Cleopatra Coleman started with pink, swirling it towards pink with a fine-tipped brush. An oval appeared on the paper, after which smaller marks joined it — ears, eyebrows, a line for a nostril. “I at all times draw this lady,” Coleman stated. “I don’t know why.”
This was on a vibrant Might morning and Coleman, a star of the FX restricted sequence “Clipped,” premiering Tuesday on Hulu, was at Blissful Medium, an artwork cafe across the nook from her non permanent condo in Greenpoint, Brooklyn. She had handed it on walks along with her canine, George, a rescue Yorkiepoo, and had typically felt jealous of the shoppers there at evening, on dates. So this morning, on a time without work from filming a brand new sequence, “Black Rabbit,” she had taken herself on a date. She had even dressed for the event, in a thrift-store T-shirt with a New York State Summer time Faculty for the Arts emblem. Charcoal and pottery tempted her, however she settled on watercolor.
To the image, Coleman, 36, added an extended neck, small breasts, two enamel. Extra colours got here — purple, sundown orange, hints of inexperienced — all representing completely different feelings. Then she took a contemporary sheet and commenced once more, portray the identical determine in several shades. Because the early days of the pandemic, she has drawn and painted this lady lots of of instances.
“It’s at all times the identical lady,” she stated.
In her skilled life, Coleman is nearly by no means the identical lady. An actress since her teenagers, she has bounded amongst genres and types. Although her look is distinct — excessive brow, full lips, limpid brown eyes — she is commonly almost unrecognizable from one position (“The Final Man on Earth,” say, or “Dopesick”) to the following (“Infinity Pool,” “Insurgent Moon”). It’s a versatility that has allowed her to remain comparatively nameless. However given her audacious efficiency in “Clipped,” as V. Stiviano, the non-public assistant to Donald Sterling, the disgraced former proprietor of the N.B.A.’s Los Angeles Clippers, and the promise of “Black Rabbit,” a starry drama set on the planet of Manhattan nightlife due out subsequent yr, Coleman’s title and face are about to change into a lot better identified.
