Interview: Noah Jupe Talks Lady in the Lake, Working With Natalie Portman

ComingSoon Editor-in-Chief Tyler Treese spoke to Lady in the Lake star Noah Jupe about the Apple TV+ drama, in which he co-stars alongside Natalie Portman. Jupe discussed working with Portman, reuniting with director Alma Har’el, and more. It is set to release on July 19, 2024.

“When the disappearance of a young girl grips the city of Baltimore on Thanksgiving 1966, the lives of two women converge on a fatal collision course. Maddie Schwartz (Natalie Portman) is a Jewish housewife seeking to shed a secret past and reinvent herself as an investigative journalist, and Cleo Johnson (Moses Ingram) is a mother navigating the political underbelly of Black Baltimore while struggling to provide for her family. Their disparate lives seem parallel at first, but when Maddie becomes fixated on Cleo’s mystifying death, a chasm opens that puts everyone around them in danger,” says the synopsis.

Tyler Treese: Early on, these interactions between your character, Seth, and Natalie Portman’s Maddie, who’s your mother in this show, they’re very tense. It’s not a very love-filled relationship. What really stood out about Natalie as a scene partner? Because you both have some very emotionally charged back and forth early on.

Noah Jupe: I think you are definitely right there in the sense it’s incredibly charged and tense, the relationship between the two of us. But I think that I would actually say that it is pretty love-filled, and I think that the reason that it is so tough for Seth and Maddie is because they love each other a lot. But then I think they’re getting Seth at a point in his life where he’s sort of realizing that his parents aren’t perfect and they are just human beings.

I think that that’s a tough thing to come to terms with, especially when you’ve looked up to these people your whole life, and you realize that they have and are making mistakes and acting in a way that isn’t polite or good for the family and selfish. I think that’s something that really angers Seth, especially because I’m sure his parents, his whole life, have been telling him to bepolite and nice and respectful. I think he thinks that Natalie’s character isn’t doing that, and that’s a tough thing to come to terms with as a kid with your parents.

You’ve worked with the director Alma Har’el before on Honey Boy, so how is it really getting to reunite with somebody you fully trust as a director and, and get to work on a very different creative endeavor here?

I think it’s the dream, to be honest, to have someone like that, that you’ve been through a wild experience with that honestly changed my life and I’m sure that it changed hers. So to come back with all of that trust and love for each other, to come back to a project and have that bond is magical. It’s something that is very rare, and so I feel very lucky to have that.

I’ve been just so impressed with how you’ve been able to navigate project to project. You’re always in something interesting. What’s been the secret to really navigating this space? Because it’s such a promising start to your career.

Thanks. That’s actually so great to hear, and I think that that’s sort of what I’ve been aiming for in a way. I think that I very much take my time in terms of choosing projects and I really have to know 100% that I want to do that project before I attach to it or sign on to do it. Because this is a passion for me, and I want to be able to keep it a passion for the rest of my life. So I think that choosing projects that I am a hundred percent passionate about is important, and hopefully that they turn out interesting and creatively exciting.

Thanks to Noah Jupe for taking the time to speak about Lady in the Lake.