creator and star, Brit Marling. From our perch on a black leather couch, we watch this season’s dizzying seventh episode in its entirety. This is “QC,” or quality control—one last check to make sure every frame and cue is just as Marling wants it, the last step before it gets beamed onto television screens in millions of living rooms. After years of writing and starring in independent films, the reach of the streaming platform that distributes her vision remains bewitching to her. It’s something she brings up again and again: just how big it is, especially when the work, to her, is so intimate.
She turns to Blake Holland, who worked on the show with her, and shakes her head. “This is the power of group storytelling,” she says. In one scene, her character, who calls herself “the OA,” which stands for Original Angel, takes a bath and remembers being underwater in a traumatic childhood incident. They had tried many complicated visual effects to show the OA shifting from her present-day experience into memory, and eventually settled on just changing the color of the water to the blue that she remembers from her childhood. It’s a subtle but powerful trick. “It feels like the way you move through memory,” Marling says, satisfied.
This story is from the April 1, 2019 edition of Time.
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This story is from the April 1, 2019 edition of Time.
Start your 7-day Magzter GOLD free trial to access thousands of curated premium stories, and 8,500+ magazines and newspapers.
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