Natalie Zea is one of those actresses who elicits a Where do I know her from? thought bubble — not because she's forgettable, but because she's been on so many shows that it's hard to quite place her. She has a recurring role on FX's Justified (her character returns tonight), and she's starring in Fox's The Following as a woman caught between her serial-killer ex-husband (James Purefoy) and the former FBI agent (Kevin Bacon) who caught him. "It's really hard to wrap my brain around it," Zea laughed when Vulture sat down with her for lunch recently. "How could she not know her husband was a serial killer?" To give herself some perspective, she wrote a history for her character ("All this great dark shit about my absent mother") only to turn out to be wrong when showrunner Kevin Williamson presented her with a new script. "There was a line 'If my mother calls, tell her I'm napping,'" she laughed. "That's the problem when you're doing a show that incorporates flashbacks." Not to be daunted, Zea was happy to flash back on her varied career, giving us her favorite stories from some of her TV gigs...
D.C., 2000 & Franklin & Bash, 2011
Zea's first job in television was as a guest star on a short-lived series on the WB (appearing on the fourth and last-aired episode); she reunited with its star Mark-Paul Gosselaar eleven years later to guest on his then-new show on TNT. "We made out on D.C., and Mark-Paul did not remember me!" she laughs indignantly. "I felt really bad. And he felt really bad. I only shot one day on D.C., in Toronto, and Mark-Paul, Scott Paulin [the director], and I went out afterward to this barn where they serve beer and disgusting BBQ, and we stayed out all night until 5 a.m. until I had to get on a plane and go — so I don't know how he didn't remember. But I'm so terrible with names myself, and I've been in some embarrassing situations. I used to tend bar here in New York, and my regulars would come in, and I would have no idea. "You have to be kidding! You serve me here every night!" My friends call me the mind eraser. So I realized, Okay, I'll give him a second to remember. But I do feel bad for calling him out for it in front of someone else. Perhaps that was rude."
Passions, 2000-2002
Zea's first major television role was on the NBC daytime soap opera as one of the actresses playing socialite Gwen Hotchkiss Winthrop, love interest of Ethan Crane, played by her long-term boyfriend, Travis Schuldt. "The shenanigans that were going on behind the scenes would shock and amaze anyone who watched it — all the hookups, odd couplings, and the strange, strange matchups you never would have thought," she says. "I met Travis on Passions, and once I talked shit about him, something about how it felt uncomfortable to do intimate scenes with him because he's like my brother, and he found it, and quoted it back to me. It's now on our refrigerator. We worked together for two years, and getting together was a slow process, but after three years of friendship, it seemed really silly not to make out! And now we're basically married and we own a home. We've been together for about a decade, and we're in it to win it."
Hung, 2009
Zea went topless for the first time for her portrayal of a client who Ray wants to actually date for real — but she just wants to hurt him — in four episodes of the first season of the since-canceled HBO program. "You like to think you're fine with the nudity, very free with all that, but on the day, it doesn't matter how relaxed and groovy you are — it's still a mind-fuck," she admits. "I don't feel as weird about it as much now. This was early on, and the nudity waiver for me was like a dictionary. It was so thick and detailed. This one took two weeks to negotiate, and we have a couple on file now. For instance, I would never do a body double. The waiver is really detailed in terms of language: side breast, nipple, crack. I will not do crack. I don't love privacy patches, because they don't cover up cracks, so they made me a special one. I said, 'Make me a G-string without the string.' It's less about what's making it to air, and more about what they'll see on set. On Justified, I've done scenes completely topless, because I've been there long enough."
Californication, 2012-2013
Zea started her four-episode run as just another of Hank Moody's exes and then became one of the more significant ones by drugging him in the season five finale. "I had been dying to get on Californication for years," she reveals. "It's one of my favorite shows, and I'm friends with the casting director, Felicia Fasano, so every time I would see her, I'd say, 'Let's make this happen,' but there was always a conflict with whatever show I was working on at the time. I was shooting the Person of Interest pilot in New York, I got the Royal Pains offer for two days after that, and then I got a call from my manager about Californication. 'Felicia called. I told her you're shooting two things in New York at the moment ... ' This is on a Thursday, but I don't even have to look — of course I'll do it! This is the only show I've ever done that I've been a big fan of, and that will fuck with you. We do the scene, and then I went up to Tom Kapinos, the creator — and I never do this — but I begged for him to write more. 'Well, you know, you burned down his apartment.' 'Figure it out! I want to keep doing this!' Like he's my own personal Make-A-Wish Foundation. I guess I was empathetic enough, because they were like, 'All right, you're coming back!'"
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