Who makes up the cast of Russian Doll?

Lyonne is, undoubtedly, the star of Russian Doll, but this is far from a one woman show. The likes of Greta Lee (KTown), Yul Vazquez (Captain Phillips), Elizabeth Ashley (Ocean’s 8), Charlie Barnett (Chicago Fire), Brendan Sexton III (Three Billboards Outside Ebbing, Missouri) and Rebecca Henderson (Orange is the New Black) all appear alongside her, as does OITNB’s Dascha Polanco. And indie film star Chloë Sevigny takes on a “very personal role”, too, in the form of Nadia’s mother.

“Chloë is my closest person in life, and there was really only one person that felt like it was safe to entrust that role to,” Lyonne told NY Times. “Probably the most incredible moment for me was walking home with my little director’s binder in the East Village and watching the sun begin to rise. And I’m like, this is a very different kind of sunrise than what I’ve experienced historically at this hour. This was the good guy’s version of that, and it was deep stuff. Chloë and I had walked those streets so many times, and now it was this world that we had built. There was a lot of gratitude. I just couldn’t believe how things have turned out.”

What does the title ‘Russian Doll’ refer to?

The Russian doll, known in its homeland as the matryoshk, is a traditional toy which features a series of round, rosy-cheeked wooden women nested inside one another

According to TIME.com, these dolls are ride with metaphors as “each smiling doll looks complete until you twist it open to reveal the hollowness inside; only the peanut of a baby girl at its core turns out to be solid.”

Referencing the show specifically, TIME suggests that those layers may equally “represent generations of mothers birthing daughters in their own image” or “the armour a woman deploys as she stumbles through her adult life feeling no more mature than she was as a kid.”

Why Netflix’s Russian Doll is already being hailed as the greatest show of 2019