The episodes feature Alicia Witt as a cold-blooded lawyer advising Nelle on how to betray her firm. Witt is a performer who always manages to be a pleasant surprise for me. She generally turns up in things I had no prior knowledge of her being in. When I watched Vanilla Sky again a few weeks ago, I'd totally forgotten she was in the movie and was pleasantly surprised when she turned up in the climax. Witt got her start as a child actress in David Lynch's Dune and had a memorable appearance as Gersten Hayward on Twin Peaks in 1990 at the age of 14.
She had a musical number on Ally McBeal ten years later, this time singing:
The show has really exceeded the plausible number of lawyers in Boston with musical talents.
Earlier this year, a friend of mine lent me a DVD of Dark Kingdom: The Dragon King, a 2004 German television movie based on Norse mythology in which I was surprised to see Witt playing Kriemhild, the badass from the Nibelungenlied. Unfortunately, there was something wrong with the DVD or it disagreed with my player somehow so I was only able to watch a third of it. I haven't been able to get my hands on it digitally from any venue but I'd love to see it, even though it is extremely cheesy with a Xena: Warrior Princess vibe.
Yeah, that's Robert Pattinson before he learned to brood all the time.
The Norse myths are really overdue for a proper film adaptation though Fritz Lang's Nibelungenlied movies from the 1920s remain spectacular, in my opinion.
The 2020s have not been kind to Alicia Witt. Her parents died because their home was improperly heated in the winter and she got breast cancer. She's still working, though. She appeared in last year's lauded horror film Longlegs and she's been recording music. Here's a music video from three years ago: