Isabella Rossellini wants to talk about animal sex, baby

Of all the places I thought my career would take me, never once did I imagine I’d be sitting down to a conversation in which Isabella Rossellini was educating me, in detail, about the inner workings of a duck’s vagina. If 2020 has taught me anything, however, it’s to expect the unexpected – and so here I am, alone at my kitchen table on a dismally grey Wednesday afternoon, listening intently as she fills me in on what must surely be one of the most obscure topics I’ve ever delved into during an interview.

Put Rossellini’s lesson in avian anatomy into context, though, and it begins to make more sense. 

Dialling in from her farm in upstate New York, where she surrounds herself with a bona fide menagerie of chickens, goats, ducks, dogs, and sheep, the model and movie icon is on the line to discuss her new theatre production, Sex and Consequences, which takes a deep dive into the secret sex lives of various animals and their subsequent evolutionary stories. 

“With Rossellini better known for playing femme fatales in films including Death Becomes Her and Blue Velvet, you might be having trouble imagining her trussed up as an insect, dry-humping a puppet, but, as the actor herself puts it, she just wants to make people laugh”

Set to be livestreamed via Zoom this weekend, given going to the theatre is still a no-go for most, Sex and Consequences is essentially a follow-up to 2014’s Green Porno. 

Making its debut at Sundance, the surreal series saw Rossellini don a variety of charmingly lo-fi Rottingdean Bazaar-esque animal costumes and explain how creatures including spiders, anglerfish, limpets, and shrimps get busy when the time comes for them to mate. Cut to the actress dressed in skin-tight green spandex, mounting a cardboard praying mantis, and getting her head bitten off and you have some v funny, wtf did I just watch content on your hands. 

With Rossellini better known for playing the mysterious femme fatale in films including Death Becomes Her and Blue Velvet, you might be having trouble imagining her trussed up as an insect, dry-humping a puppet, but, as the actor herself puts it, she just wants to make people laugh. “Now more than ever seems like a good time to do so,” she adds. 

Here, Rossellini offers up a few titbits about Sex and Consequences, talks tapping David Attenborough up for an apprenticeship, and goes into a little more detail about the aforementioned ducks’ vaginas.

ON SEX AND CONSEQUENCES AND MAKING SEX HER SUBJECT 

“I love to talk about animals, but if I were to cover, say, the digestive system, I think it would be a lot harder to find an audience (laughs). But with Sex and Consequences I’m going more into evolution than I did in Green Porno. Of course, evolution is based on sex, reproduction, and the inheritance of genes, the inheritance of traits. So I talk about how the wolf became the dog, and how the red junglefowl became our domestic chicken, and one thing I found really interesting was how domestic animals and farm animals have patches, so think of goats, and cows, and rabbits, and dogs and cats and they all have spots or splashes which wild animals don’t have. So I look at this a bit, even though specialists in this kind of thing don’t really know why it happens.”

ON ADAPTING TO ‘THE NEW NORMAL’

“Not only do I not have a physical audience, I don’t have a crew. It’s just me and my iPhone 11 and a couple of technicians who are working remotely – this is how it works in the new world of COVID! I was actually thinking of my father (director Roberto Rossellini) when I was coming up with this. He made incredibly moving films during World War II, when Italy was bombed, completely destroyed and totally poor, and stylistically they were very rough, but I think human nature is to reconnect whatever the circumstances, it’s our instinct. So I accepted Sex and Consequences wouldn’t be very slick, because we don’t have the instruments to be slick – you know, Zoom is for business meetings, it’s not really for staging elaborate theatre productions. But we enjoyed silent film before we discovered how to record voices, so why not? Let’s tell a story and connect to an audience with what we have.” 

ON SEX AND CONSEQUENCES’ COSTUMES – AND HER SURPRISING CO-STAR

“Green Porno had some very elaborate costumes, but Sex and Consequences is all things I could make myself at home. I don’t want to give too much away, but I also have a dummy I call my husband who will feature a lot. I think there are four costume changes, and of course, my co-star the dummy (laughs).”

ON ONE OF THE ANIMALS WHOSE SEX LIFE SURPRISED HER MOST

“There are so many that fascinate me, but the female duck’s anatomy is very interesting – she’s evolved a vagina, or whatever it’s called in science, that has many canals that she can control, because male ducks will gang up and and try to rape her. So if one tries to penetrate her and she doesn’t like him, she sends him to a dead end. But if she’s penetrated by a male who she wants to be the father of her baby, she can open up the right canal that leads to her eggs and let him in. It’s literally called ‘cryptic female choice’ – now, isn’t that just so interesting? (laughs).” 

ON TAPPING DAVID ATTENBOROUGH UP FOR A JOB

“I used to write to David Attenborough for a job when I was a girl – I thought I could be his assistant or something. I never got a reply and I’ve never met him in the time since but he’s still my hero. I’ve seen everything he’s done. I love his work and his humour and his demeanour, I love it all.” 

...AND FOLLOWING IN HIS FOOTSTEPS WITH HER OWN BBC NATURE SHOW

“Oh I’d love a BBC nature programme! Never say never.” 

ON WHAT SHE HOPES PEOPLE WILL TAKE AWAY FROM SEX AND CONSEQUENCES

“I hope people will feel connected. We have to make the best of what we have while we’re isolated at home and waiting for a cure. And I want people to laugh, and to come away saying ‘Ah, well I didn’t know that!’ I want them to learn something, and for there to be laughter while they’re doing it.” 

ON WHAT SHE’D DO AS PRESIDENT FOR THE DAY 

“Oh one day is not enough! But I’d be kind, I would try to be kind for sure. We’re so starved of kindness and respect today, so that would do for starters.” 

Buy tickets to watch Sex and Consequences here.