Actress Laura Niemi chatted with Digital Journal’s Markos Papadatos about starring in “Pool Boy” with Pat Towne, and she opened up about her experience in the hit series “This Is Us.”
Laura Niemi is known for playing Milo Ventimiglia’s mom, Marilyn Pearson, on the hit NBC series, “This Is Us.” “This experience is a gift. It’s one of the best gigs in town. I feel very lucky to be a part of that world. Great people to work with, people at the top of their game,” she said. “Dan Fogelman is the coolest guy in the world. Milo Ventimiglia is just a love, he is a wonderful human being.”
She is currently in the Warner Bros. film “Those Who Wish Me Dead,” starring Angelina Jolie and directed by Taylor Sheridan. “That movie was great. I filmed that in New Mexico a couple of years ago,” she said. “Angelina is a wonderful person to work with as well. She was very down-to-earth, cool, and committed to her craft. She was fierce.”
Niemi will star with Pat Towne in the world premiere production of “Pool Boy” tonight. It is presented poolside at a gorgeous home on Mulholland Drive with a spectacular view of Los Angeles from the Hollywood Hills. This unique theater event will have a limited run on Saturdays and Sundays at 5:15 p.m. starting on July 17, and it runs thru August 22. “I am very excited,” she admitted. “Nervous, excited, the whole thing. All of the things that you are supposed to be feeling.”
“I call it a beautiful date night,” she said. “Everybody gets to enjoy this beautiful view at Mulholland as the sun is setting.”
This covid-friendly outdoor event will be the first site-specific play under the Lost Angels Theatre Company’s banner. LATC, which won the 2005 Ovation award for Tracy Letts’ Killer Joe, is once again teaming up with director Scott Cummins (Killer Joe, Bug), and will mark their third collaboration. Cummins won the Ovation Award for his direction in LATC’s production of Killer Joe. Playwright Wendy Hopkins penned this two-hander comedy, which features a cast of two Ovation award-winning actors, Laura Niemi and Pat Towne.
The play “Pool Boy” is set in Los Angeles during the 2020 pandemic, and house sitter Glenn is looking after an elite home in the Hollywood Hills. Isolated and desperate for human contact, she attempts to make a connection with an atypical Pool Boy. Despite their contrasting personalities and rusty social skills, they forge an unlikely bond in a Covid colored world.
After an inconceivably odd year, LATC presents this unique theatrical experience as a love letter to the “City of Angels,” celebrating its art and beauty in a quintessentially Californian way, with the sun on their faces. “The reason I did ‘Pool Boy’ is that it’s my love letter to Los Angeles. It really is,” she said. “I wanted to acknowledge the elephant in the room with this beautiful play since it addresses what happened last year and how weird we all got. Being able to have a catharsis and laugh at what just happened.”
For young and aspiring actors, she said, “Have a job that will help you support acting through the hard times. Do something else that gives you joy. Just keep the joy alive without having the financial stress of it.”
On being an actress in the digital age, she exclaimed, “I love it. This is fantastic. I get to shoot things on my iPhone, it has been incredible. I filmed a pilot on my iPhone and it came out fantastic.”
She listed Oscar winners Frances McDormand and Sam Rockwell as her dream acting partners in the entertainment business. “I adore Frances,” she said. “I love Sam Rockwell too. Also, directors really intrigue me. It is nice to have scene partners that have different ways of working.”
Regarding the title of the current chapter of her life, she said with a sweet laugh, “Saving the Best for Last.”
Niemi defined the word success as “peace” and “having serenity.”
To learn more about actress Laura Niemi, check out her IMDb page and follow her on Instagram.
