Morena Baccarin can currently be seen opposite Anthony Mackie the new action thriller Elevation, which is out now in theaters. In Deadpool, Deadpool 2, and this year’s Deadpool & Wolverine, she plays Vanessa, the tough and witty love interest of Ryan Reynolds. She will soon lead CBS’s new series Sheriff County, a spinoff about her recurring Fire Country character, and star opposite Jason Mamoa and David Bautista in Amazon’s feature Wrecking Crew. Her long list of television credits includes a regular series in Fox’s Gotham, the lead in ABC’s V, the lead (and a producer) of CBS’s The Endgame, Jordan Peele’s The Twilight Zone, and of course, Homeland, for which she was nominated for Emmy and SAG awards. As a new Juilliard grad, Morena broke through in Firefly, which was followed by its big-screen adaptation Serenity. Her other film credits include Paul Feig’s comedy hit Spy, the Gerard Butler thriller Greenland, and Fast Charlie, opposite Pierce Brosnan.
Three Great Things is Talkhouse’s series in which artists tell us about three things they absolutely love. To mark the current release in theaters of the new action thriller Elevation, starring Anthony Mackie and Morena Baccarin, the popular Brazilian-born actress best known for Homeland, Gotham and the Deadpool movies shared some of the things she loves most in life. — N.D.
My Family
About 99 percent of my life, I’m thinking about are my kids and my husband. So that’s probably a good place to start.
Last week was Halloween, which is a very big holiday for our kids. I have a three-year-old, an eight-year-old and an 11-year-old, and the night before Halloween, I was up very late making a costume for my eight-year-old, who saw a costume on TikTok she thought was cool. She was dressed in an old lady costume with an old lady head attached to her shoulder, and her head is part of a baby onesie that is on the back. So she was the baby and the old lady was walking around in her body. It was kind of phenomenal.
My kids are a constant reminder for me to be in the moment. And the thing about parenthood is, just when you think you got it all figured out, you’re totally wrong. Parents are always going to mess up. But if we didn’t, kids wouldn’t have coping mechanisms for how screwed up life can be. My 11-year-old is very energetic and a skateboarder, and I’m constantly afraid he’s going to crack his head open. Which might happen. My eight-year-old is very creative, and my three-year-old is currently kicking his teachers at school, so we’re working on that!
The hard thing about parenting is that you’re striving for a perfect balance, but you cannot always provide for everybody, including yourself. But then you find golden nuggets of joy throughout the day, where something unexpected happens and it’s just pure pleasure. And then 30 seconds later, of course, you’re on the floor crying with your children, because things can become incredibly difficult at any moment. Parenthood is messy and it can be really challenging at times. It’s the hardest and most amazing thing I’ve ever done. I don’t think there’s anything that will ever compare to it in life. And since having kids, I basically weigh every job I take or everything that I do against that time that I will have to be away from my family.
Books
I became an avid reader probably around the age of eight or nine. A Wrinkle in Time was the book that first drew me in, and then it was The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe. Next, I got into really trashy books like Flowers in the Attic, which I think is a rite of passage for any teen or tween. Currently, I’m reading Erasure, the book that American Fiction was based on, and I’m absolutely loving it. At the same time, I am also listening to Intermezzo, which is Sally Rooney’s latest novel. I read mostly fiction, but I do love non-fiction books as well. When I’m on a plane, or just before going to bed, or whenever I have five minutes on the train, I like to read or listen to a book on tape. I find it very relaxing, and it really has a way of taking me into a different world that has a very calming and inspiring effect on my life.
Sometimes I’ll read in my trailer, but for the most part, when I’m on set, I’m consumed by the project I’m shooting, so I have a hard time picking up a book or doing anything else. Weirdly, on a set, I can’t concentrate enough to read a book. It pulls me out of the project too much, almost as if the film is my own book, and reading something else at the same time would confuse me. The only thing I can do is short-term attention span stuff like crossword puzzles or the New York Times Spelling Bee, which I’m a big fan of.
I read to my kids a lot, and I love finding books that we can both enjoy. Roald Dahl is a bit of a favorite, and Shel Silverstein is big in our house too. And I’m definitely interested in writing myself. I haven’t been diagnosed with anything, but I suspect I have some kind of A.D.D., because the minute I sit down to flesh out an idea, I think of a thousand other things. I don’t know if this is a common problem that writers have, but it really precludes me from being able to follow anything through! I’ve started a lot of things, but as yet I’ve never finished any of them.
Cooking
I moved to the States when I was 10, but I was born in Brazil, where my grandmother cooked a lot for us. My mom was an actress in Brazil and a big feminist, and she refused to cook. She would even put a sign on the stove that said “Closed,” so we couldn’t ask for any food to be warmed up. (This was before the days of microwaves.) I just thought cooking was something you got people to do for you. My mom told me, “You will not grow up cooking and you will not cook for any man, ever.” I just responded, “OK, cool, whatever.”
When I was living by myself in Los Angeles, I literally could not make anything other than eggs and pasta, and I didn’t even make those things well. I had a lot of free time on my hands, as I was auditioning and unemployed, so I just grabbed a cookbook and made friends with a girl who loved to cook. We would just pick random recipes and make them on a Saturday afternoon, which, thinking about it now, is a very healthy (and very dorky!) way to spend your 20s in Los Angeles, instead of going out drinking. I fell in love with cooking and now I make any recipe that looks interesting to me; I have hundreds of recipes that I’ve memorized and know how to cook. A particular favorite in my family is a Brazilian seafood stew called moqueca, that I’ve learned to make quite well and that everybody will eat. It very much brings me back to my childhood, so I’m glad that I now don’t need a recipe for it.
Cooking is meditative, it’s creative, it’s productive. And you’re doing something healthy for everybody. It’s a source of pride for me to cook for my man and for my family – which is so funny, because it’s my mom’s worst nightmare. I love the notion of sitting around the table and enjoying something that you created together. My kids love to help me. During the pandemic, we cooked almost every meal together and it was so incredible to have that time with them.
