On CBS’s Superior Donuts, Anna Baryshnikov plays Maya, a college student who frequents a Chicago donut shop.
And since she’s a sociology major, she’s keen on blithely calling out any displays of bigotry or racism by the shop’s patrons — or its owner, Arthur Przybyszewski (Judd Hirsch).
“She’s trying to be a kind, supportive member of society,” Baryshnikov explains. “But being privileged, she can get her foot stuck in her mouth.”
The daughter of Russian ballet megastar Mikhail Baryshnikov and Lisa Rinehart, a ballerina turned writer, the actress is nonplussed about her own distinctive place in society. She makes fun of her name’s pronunciation: “ Ahhhhna — it sounds so pretentious!” Growing up in tony Palisades, New York, Baryshnikov nixed the notion of following her parents’ pirouettes.
An energetic six-year-old, she was plucked to play the fairy Peaseblossom in a local children’s production of A Midsummer Night’s Dream. “It felt like an a-ha moment: ‘I’m an actress!’”
Mom and Dad didn’t blanch — but they did insist that she stay away from auditions until age 16 (Mikhail did emote in flicks like The Turning Point and in HBO’s Sex and the City). “My dad said, ‘You want to be an actress? You should learn how to speak seven languages!’ He used education as motivation.”
Nearing graduation from private Ethical Culture Fieldston School in close-by Riverdale, she enrolled in an actors’ showcase, landed an agent and notched a commercial in quick order. Then, after studying theater at Northwestern, she made her grand jeté into Hollywood.
Guest parts in The Mysteries of Laura and Blue Bloods in 2015 led to indie roles in Wiener-Dog and Manchester by the Sea (as bandmate-paramour of Lucas Hedges) and three episodes of Amazon’s dawn-of-feminism drama, Good Girls Revolt.
Donuts, based on the 2009 Broadway play by Pulitzer Prize–winning actor-writer Tracy Letts, aims to recall button-pushing CBS classics like All in the Family.
“It’s an exciting show to be making right now,” the actress says. There is a downside, though. Her sweet costars — those donuts — “are real .”
A big reader (favorite author: Emma Straub) whose own comedy tastes veer from Charlie Chaplin to Lisa Kudrow in The Comeback, Baryshnikov laments TV’s preponderance of “millennial characters who don’t care about anything.” Right now, what this millennial cares about is getting in touch with her familial roots: “I’m going to make borscht. Wish me luck!”
This article originally appeared in emmy magazine, Issue No. 5, 2017
