You may know Natalie Palamides as the sardonic Mara in Progressive Insurance commercials; as an anthropomorphic egg in Laid; as her douchebag alter-ego Nate; or as the voice of Buttercup in the reboot of The Powerpuff Girls. On Saturday night, however, Vogue meets the actor, comedian, and trained avant-garde clown in her dressing room at the Cherry Lane Theatre, where she’s suiting up for the penultimate time as Mark and Christina—the two halves of the cantankerous, Gen-X couple in her one-woman, off-Broadway rom-com, Weer.
Palamides’s look in the show is a bit like the Batman villain Two-Face, but make it Y2K. “It’s three hours total to get into full hair and makeup and then do my warm-up,” she says. Her Mark side requires a black mop wig, a blue plaid shirt, and one low-slung jean leg that reveals star-spangled boxers. “People think I cut my hair. I’m crazy, but not that crazy.” (And then, in her raspy, Natasha Lyonne-esque deadpan: “Actually, I am.”)
She also uses mascara—her favorite is CoverGirl—to accentuate her one unshaven leg and armpit, and sticks on fake pubes and belly hair. “This really affects my fashion game,” Palamides laments. “It sucks, walking around the hot springs in a cute swimsuit with one hairy leg.” For Christina, she secures her long, brunette hair with era-appropriate butterfly clips, and wears a fluffy-cuffed, magenta cardigan with a more fitted jean leg and a sparkly half-belt. She has one set of pink French tips, one gargantuan gold hoop earring, and applies lilac eyeshadow up to her brow.
We encounter Mark and Christina on New Year’s Eve, 1999, quarreling as the clock strikes midnight, before cycling back through three years of their very messy relationship. All along, the audience is asked—amid the chaos and clownish calamity, but also tender and touching moments—to consider both sides, quite literally. You suspend all belief and lock in.
Weer is the first show at the historic Cherry Lane Theatre since it reopened, after a two-year renovation, under the ownership of A24—the studio behind films like Marty Supreme, Lady Bird, and Moonlight. It was a bold, statement-making choice, helmed by an artist at the forefront of the modern clowning movement.
“Sometimes, I feel a little insecure calling myself a clown,” admits Palamides, 35. Originally from Pittsburgh, she’s a graduate of École Philippe Gaulier in Étampes, on the outskirts of Paris. “I respect the art form so much and I don’t want to bastardize it.”
Her friend Chad Damiani, an architect of the West Coast’s contemporary clown scene, encouraged her not to be so precious. “He told me, ‘You’re giving the label too much power. Call yourself a clown!’ [But] the pure art form of clowning is innocent and childlike, and my stuff is very dark, grotesque, and a little blue, which would fall more in line with bouffon—a more satirical offshoot of clowning.”
Either way, Palamides has captivated audiences with her compassionate, tenacious performance style, leaving mouths agape as she ricochets around the stage, pivoting from Mark to Christina, drenched (and drenching some of her viewers) in various liquids. The New Yorker called Palamides “a physical-comedy virtuoso,” and among those who have come to watch are Drew Barrymore, Sabrina Carpenter, Dua Lipa, and Nathan Fielder. (Also, her own parents, who were there opening night: “It’s their fault that I have this sense of humor. They’re both demented and deranged... in a good way.”) In January, she will take Weer back to the UK—where it enjoyed a rapturous debut at the Edinburgh Fringe in 2024—for 10 nights at the revered Soho Theatre’s outpost in Walthamstow, London.
The concept for Weer was worked up from a 10-minute set Palamides did to open her friend Mike O’Brien’s show at the Elysian in Los Angeles. He gave her free rein. “I had this image in my head of a tragic car crash scene inspired by the Pearl Jam song ‘Last Kiss,’” Palamides explains. “I thought that was a beautiful and absurd image. I grabbed a deer head hanging on my wall, a bunch of stuff from my wardrobe that I glued half and half together, and an old steering wheel…we won’t give too much more away.”
Her dressing room includes a little shrine of gifts and tributes from friends: a vintage book of magic tricks, a card from actor Kate Micucci, a gold pendant from designer Susan Alexandra. “It’s worth the reveal,” Palamides says, painstakingly unraveling its twisted chain; the necklace reads WEER. “Cute, right?”
She’s kept to a pretty strict routine and diet throughout the physically demanding show, losing about 20 pounds in the process. Bone broth has been a fixture, as have daily cryotherapy sessions and 20 pre-curtain push-ups. (She demonstrates the latter here and now.) After Palamides’s final show, she plans to order a sourdough cinnamon roll from Loser’s Eating House in Soho.
Palamides explains that she made her right side Mark because in Ayurvedic philosophy, the right side of the body is associated with masculinity. “I really need to work on living in my feminine energy,” she reflects as she glues down her eyebrows. “I feel so often that in directing and creating, you’re calling the shots, you’re wearing the pants. You have to be alpha. But I just want somebody, sometimes, to tell me what to do…in a nice way, of course! Although I know I’d ultimately hate that.”
Sometimes, she fantasizes about a regular nine-to-five, “where you’re more open and receptive,” whereas in creative jobs, “you have to penetrate the universe and be more forceful, taking charge.”
“I just need to learn to balance both,” she concludes, astutely, “in this makeup.”
