Reiner is perhaps best known for her portrayal of Natalie “Fig” Figueroa on Orange Is the New Black, but she’s a prolific actor on both screen and stage, with a co-starring role in the SAG Award-winning film Sideways, on TV dramas like How to Get Away With Murder and Shining Vale, and in the Obie Award-winning play An Oak Tree. More recently, she joined the Marvel Universe (there’s that superhero thing again) playing Agent Sadie Deever on Ms. Marvel.
Even over Zoom, with the camera off, Reiner practically vibrates with energy as she discusses her work — and what she can and can’t say about it, thanks to the SAG-AFTRA strike (which was ongoing when this interview was conducted). Reiner has three movies on the festival circuit right now, but can only talk about one, "because they have an interim agreement, and it's called The Feeling That the Time for Doing Something Has Passed."
She can also talk about the play she’s currently rehearsing, the Pulitzer Prize-nominated docu-drama War Words, which premiered November 14.
Reiner calls rehearsing “such a joy because I actually know where I'm going to be for 8 hours a day,” but it’s also a joy because it’s a professional reunion with her husband in a play she finds deeply meaningful. Also: Amid a months-long strike that has kept screen actors largely unemployed, it’s a privilege to be working.
“I think everyone and their mother wants to do theater right now,” she says, “and my sweet husband got an audition for this show. And he read it. And in the play, the character he was auditioning for has a wife who's also in the military. And he's like, ‘Babe, you should ask about this.’” Reiner did and was told the role had already been cast. But the following week, they offered it to her, and Basche was offered the husband role.
For Reiner, it feels like a full circle moment: The couple met doing Shakespeare in Vermont when she was Olivia and he was Sebastian in Twelfth Night but haven’t been on stage together since Livia was born. “We love it,” she says of working together. “You know, we've acted together and produced together — which is a lot harder. So when we both just get to be actors, it's so delightful.”
lysia Reiner is in the superhero phase of her life, and it’s showing itself in every way. It’s a late October
afternoon and the actor, activist, speaker, producer, and self-described “eco-mom” is in transit as we talk.
“It’s been a day,” she says, half-jokingly struggling to recall and recite exactly what she’s done, from a
morning SoulCycle class to a writing session with a friend for a “top secret” TV pilot to a meeting with the president of Susan G. Komen, to lunch with a producer from Orange Is the New Black and a call to discuss a fundraising screening of Equity, a 2016 movie that she starred in and produced. And then of course, this interview.
“I'm a very forward-thinking person, so once something's over, I shed it,” she explains. “I literally had to look at my calendar to tell you [all] that because I can't keep up with my own life.”
Reiner’s day isn’t done, either; she’s heading to her Harlem, New York, home to make a lasagna for her husband, actor David Alan Basche, and their 14-year-old daughter, Livia — and it’s not just any lasagna. Reiner goes into rich detail about the protein-packed meal she’s going to make. While some people perfected sourdough during the COVID pandemic, Reiner perfected a vegetarian pasta dish that’s centered on organic green lentil noodles that she layers with “lots of kale and yummy veggies” and cheese, and maybe tomato sauce or pesto made with fresh basil from the garden. “I think we're gonna go green tonight,” she says, and when I laughingly ask what time I should come over, she doesn’t skip a beat. “You're welcome anytime. I am that girl; seriously, I'm that girl. Any time.”
It’s no wonder that Reiner is hungry, following a jam-packed day that called for super energy — if not superpowers — to get through. And did we mention it’s her day off?
Still, if her roles on stage and screen get Reiner buzzing, it’s her work as an innovator offscreen that really gets her fired up. “I LOOOOVE working as a change maker for women,” she writes on her website. And in that arena, Reiner is just as prolific as she is in her professional life, focusing on — but certainly not limited to — women’s rights and climate change initiatives. A proponent of healthy green living, she founded an eco-fashion initiative called Livari, is an advisor for a forthcoming brand called Air Protein (“It is exactly what it sounds like,” she says), and is the face of a zero-waste beauty brand called IZZY.
“Innovation is something I'm thinking about all the time, as an artist and a human and a mother in our world today,” she says. “I think about it most in reference to climate; [that’s] where it feels the most important, or life-or-death, or crucial — whatever word you want to use — and a bit of an imperative. So I'm always excited to celebrate innovation that can change the world and to be an advocate and a champion for those things.”
The thing about innovation, she continues, “is it inspires others, right? So when there's the first-ever zero waste beauty brand, it inspires someone else to think outside the box in that new way.”
Bringing her two worlds together, Reiner is also making a short film with a friend right now that focuses on the climate crisis, in which she has a tween who’s a climate doomsayer.
“It's a very scary time for a lot of people, including me,” she admits. “And I feel like it is my job as a human being on this planet to be part of the solution every day, and to really dig into, what does that look like?”
For Reiner, it looks like showing up — championing small businesses and startups, serving her community as a volunteer firefighter, being a foster parent, singing in the Resistance Revival Chorus, volunteering… “all of these ways that I love to show up to be an activist around change, you know, which is really what innovation is.”
When there’s so much work to do on so many issues, so many wrongs in the world to try and right, Reiner doesn’t worry about having a shotgun approach to activism — not even for a second. Even the idea that she should be dedicated to just one cause makes her flare with anger.
“I don't do this for my fucking brand, I do this because I care about the world. And no, sorry, I refuse to choose,” she says. So there’s her work on climate and women's rights — she’s on the board of directors of the Geena Davis Institute on Gender in Media — but she's also dedicated her time to causes like hunger, immigration, changing policies around incarceration and supporting the cancer community. (Reiner had a cancer scare when she was younger, and a couple of years after giving birth to Livia had an abnormal pap smear and underwent a LEEP procedure, so cervical cancer prevention is a cause close to her heart as well.)
So choosing just one? Hard no. “That's not how the world works,” she says. And here, she brings up another cause — one that’s deeply personal. “Antisemitism is rampant in this moment,” she says. “And as a Jewish woman who deeply believes in freedom and equality for all—including Palestinians, of course—we need to talk about the fact that Jews are being targeted. Fighting antisemitism has never been a cause of mine, but in this moment, nobody else is talking about it, and that’s not okay.”
ALYSIA
REINER
by ERIKA JANES | photographs by GEORGE CHINSEE
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Innovation is something I'm thinking about all the time, as an artist and a human and a mother in our world today. I think about it most in reference to climate; [that’s] where it feels the most important, or life-or-death, or crucial — whatever word you want to use — and a bit of an imperative. So I'm always excited to celebrate innovation that can change the world and to be an advocate and a champion for those things.
ALYSIA REINER
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It's a very scary time for a lot of people, including me. And I feel like it’s my job as a human being on this planet to be part of the solution every day, and to really dig into, what does that look like?
ALYSIA REINER
Acting The Part
Blazing A Path Forward
Another Superhero Role
by Aramide Tinubu | photographs by Bertram Knight
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The actor, activist and eco-mom is fighting climate change — and actual fires, too.
Is a Woman On Fire
Reiner’s all-in attitude about activism, advocacy, and giving back took her in an unexpected direction following the COVID pandemic. During the early days of quarantine, her family found a soft (if somewhat remote) landing on Fire Island, a narrow strip of land off the south shore of Long Island that’s a hot spot during the summer, but has a population of less than 500 people year-round. Reiner calls it her Little House On the Prairie experience, “where we were living in this tiny, tiny village with maybe 10 other families on the whole part of the island.” There were no stores, no cars, and a once-a-day ferry. It was all welcome isolation and self-sufficiency, aided by Amazon.
“I feel like that place saved my life physically, emotionally, and spiritually,” she says. “And when that time was over, I really wanted to give back to that community. And because there's no hospital, no doctor, no police, there's just volunteer firefighters, I was like, ‘Oh, I want to be part of who you call when you have an emergency.’”
Reiner admits she went into it not knowing exactly what it entailed when she embarked on the path in 2021; it turned out to be passing the same intense, grueling test that any hopeful FDNY firefighter has to pass: “Carrying 80 pounds of equipment on our back and climbing ladders with tools and all the things,” she says, as well as a 4-hour written exam.
Never strong at standardized tests, Reiner flunked it. “It was my first time failing in a very long time,” she says. “I was physically beaten up from the experience, and I was emotionally bruised from failing that first test.” Sobbing to her best friend, she received some sage advice: “‘Do your absolute best — and if you fail, it will be one of the best things you could ever do for your child. To show her, you can try really, really hard and do your best and still fail, and that happens in life.’ And I was like, Okay. And that's what I did. And the day I passed my exam, I called her and said, ‘I'm a firefighter, but I just failed as a mom.’ We had a good laugh about it.”
So the vulnerability, the discomfort — it was all good, all part of a personal innovation that feels right for Reiner today. When she celebrated her most recent trip around the sun this past July, she took to Instagram. “Birthday selfie. No makeup. No filter. No filler. Wrinkles, freckles (sun damage), grey hair & cellulite included. My birthday present to myself is cultivating more self love and worthiness AS IS,” she wrote.
But ask Reiner, a proud and newly minted Marvel Universe member, about her superpower, and after being stumped for a minute — “I want to outsource that,” she says with a laugh — she comes back to compassion: “I think my biggest superpower is love,” she says. “If I'm really honest, my ability for unconditional love, including forgiveness, is my number one superpower because it's what helps me get back up in the darkest, darkest times. I can always find a way to see the love, to look for the love, and to look for ways to love on the world.”
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I feel like [Fire Island] saved my life physically, emotionally, and spiritually…I really wanted to give back to that community. And because there's no hospital, no doctor, no police, there's just volunteer firefighters, I was like, ‘Oh, I want to be part of who you call when you have an emergency.
ALYSIA REINER
ALYSIA
REINER
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It's a very scary time for a lot of people, including me. And I feel like it’s my job as a human being on this planet to be part of the solution every day, and to really dig into, what does that look like?
ALYSIA REINER
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It's a very scary time for a lot of people, including me. And I feel like it’s my job as a human being on this planet to be part of the solution every day, and to really dig into, what does that look like?
ALYSIA REINER
A
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