Moses Ingram first came to viewers’ attention as Jolene, the best friend of Anya Taylor-Joy’s character in The Queen’s Gambit, a role that earned Ingram an Emmy nomination. After parts in Obi-Wan Kenobi, The Tragedy of Macbeth and Ambulance, the Baltimore native returned to home turf for a starring role on Alma Har’el’s Lady in the Lake, a whodunit about a Jewish housewife in the 1960s, played by the show’s exec producer Natalie Portman, who risks everything to become an investigative journalist trying to solve the death of Cleo Johnson, played by Ingram. The limited series that pushes all boundaries when it comes to genre and tone is a wild showcase for Ingram, who gets to demonstrate every skill she has as an actress. But for the 30-year-old, the highlight of the project was returning to the place her ambitions were born. “I did a lot of dreaming in Baltimore. I don’t know if I’ve dreamed as hard since I left,” she says. “I always thought if I was going to do anything with my life, I’d have to leave. For the most transformative work of my adult life to be right back there, I couldn’t write it better.”
DEADLINE: You came to the project fairly late in the game. Did you audition for it?
MOSES INGRAM: I did. My agent called at eight o’clock at night, and he was like, “You have to read this right now. Literally stop whatever you’re doing, read this right now.” And I read that first episode and thought, “Oh my God, this is amazing.” So, the next morning I talked to him, and he said, “They need that tape by end of day.” I was like, “It is 12 pages. What do you mean they need this end of the day?” He’s like, “I know you can do it.” That’s the kind of person that my agent is. So, I spent that whole day trying to lock in the lines and do it. The next morning I met Alma, and that was it. That was my process. A smooth day and a half.
DEADLINE: Did anything prepare you for the scope of what you were getting into? Singing, dancing, fantasy segments, grounded drama—this show has everything.
INGRAM: Yeah, I had no idea and for a long time I just had that first episode, even once we started filming. I had some inkling of where the character might go, but a real idea or trajectory of what I was stepping inside of, not really. I could feel based on what I was reading, that it would use many parts of me, which I really appreciated.
DEADLINE: Did you read Laura Lippman’s book that the series is based on?
INGRAM: No, I hadn’t read her book at the time. I had been informed by Alma and Natalie that Cleo, in the book, is not a character in the way she is within the series, so it wasn’t really a part of my zeitgeist at the time.
DEADLINE: How did you get a sense of the tone of the project?
INGRAM: It’s a lot of just being ready to go, being able to adapt and be with who you’re with. I think it’s easy… Actually, it is not easy. That’s not true. But, as long as you’re playing in truth, it makes it easier than trying to take the whole thing in. You take it in, in pieces and chunks.
DEADLINE: How did you ground Cleo as a character? Who was she to you?
INGRAM: To me, she’s my mother. She’s my aunt. She’s my grandma. That’s the city that I’m from. It’s a lifeblood inside myself. I say, with this project there are a lot of things that I get for free, a lot of things that, without research, my person understands. So, grounding her in truth was really easy, but also super important to me. I felt like this is a woman who represents many women in my life.
DEADLINE: What was it like for you to step into the footsteps of your mother and grandmother and walk through that life?
INGRAM: It is really special. To be very honest, I haven’t been the same since, and I honor that feeling. I feel when I work, and I’m doing the work that I’m supposed to do, that I don’t go to work alone, there are people at work with me, in me. That’s the only way a lot of stuff is able to happen, I believe. So yeah, I go to work, but I don’t go to work alone.
DEADLINE: Did you know from the start that it was going to be in Baltimore?
INGRAM: That I did know. That was right at the top of the page: 1960-something Baltimore and I was like, “Yes, yes, exactly.” It’s really beautiful what the project was able to do for the city. Kids coming out of their house in the morning and seeing a full film set on the street right in front of your house is pretty epic.
DEADLINE: What was it like working with Alma? I feel like with this project, in particular, is so dependent on the director’s vision.
INGRAM: It’s a project where time was of the essence, and that can be really hard for an artist trying to find their way in something that is already moving. What I appreciated about Alma is that in the midst of chaos and noise, she’s really able to quiet it and provide time and space for me to arrive at the places that I needed to. I think it would’ve been super easy for her to be like, “We don’t have time. We don’t have time for this many takes. We don’t have time for this.” She made time and made space and also allowed me to be a collaborator, not just work for hire, but to be a part of the process, which I really appreciated.
DEADLINE: How did that present itself, the collaboration?
INGRAM: At the top of the week, we’d sit down and look at the scenes. “How do you feel about this? Does this feel natural to you? How would you say it going in?” And sometimes you can’t help what the blocking is, but a lot of times she’d go in and say, “Just do what feels most natural, do what feels most truthful.” And I feel like when you have that kind of playground, it really allows you to go to the ends of the thing that might be there, but you don’t know until you try.
DEADLINE: It must be a little bit like theater school, with no time to feel self-conscious. The bus is moving and there’s a goat in front of it. Are the fantasy sequences hard to get into or do you just have to get on the bus?
INGRAM: You just got to get on the bus. If you take too much time to think about something, it’s exactly as you said, you get in your head and now it’s weird. Whereas if you get on the bus, you just go with it and take it in. A lot of my process, in the time that I’ve been an actor, is really strong game of “What if?” “What would be happening to me if this was a situation that I was in?” and really leaning in.
Sometimes it can be one of those things where you get self-conscious or unsure about what you look like. Early on in my career, I was able to work with titans in the business and watching them be like, “Yeah, it’s ugly right now, but I’m so confident in myself that I’m okay being ugly in front of you, knowing that I’m going to arrive at the place that I’m going to arrive at.” And that experience makes way for me where I feel free enough to look weird, stupid, whatever.
DEADLINE: What did you find the most challenging about Lady in the Lake?
INGRAM: It can be emotionally exhausting. Toward the end of shooting, it’s like, I just don’t know what I have left inside of myself to give. In those situations, [its good] having someone to say, “I feel like I don’t know what tools to use right now to get me to this place,” to. I worked with Kim Gilligan, who was really amazing – who I also worked with on The End, actually. She’s someone that I always want to work with now because, especially in long processes, you get to a point where you’re like, “Okay, help me find another way to look at this because I am at my wits’ end.” But really it’s just finding room to keep breathing in an atmosphere where air is constantly being sucked from a person.
DEADLINE: You and Natalie barely intersect on the show. How would you describe the relationship between these two women and how did it inform you, narratively?
INGRAM: Yeah, I mean these two women would not be interacting if it weren’t for Maddie’s will, diligence and entitlement. One of my favorite lines Cleo has is when Maddie’s like, “Oh, don’t you think we could have been friends?” And Cleo’s like, “Girl, no. How? I’m in this situation because you just couldn’t mind your business.” You know what I mean? So, I think they probably look at each other as a means to an end.
DEADLINE: What was it like working with Natalie? As an executive producer, she must’ve been present throughout.
INGRAM: Yeah, it’s Natalie Portman, and that’s someone that I’ve watched my entire life. When you want to be an actor, you spend hours and hours and hours watching people that you think are great, and she’s one of those people. So, to have that front row seat to it is something that I will never ever take for granted. She’s really professional, really about her business. Being in the scene and then having to jump out and handle whatever and coming right back to it. I think it’s just another example of what’s possible moving forward in the business and the kind of artist a younger artist might aspire to be like.
DEADLINE: In terms of getting to show what you can do, you didn’t leave anything on the stage on this show. Do you feel like this is a showcase for all the things that you can do?
INGRAM: I feel like for every actor there’s what you know can do versus what people have allowed you to do. I feel so grateful to have had an opportunity to show people the potential of the artist. And that’s just my beginning. This is me five years in and I feel grateful for what I have laid down in the past five years and look forward to what’s next, pushing those limits and breaking those ceilings that I set for myself. I shocked myself a lot on this, but it’s work that I’m the most proud of. Absolutely.
DEADLINE: Did you then go to do the apocalyptic musical, The End?
INGRAM: Yeah, it was hard for a lot of reasons. One, because I was exhausted. I had already come from a year of being at work and not really having had any downtime. That is a thing that you dream of, so you cannot complain about going to work. It’s just not a thing. But it was also hard because I was so far away from home and anyone that I knew, so most of the cast could go home for a weekend – and a lot of them invited me, which was also very sweet – but there truly is no place like home. And I think I was just ready to go home at a certain point. It was work that also required a lot. We were down in caves, like three Statues of Liberties deep into the center of Italy and again in Germany and over in Ireland, and it was getting dark early. It was so many things happening at that time, but an experience that I was grateful for, that also pushed the limits. Like, “You think you’re done? No. No.”
DEADLINE: I guess there’s no such thing as like an easy gig.
INGRAM: No, there’s no such thing as an easy gig. But I can’t imagine doing anything else. In times where I wanted to quit, I know it’s fake because I don’t know what else I would do. I love what I do and it’s what I was put here to do, and I have all confidence in that. And I’ve seen people do hard work. I was raised with people who do hard work. I don’t do hard work. I do work that I love that requires a lot of me, but… You know?
DEADLINE: Speaking of, how meaningful was it to do Lady in the Lake on home turf?
INGRAM: So very. I did a lot of dreaming in Baltimore. All my dreams, really. I don’t know if I’ve dreamed as hard since I left. I always thought if I was going to do anything with my life, I’d have to leave. For the most transformative work of my adult life to be right back there, I couldn’t write it better. We filmed scenes in the place that I graduated from high school, and then on Sundays I could be in my mother’s house. It’s just really, really beautiful.
DEADLINE: Can you say anything about Kathryn Bigelow’s upcoming untitled White House thriller?
INGRAM: It is super top secret. I read that script three times before it vanished. And then I went to film it and all I had were sides. We finished it in September, October, something like that. It’s very, very top secret. I’m glad I got to read it. I had some days where people were like, “Do you know what’s happening in this scene?” and I knew what was happening. But it’s fun to do things like that and to see if what you read is the thing that you actually ended up making. I love working with Kathryn because she’s super cool and super, super down to earth—but also very detail-oriented and [uses] a lot of camera machinery, which is cool.
DEADLINE: In terms of work now, what’s the dream?
INGRAM: I feel like such a big kid, but I love watching Aunjanue Ellis. I think she’s absolutely fantastic. And I think the same thing about Nicole Beharie. If I could get in something with the two of them, I would just be beside myself. But honestly, any work that is worthy, I’m happy to do. That’s my dream. Like a kid in a candy store, I’d be so happy if I got to do that. But I just want to work.
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