Haley Lu Richardson Found Her ‘Ponies’ Character Inside a Line Viewers Didn’t Get to See

Haley Lu Richardson rejects the favorite scene hierarchy, but loves every part of her character, Twila Hasbeck — including the bits that didn't make it into "Ponies."

Welcome to My Favorite Scene! In this series, IndieWire speaks to actors behind a few of our favorite television performances about their personal-best onscreen moment and how it came together. 

Haley Lu Richardson rejects the hierarchy of having just one favorite scene in “Ponies” — but for a good reason. Every scene playing Twila Hasbeck taught her something about her work and about herself.   

The Peacock series, created by David Iserson and Susanna Fogel, follows two women, Bea (Emilia Clarke) and Twila (Richardson), who start out as the wives of CIA agents stationed in Moscow in the mid-’70s, become widows after a mysterious plane crash, and then become CIA agents themselves in order to discover the truth of what happened to their husbands. 

Twila is the outwardly brash, confident, fast-talking improviser to Bea’s more nerdy, poised, rule-follower (who can actually speak Russian); but their friendship and what they learn from each other help see them both through the increasingly dangerous, KGB-infested waters they need to sink or swim in. Both Richardson and Clarke have talked about how meaningful it was to tell a story that centered on a platonic, supportive female friendship, even with a lot of fun spy shenanigans thrown in. But beyond that, when Richardson read the pilot script, she found a reflection of things she herself was feeling and dealing with in Twila. 

Specifically, she found it in a moment that didn’t quite make it into a scene early in the pilot episode, “Second Hand News.” Twila has a fight with her husband, Tom (John Macmillan), about going to the US Embassy Christmas party without him, because he’s had a job come up. It turns out to be their final fight before Tom gets on the plane that (allegedly) crashes and kills him. It’s the one scene we get that illustrates their relationship, and the level of simmering disrespect, desire, and neglect that all fuel Twila’s bravado and self-reliance. The sharpness and the briefness of that glimpse is very effective in the show, but the longer version they shot had a line that gave Richardson full-body goosebumps. 

“He said something like, ‘You are too much. You are too loud’ and when I read that, it hit me so hard,” Richardson told IndieWire. “I [understood] who Twila is, what’s buried that she’s suppressing within her because of the shame she feels, and why she overcompensates. I relate to this personally. I know so many people, especially women, but also just anyone, will relate to that feeling of being too much and yet not enough for this person who’s supposed to love you. I read those words, and I was like, ‘Damn, I gotta play this woman.’” 

The fight between Twila and Tom ended up being really cathartic for Richardson to shoot, as well. Normally, in a heated scene, actors might want to try and stay in that energy between takes and keep themselves worked up. “But when I was doing that scene, I was sobbing between takes,” Richardson said. “I was releasing so much, for Twila and for me, it was therapeutic. Like, I was sobbing, and then I’d have to get myself together and contain it all to be able to be strong, feisty, biting Twila. It was a totally different experience than I’ve had before.” 

But the whole of “Ponies” was a different experience from any that Richardson has had before as an actor. Twila’s person turns out not to be Tom (RIP), but Bea, and Richardson found that scenes of Twila and Bea drinking wine and scheming through the latest clues they’ve uncovered to be just as interesting and releasing. “I just felt so much freedom as Twila in every single scene. I learned something, and I let something go,” Richardson said. 

Richardson tapped into some things about acting, too. In Episode 4, Twila and Bea need to retrieve a gun and a passport from the corpse of a contact who fell off a bridge into the river. They bicker a little bit about the absurdity of the situation, and Twila has kind of a reflective moment (water pun unintended), seeing a cautionary tale in the fate of a woman who was similarly self-reliant, brash, and tough, the way that Twila is. It’s a long, twisty scene, a night shoot where a lot of variables had to go right — all hinging on Richardson’s performance. 

“I think normally I would’ve been really in my head about that for days leading up to it and trying to stay in it or whatever during it. But I just felt so much trust in my connection to Twila that I just felt things in my bones that I just knew — I would get to the edge of the water, and it’d come time for me to say this weird, out of nowhere, vulnerable monologue, and it would just click,” Richardson said. “I just had a trust with her as a character, which allowed me to trust myself more. [It’s] much more fluid and less tortured to act that way.”  

Richardson doesn’t know if the kind of freedom and trust she felt with Twila will carry over into other roles or if it’s tied to her connection to this specific character, but she’s already noticed how the character has subtly left her mark. 

“My mom came over yesterday, and she was like, ‘This has only happened in the last year, Haley, but you draw out syllables, and you have different facial expressions,’ and we were talking about how it was probably born from Twila [because] I had probably the most personal relationship with Twila of any character I’ve played,” Richardson said.

“Ponies” is still waiting on a Season 2 renewal, but regardless, getting to play Twila, both in her loudest and quietest moments, has been life-changing. “I was playing her at such an integral time where I was going through growth phases that were kind of parallel to what Twila was experiencing throughout the season. I turned 30 while I was playing her, and it was just really impactful for me personally,” Richardson said. “I do feel like she’s lingered. And I’m not mad at it ‘cause I love her.” 

“Ponies” Season 1 is streaming on Peacock.