It has been four years since Sydney native Yael Stone packed her bags, moved to New York City, launch an experimental theatre company and landed the role of a lifetime. As idealistic Lorna Muccio on Orange Is the New Black, she’s a make-up-obsessed, heavily accented, slightly off-centre Italian girl doing time in the pen.
Being part of the hit Netflix series “has been a huge eye-opener,” Stone tells WHO. “I get kids writing from rural communities telling me thank you, that they don’t feel like nobodies. The more we tell their stories, the more they feel like they exist.”
Stone feels exactly the same about Deep Water, the new SBS series (premiering Wed., Oct. 4 at 8.30PM) she filmed during an extended trip home to Australia earlier this year. In the series, Stone, 31, plays Tori Lustigman, a detective who realises the murder case she is investigating may be connected to a (real-life) string of unsolved murders, bashings, “suicides” and disappearances involving gay men that haunted Sydney’s beachfront suburbs in the 1980s and ’90s.
For Stone, the project is personal. “Well, I do work in the theatre so all my friends are gay,” she laughs. “The issue is very close to my heart. Strangely enough, as soon as I mentioned it to my dad, he was like, ‘Oh yeah, everyone knows about that.’ As if there is this sort of secret history of violence, you know? That’s deeply disturbing to me.”
Stone’s husband Dan Spielman co-stars in Deep Water (“Everyone should work with their partners,” she tells WHO), along with a who’s who of Australian actors like Jeremy Lindsay Taylor, William McInnes, Noah Taylor and Danielle Cormack.
Stone’s husband Dan Spielman co-stars in Deep Water (“Everyone should work with their partners,” she tells WHO), along with a who’s who of Australian actors like Jeremy Lindsay Taylor, William McInnes, Noah Taylor and Danielle Cormack.
Right after she spoke to WHO, Stone was on her way back to New York, where she would hit the promotional trail for Orange’s fourth season and begin preparing to film its fifth.
“I’m learning so much,” Stone Says. “It’s been incredible … but I’m totally exhausted, if I’m being honest. This level of intensity is new for me.”
For more on Yael Stone and the new SBS series Deep Water, pick up the latest issue of WHO on newsstands now.
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