Unorthodox is Netflix’s sort-of counterpoint to its own Tiger King, if you’re looking for something with depth to clear the big cat-people’s wrongdoings from your palate. Lead actress Shiva Haas is a vision in the stunning miniseries that explores one young woman’s rejection of Hasidic Judaism, and she went to some emotionally strenuous places to portray Esty. Haas recently hopped on the phone with Jessica Chastain (for Variety), with whom she co-starred in 2017’s The Zookeeper’s Wife, to discuss how she played the complicated character, including the very first scene she shot.
That particular scene — when Etsy’s head is shaved immediately following her wedding — would have been a tough one to endure by anyone’s standards. It’s definitely not unusual to shoot scenes out-of-order (usually, that’s simply how things go for practical reasons), but it does surprise me that the production would go there first, given that many plentiful flashback scenes show Esty with hair that looks a lot like Haas’ own tresses, but the wig game must have been strong. In any event, Haas told Chastain that the scene immediately got her into the right headspace:
“That’s one heck of an opening right at the start. But then I thought that it’s good not to wait for it. I don’t need to wait and be like, ‘Oh my God, in 10 days it’s going to happen.’ It really made me very commit to the role. It was a hardcore start, but I really understood the character. It’s only like 20 seconds of a scene. But you really have almost all of her conflict — because she’s looking forward to her married life, and she’s really excited and happy. She’s also very scared and saying goodbye to her childhood.”
As for the last scene? That one’s much easier to predict: the lake scene where Esty removes her “marriage” wig, quite symbolically, and drops it into the water. That scene must have been very freeing to shoot, since Unorthodox was undoubtedly a heavy film for Haas, and it was probably a load off her shoulders to say goodbye to the role, even after Esty stood her ground and tiptoed into the Berlin in an effort to escape her constricted life and start a new path for herself. Overall, the four-part miniseries is an illuminating project, so hop on over to Netflix and invest a little of your quarantine time on the young woman’s story. It’s a breathtaking watch.
