“I’m not everyone’s cup of tea,” Patricia Arquette admitted during a recent interview. It’s instructive to ponder why that might be.
Arquette also spends about a third of her time on activism. In her Oscar acceptance speech, she made a passionate plea for equal pay for women. On Twitter, she’s an outspoken Democrat who calls out political hypocrisy, and an advocate for transgender rights and community arts programs. You would think that a public face for equal pay would get job offers that were scrupulously fair, but that’s not the case, Arquette says – not in the first project she was offered after, nor in one she was offered last year. She’s sitting back in a comfy-looking chair, pale skin and blond hair glowing. Her voice is an ASMR dream,“It’s not all about the money, but it’s fair to ask for what you’ve earned,” she says matter-of-factly.
“I don’t know that I’m consciously drawn that way,” Arquette demurs. Then she laughs. “Although I am shooting something now” – the black-comedy series, also for AppleTV+, directed by the distinctly political Jay Roach – “where my character has some scary aspects in her personality that aren’t usually what we think of in a woman. She’s failed at things women usually make their priority.