Natasha Bianca Lyonne Braunstein born April 4, 1979 is an American actress, director, writer, and producer. She starred as Nicky Nichols in the Netflix comedy-drama series Orange Is the New Black (2013–2019), for which she received a Primetime Emmy Award nomination, and portrayed Nadia Vulvokov in the Netflix comedy-drama series Russian Doll (2019–present), which she also co-created, executive produces, writes, and directs. For the latter, Lyonne received nominations for three Primetime Emmy Awards.
Lyonne is also known for her role as Jessica in the American Pie film series (1999–2012). Her other film credits include Everyone Says I Love You (1996), Slums of Beverly Hills (1998), But I’m a Cheerleader (1999), Scary Movie 2 (2001), Blade: Trinity (2004), Robots (2005), All About Evil (2010), Sleeping with Other People (2015), Hello, My Name Is Doris (2015), Addicted to Fresno (2015), Antibirth (2016), Yoga Hosers (2016), and Ad Astra (2019).
Early life
Lyonne was born in New York City, the daughter of Ivette Buchinger and Aaron Braunstein, a boxing promoter, race car driver and radio host, distantly related to cartoonist Al Jaffee.
Lyonne’s parents were from Orthodox Jewish families, and she was raised Orthodox. Her mother was born in Paris, France, to Hungarian Jewish parents who were Holocaust survivors. Lyonne has darkly joked that her family consists of “my father’s side, Flatbush, and my mother’s side, Auschwitz.” Her grandmother Ella came from a large family. Only she and her two sisters and two brothers survived, which Lyonne credits to their blond hair and blue eyes. Lyonne’s grandfather, Morris Buchinger, operated a watch company in Los Angeles. During the war, he hid in Budapest as a non-Jew working in a leather factory.
Lyonne lived the first eight years of her life in Great Neck, New York. She and her parents moved to Israel, where Lyonne spent a year and a half. During her stay there, Lyonne participated in the production of the Israeli children’s film April Fool, which began her interest in acting. Her parents divorced, and Lyonne and her older brother Adam returned to America with their mother. After moving back to New York City, Lyonne attended the Ramaz School, a private Jewish school, where Lyonne said she was a scholarship kid who took honors Talmud classes and read Aramaic. She was expelled for selling marijuana at school. Lyonne grew up on the Upper East Side, where she felt she was an outcast. Her mother moved their family to Miami, where Lyonne attended Miami Country Day School. She has not graduated from high school; she left before her senior year to attend a film program at NYU’s Tisch School of the Arts. Her high school graduation depended on completing her first year at Tisch, but she left the program because she could not pay the tuition.
She attended New York University for a short time, studying film and philosophy.
Lyonne was estranged from her father, who was a Democratic candidate for City Council for the sixth District of Manhattan in 2013, and lived on the Upper West Side until his death in October 2014. Lyonne has said she is not close to her mother and has essentially lived independently of her family since age 16.
Career
As a young child, Lyonne was signed by the Ford Modeling Agency. At the age of six, she was cast as Opal on Pee-wee’s Playhouse, followed by film appearances in Heartburn, A Man Called Sarge, and Dennis the Menace. On working as a very young child actor, Lyonne said: “I didn’t have the best parents. I don’t think they are bad people. Even if they were ready to have children, it is kind of a wacky idea to put your child in business at six years old.”
Film
Lyonne at a screening of The Immaculate Conception of Little Dizzle
At age 16, Lyonne was cast in the Woody Allen-directed Everyone Says I Love You (1996). This led to appearances in a variety of films over the next 10 years, including starring roles in the independent features Slums of Beverly Hills (1998), for which she received two Teen Choice Award nominations, and But I’m a Cheerleader (1999). During this time, she appeared as Jessica in the highly successful teen comedy American Pie (1999), reprising the role in two of its sequels. Lyonne’s other films during this period included Detroit Rock City, Freeway II: Confessions of a Trickbaby (both 1999), Scary Movie 2, The Grey Zone, Kate & Leopold (all 2001), Party Monster (2003), and Blade: Trinity (2004).
Lyonne’s subsequent film appearances include All About Evil (2010), 4:44 Last Day on Earth (2011), Girl Most Likely, Loitering with Intent, Sleeping with Other People, Hello, My Name Is Doris, Addicted to Fresno, #Horror, Yoga Hosers, Antibirth, The Intervention, and Handsome: A Netflix Mystery Movie.
In 2019, she appeared in Shia LaBeouf’s autobiographical film Honey Boy.
Lyonne at The Paley Center for Media’s PaleyFest 2014 honoring Orange Is the New Black
Theater
Lyonne made her New York stage debut in the award-winning New Group production of Mike Leigh’s Two Thousand Years.
She was part of the original cast of the award-winning Love, Loss, and What I Wore, a play by Nora Ephron and Delia Ephron, based on the book by Ilene Beckerman.
In 2010 Lyonne received positive reviews for her performance in Kim Rosenstock’s comedy Tigers Be Still at the Roundabout Theatre Company: “a thorough delight in the flat-out funniest role, the grief-crazed Grace, so deeply immersed in self-pity that she has cast aside any attempts at decorum”.
In 2011, Lyonne starred opposite Ethan Hawke and Ann Dowd in New Group’s production of Tommy Nohilly’s Blood From a Stone. The following year, she participated in New Group’s benefit performance of Women Behind Bars.
On working in the theater, Lyonne said, “There’s something about theater that squashes the self-critical voices because you have to be in the moment. I’m glad that I didn’t do this before I was ready before I was capable of showing up every day. That is not a skill set I had before”.
Television
Lyonne has made guest appearances on the series Grounded for Life, Weeds, New Girl, Will & Grace, and Law & Order: Special Victims Unit.
Since 2013 she has appeared as Nicky Nichols in the critically acclaimed Netflix series Orange Is the New Black. The role is Lyonne’s first television job as a series regular. She received a nomination for the Primetime Emmy Award for Outstanding Guest Actress in a Comedy Series in 2014, and has twice been awarded the Screen Actors Guild Award for Outstanding Performance by an Ensemble in a Comedy Series, along with her co-stars.
In 2014 Lyonne was cast in Amy Poehler’s NBC comedy pilot Old Soul, directed by David Wain. In 2016 she began voicing the character Smoky Quartz on the Cartoon Network show Steven Universe. She has also appeared as various characters on IFC’s sketch comedy series Portlandia. In 2018 she voiced the character Gaz Digzy on Adult Swim’s comedy series Ballmastrz: 9009. She has voiced characters on The Simpsons and Netflix’s Big Mouth.
Her performance in the 2019 Netflix series Russian Doll has been praised as “astonishing”. Alan Sepinwall of Rolling Stone called it “brilliant”. The series as a whole received 13 Emmy nominations including Outstanding Comedy Series, Outstanding Lead Actress in a Comedy Series for Lyonne’s performance as Nadia Vulvokov, and Outstanding Writing for a Comedy Series.
Directing and producing
In 2017, Lyonne was approached by Kenzo’s creative directors Carol Lim and Humberto Leon to direct the 5th installment in their short film series. For this, her directorial debut, she began writing a script with Maya Rudolph in mind to star. The surrealist short film was titled Cabiria, Charity, Chastity and starred Rudolph, Fred Armisen, Greta Lee, Leslie Odom Jr. and Macaulay Culkin.
In September 2017, Lyonne’s project Russian Doll was given an 8-episode straight to series order by Netflix. The comedy, co-created and executive produced by Lyonne, Amy Poehler, and Leslye Headland, premiered on February 1, 2019. Lyonne has multiple roles in the series. She is credited as the lead actress and is one of the series’s executive producers with directorial and writing credits.
In 2018, Lyonne co-founded the production company Animal Pictures with Maya Rudolph. The first project Animal Pictures green-lit was Sarah Cooper: Everything’s Fine, which Lyonne directed.
Lyonne directed an episode of Orange Is the New Black for its seventh and final season, as well as an episode of Hulu’s Shrill, “WAHAM.” and an episode of High Fidelity titled “Weird…But Warm.”
Personal life
When she was 18, Lyonne used the paycheck from her work on Everyone Says I Love You to buy a small apartment near Gramercy Park. During the early 2000s, Lyonne experienced legal problems and was arrested for driving under the influence of alcohol, and for incidents involving her neighbors. In 2005 she was evicted by her landlord, actor Michael Rapaport, following complaints by other tenants about her behavior.
In 2005, Lyonne was admitted to Beth Israel Medical Center in Manhattan (under a pseudonym) suffering from hepatitis C, a heart infection, and a collapsed lung; she was also undergoing methadone treatment for heroin addiction. In January 2006, a warrant was issued for her arrest after she missed a court hearing relating to her prior problems. Her lawyer said an emergency had arisen but did not give details. Later that year, Lyonne was admitted to a drug and alcohol treatment center, and she appeared in court afterward. A judge sentenced her to conditional discharge.
Lyonne underwent open-heart surgery in 2012 to correct heart valve damage caused by her heart infection, which could have resulted in sudden death if untreated. She recovered from the surgery and discussed her past health problems on The Rosie Show in March 2012.
Lyonne lives in New York City. She has been in a relationship with Saturday Night Live alumnus Fred Armisen since 2014.