Cazzie David Reverse Manifested Her Way Onto Netflix
Cazzie David has just recently attended her first fashion event and lived to tell the tale.
“I wasn’t asked about my feelings on fashion, so all was good,” she says over the phone from Los Angeles. The event in question was Chanel’s annual artists’ dinner thrown for the Tribeca Festival, which in general is an event that draws a very cool, in-demand crowd — and she does fall into such category. The 28-year-old daughter of Larry David and Laurie David has been in the public eye for a minute, creating the web series “Eighty-Sixed” and released a book of essays in 2020, yet she hasn’t made a big push into acting until now, starting with her role in the new season of Netflix’s beloved “Umbrella Academy.” Those sorts of things tend to come with fashion party invites.
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“I’m always like, ‘Wow, they obviously had extra seats this year or something,’” Cazzie David continues. “My instinct, while I was walking in, was literally [to] just be, like, ‘Sorry I’m here,’ to every person.”
It’s likely to not be her last of such invites, with the success of the show. (It became the most watched show on Netflix upon release of the new season, taking the spot from “Stranger Things.”)
David had been auditioning for a long time before landing the role of Jayme in “Umbrella.” A lifelong superhero film fanatic, she was already a fan of the show prior to auditioning for Jayme.
“When I was in high school, ‘Heroes’ was my favorite show. I was obsessed with it. Still obsessed,” she says. “And so I feel like [‘Umbrella’] is a similar genre. I was a huge fan, had watched from the beginning. I could not believe it when [I got the audition]. It was the first audition where I was, like, ‘I’m going to do my absolute best to be as negative about this as possible and just see how that goes. There’s no chance in hell I’m going to [get it]. I’ve gotten nothing. It’s not going to be this of all things.’”
Her approach of “reverse manifestation” worked, and she soon found herself on Zoom with the rest of the cast during their two weeks of quarantine upon arriving in Canada to shoot.
“We did a lot of rehearsals on Zoom, and I was pretty quiet on that. I don’t think I spoke the entire 12 Zoom meetings,” she says. “So I think people just genuinely thought I didn’t speak. But when we got on set, they were so, so welcoming, which was not surprising, but you don’t have to be that nice and make people feel that comfortable. They really made everyone feel like they were truly a part of the show, even though they’d been doing this for so long.”
Her character Jayme’s superpower is, of all things, gleeking (with venom), which if you aren’t aware is a form of spitting. It meant David had to spend lots of time researching videos of people doing just that.
“It wouldn’t be like my superpower of choice, but it’s a superpower nonetheless. And for that I’m grateful,” she says. She’d prefer mind control, if it were up to her.
“Which is sick in the bad way, just cause people need help with their thoughts and beliefs and I feel like they need me to control their minds,” she says. “If only they had me controlling their minds, the world would just be such an incredible place.”
David is open to writing another book but remains focused on her film career now, with hopes to finally get a movie she wrote years ago over the finish line. (It’s currently in development.) She’s done her share of “Umbrella” press now and, when asked what the next few months hold for her, it’s clear the Netflix success isn’t going to her head.
“I’ll probably just try to keep writing. Same s–t. It’s ongoing,” she says. “It’ll be the same every summer for my whole life.”
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