Jessie Buckley Is the Existential Tour de Force 2020 Needs

It would be understandable if you didn’t know the name Jessie Buckley a year ago, but that ignorance is about to be unacceptable. Between her breakout roles in Charlie Kaufman’s I’m Thinking of Ending Things and Noah Hawley’s Fargo, Jessie Buckley is quickly becoming the go-to acting force when it comes to the world of cerebral dramas.

Ever since she first appeared on the BBC talent show I’d Do Anything, Buckley has developed a reputation for starring in esteemed projects. The Irish actress starred in the 2016 adaptation of War and Peace, 2018’s The Woman in White, and in the film Wild Rose. The latter earned Buckley a BAFTA nomination. Yet she didn’t become a force in American entertainment until last year when she tackled the role of Lyudmilla Ignatenko in HBO’s devastating miniseries Chernobyl. That’s when she embodied one of this drama’s most depressing characters, that of a mourning wife who visits her first responder husband and risks radiation poisoning herself.

As great as all of these performances are, nothing could predict the way Buckley has been claiming American entertainment as her own this year. She first made waves this fall by starring as the young woman in I’m Thinking of Ending Things. Purposefully disjointed and haunted, Buckley plays the part of an endless series of unhappy girlfriends trapped in an unfulfilling relationship. Exactly one month later she appeared on FX as one of the oddest, most unhinged, and most anxiety producing characters Fargo has ever brought to screen.

Fargo‘s Oraetta Mayflower is a loose cannon in every sense of the word. During the brief time we’ve seen her she’s suffocated the leader of a mob, tried to poison a little girl, and has been as casually racist as she is casually threatening. Any character who sings a hymn while giving Jason Schwartzman an unwanted and completely random handjob runs the risk of seeming too deranged to be believable. Yet Buckley is always able to infuse a painful degree of philosophical musings into even her most bizarre roles.

On the surface I’m Thinking of Ending Things’ young woman and Oraetta Mayflower are contradictory characters. The young woman is defined by inaction and complacency, trapped by a relationship of her own co-creation. In comparison Oraetta is all action, someone who is in a constant state of motion whether she’s committing yet another murder or taking more of her noticeably tiny steps. And yet there’s an underlying desperation Buckley has given both of these women that makes them undeniably relatable. Whether they’re accepting it or fighting against it, these women know they’re stuck in the menial trappings of daily life. They may act despondent or even silly, but each of their actions is tainted by an unspoken existential dread. They lay down or kill because some part of them understands that they will one day die and what they’re doing now may be meaningless.

That’s what Jessie Buckley brings to the table. In a world full of endless tasks and goals, Buckley is somehow able to channel some of the biggest questions in the universe into her work. What are we doing here? Why do we waste so much of our limited time on earth on small, unfulfilling moments? Buckley doesn’t have the answers to these musings. But she’ll keep us asking.

Where to stream Fargo

Watch I'm Thinking of Ending Things on Netflix