Dickinson's Jane Krakowski: I've achieved my childhood dreams

"Apple TV+ is really doing this right,” the American actor, comedian and musical theatre stalwart Jane Krakowski is saying, carefully spelling out the full, correct name of the company’s new streaming service, something she’ll do diligently and repeatedly over the course of our interview.

“They’re getting the top-notch people to make this show as beautiful as it can be.”

“This show” is Dickinson, one of four flagship series launching Apple’s keenly anticipated entry into the TV-on-demand market.

Two of the others, the Jennifer Aniston/Reese Witherspoon breakfast TV satire The Morning Show and Jason Momoa fantasy series See, have already weathered challenging reviews. Now comes a 10-episode period dramedy that’s a millennial take on the life of beloved 19th-century New England poet Emily Dickinson.

Social media-gen heroine Hailee Steinfeld (True Grit) takes the title role and is also an executive producer on the YA-leaning series. Krakowski, a multiple Emmy nominee for her scene-dominating turns in Tina Fey’s 30 Rock and Unbreakable Kimmy Schmidt, plays the teenager’s buttoned-up mother.

“Women were so bound and constricted and restrained,” says the smiley, chatty 51-year-old when we meet in a suite at Claridge’s. “The men got the more fanciful hair and outfits, and they’re always at ease and comfort,” Krakowski continues, illuminating one of the gender schisms loudly, sometimes galumphingly, exposed in a show that presents Dickinson as a shouty teen feminist with a discombobulatingly uncorseted mouth. Steinfeld exclaims in the first episode: “This is such bulls***!”

Making those costumes is one of those top-notch professionals, John Dunn (Boardwalk Empire, Vinyl). Another, writer and producer Alena Smith, has spent seven years wrestling to the screen her 21st-century take on a 200-year-old poet who was an unknown, mostly unpublished recluse in her lifetime.

As Krakowski notes of a show in which the latent, Twitter-ish concision of Dickinson’s poetry is metastasised into on-the-screen, on-the-nose, teen-friendly scribbles, Dickinson was “so different from other shows I’ve ever [seen]”.

Indeed. It’s modish and fantastical, with Wiz Khalifa playing Death and Billie Eilish on the soundtrack. As Krakowski acknowledges: “When you see the show, it actually does have so much of the aesthetic and image of Apple TV+ and the millennial-era target audience they’re going for.”

For Krakowski, Dickinson is another intriguing turn in a cheerfully mazy career. She grew up in New Jersey a child of the stage, with both her parents “heavily involved in community theatre. And they didn’t necessarily have the money for a babysitter, so they brought me with them.”

As a suburban teenager she dreamed of living in New York, inspired by groundbreaking sitcoms like The Mary Tyler Moore Show and Rhoda, “about women who were on their own who had their own careers. And in my childhood, my parents let me turn my bedroom door into a New York apartment door, complete even with mail slot, and I had a key. So I could pretend I was a modern single woman living in Manhattan.

“Now I think, ‘Wait, these are my teenage dreams?” she frowns and laughs. “Because I’ve kind of made them come true — I’m a single woman living in Manhattan! Maybe I should have aimed for a little bit more.”

Her ex-partner and the father of her eight-year-old son, menswear designer Robert Godley, is a British former resident of Hackney, meaning Bennett has dual citizenship. It’s one of the reasons Krakowski loves London, the other being her role in the 2005 adaptation of Guys and Dolls in the West End. Starring alongside Ewan McGregor as Sky Masterson, she won an Olivier for her portrayal of Miss Adelaide.

Dickinson has already been recommissioned for a second series. So, should Netflix, Amazon and even the good old BBC be scared of Apple and its trillion-dollar war chest?

“I remember Tina Fey making a joke at the Golden Globes a few years ago: ‘What, is Amazon gonna make TV now?’ Because it was just a shopping platform at the time. Then it did, and made amazing shows. So even if it’s a joke to begin with, there’s the possibility for everybody to make great shows.”

For sure. Even if the early notices for Apple TV+’s first shows are hardly A+, only a fool would bet against them.

All episodes of Dickinson premiere on Apple TV+ today.

Read more

How much did the Matt Lauer case inspire the plot of The Morning Show?

Apple rolls out the big guns for its TV debut The Morning Show

Jennifer Aniston and Reese Witherspoon hit The Morning Show premiere