Cazzie David Talks 'The Umbrella Academy,' Instagram Trends, and Getting Offline
The actress and writer cements her obsession with superheroes in her new TV role.
Cazzie David, author, screenwriter, and essayist, has just added a new title to her already lengthy resume.
In her first major acting role, the 28-year-old joins the cast of The Umbrella Academy. The superhero TV series centers around a group of seven powerful, yet dysfunctional siblings, who were brought up by billionaire industrialist Sir Reginald Hargreeves to save the world.
This season, there's a new family in town. After returning from a visit to the past at the end of Season 2, the group finds that the present is not exactly as they left it. A new Academy of superpowered siblings—known as the Sparrows—are now living in the Umbrellas' home, seemingly adopted by Sir Hargreeves in their stead.
David plays Jayme, the sarcastic, venom-spitting Sparrow, who she likens to "the arched eyebrow of the group”—not unlike David herself.
Known mostly for her tongue-in-cheek musings on life in the age of the Internet as a self-described Millennial/Gen Z cusp, David didn't have to dig too deep to get to her character's thorny core. “I think the writer in me would have a hard time doing anything that doesn’t feel like myself,” she says. "No matter how hard I try to fake interest it just will not come through, so that’s something I don’t have trouble with."
Here, she speaks with L'OFFICIEL about spitting venom, her Marvel obsession, and the lengths she'll go to get offline.
L’OFFICIEL: What drew you to your charcter, Jayme?
Cazzie David: Jayme is very sarcastic, which is the only way I really know how to communicate—though obviously, I don’t speak in cheeky one-liners. She is really apathetic. The whole time we were filming, the showrunner, Steve Blackman, was like, “I just want her to be super disinterested.” I was like, you don’t understand, the most enthusiastic I could possibly be would still seem like I didn’t care at all.
L’O: Have you always been that way?
CD: Yeah, I have a pretty low monotone voice and even when I’m trying to be genuine people think that I’m being sarcastic. I have to tell them: “No, I really mean it!” It’s probably in my DNA, because I’ve never been anything else. It’s definitely not an Austin Butler in Elvis situation. [Laughs.]
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L’O: What can we expect to see your character go through this season?
CD: She has a very strange, kind of gross superpower, which is spitting venom that makes people hallucinate. That in itself was a pretty crazy thing to be trying to do in the height of COVID. There are also a lot of fight scenes and physical action, which are super fun to do and really gave me the confidence to feel badass enough to beat two men to the ground. I actually really miss it and have been looking up karate classes. So you can expect that. And a lot of spitting.
The funniest part of being an actor is definitely having to play opposite to a tennis ball, and there’s a lot of that in this show. Even the spitting is VFX, so we don’t know what so much of the scene will look like because it just isn’t there in the moment. I watched a lot of Marvel films before this.
L’O: Are you really into Marvel?
CD: Yeah, I’m pretty much obsessed with all superhero stuff. My dad would get me comics when I was little so I’ve been following it since I was young. I’ve seen every Marvel film, and re-watched them for Umbrella. Spider-Man is definitely the best of all the superhero franchises.
L’O: Everyone is obsessed with Tom Holland.
CD: That gives me faith in humanity.
L’O: You’ve mentioned that you and Jayme are very similar, but is there any other actor you tried to channel?
CD: I really like Lizzy Caplan’s energy—she comes off like a badass with a hard exterior, but seems sensitive and innocent deep down, with all the qualities of a kid. She’s someone I look up to in terms of the sarcastic girls of the world. Also Aubrey Plaza. I think even Shailene Woodley in Divergent has a lot of soft expressions that are hard to read but they’re still human.
"I think we have to make fun of things in order to not buy into them all the time."
L’O: As The Umbrella Academy is based on the comic by Gerard Way, were you a big My Chemical Romance fan?
CD: I was a goth teen, so the answer is absolutely.
L’O: What do you make of this pop-punk aesthetic revival?
CD: It makes sense. It’s weird because it’s the first time I’ve witnessed a trend return firsthand. I’m now really aware of how everything comes back again—I mean, I would believe people when they said it, but I hadn’t seen it yet. The Internet’s made everything insane.
I had a family friend who was talking about how his teenager was such a slob. He was like, “She never dresses up, I’m worried she’s not going to make any friends because she’s in her pajamas.” And I asked him what she wore and he said, “Sweatpants with a little shirt.” And I was like, “No, she’s like a popular girl.”
L’O: A lot of your writing centers around social media. What is your relationship like with social media right now? Have you managed to be more offline? Do you even want to be?
CD: It’s definitely a love-hate relationship, which I think everyone has. I try to have healthy boundaries, but it’s pretty impossible to not be totally addicted considering the times we live in.
The one thing that gets me off of it sometimes is just thinking about my cat. I imagine she’s probably really bored just sitting there, and wonder how she’s not on a phone during that time. Then I try to imagine a cat looking at more attractive cats all day and then feeling depressed. I have to think about really weird metaphors in order to feel stupid enough to be like, Why am I doing this?
This is why I like to write about it, because being able to make it feel ridiculous gives you perspective. The stakes aren’t that high. I think we have to make fun of things in order to not buy into them all the time. For example, for women to fit the beauty standard now they have to look slightly like an alien. Even acknowledging that is so crazy, and it helps you not look in the mirror and hate yourself.
That’s why it’s so important to have people who look normal on TV. Who don’t have a ton of work done, because no one’s born looking like that. And with the amount of people you see online every day that make you feel like that’s what you’re supposed to look like, of course, everyone feels depressed and wants to change their face.
L’O: You released a book of essays, No One Asked for This in 2020. What is it like to reflect on that time now?
CD: It was a really crazy time to release a book; it was super vulnerable and I’m trying to build up the courage to once again put out really personal writing. With the book, it’s hard to even explain it, but I really did try to be a character. I think it felt safer to not 100 percent be myself, but to portray myself as one of those characters you read and you relate to.
I think in being so deeply honest and raw about how you feel about something, sometimes you go past the truth. Maybe something’s making you feel so intensely in the moment, it feels bigger than it is.
I don’t sit here and think about my life and my feelings all the time, but the book is about someone who is doing that. Obviously the character is me, but it was definitely exaggerated in order to be an interesting read. Sort of like how Holden Caulfield is a horrible guy, but you are interested in reading him because he hates everything so much, and I related to that—in the ways that aren’t problematic. [Laughs.]
L’O: How do you decide what to write about?
CD: If it feels like someone else could write it, then I won’t do it. I’m trying not to look to anyone and to do my own thing. But it’s weird because you’ll go on TikTok and see someone saying something you’re writing in an essay, and it’s like, Is this even worth it? What’s the point? It’s hard to grapple with sometimes.
L’O: Everyone is so plugged into the zeitgeist now that it’s much easier to stumble upon someone thinking the exact same thing you are, even if you’ve never vocalized it.
CD: Absolutely. I was writing about Instagram trends a while ago, and now it’s a trend to talk about trends. I was like, Do I not write this anymore? Because it feels like it could just be made into a bite-sized algorithmic video.
Sometimes I’m asked if I could make an Instagram reel about the essay I just wrote. I can’t! I actually can’t, just because I sound dumb talking to a camera and nobody else does, for some reason. [Laughs.] Maybe I can get someone to pretend to be me on the Internet.
PHOTOGRAPHY Davis Bates
STYLING Jared Ellner
HAIR Kiley Fitzgerald
MAKEUP Carly Fisher
