Aliandra Calabrese
Both photos courtesy of Crème Artist Management
Aliandra Calabrese is an Australian actress. She most recently portrayed Lauren Lowe on Peacock's Joe vs. Carole.
Aliandra joined me via Zoom to discuss the show, her role, and her career.
To listen to the interview with Aliandra Calabrese, click the play button below (or click here to open the audio player in a new tab/window).
And you can watch Aliandra Calabrese as Lauren Lowe in Joe vs Carole on Peacock, beginning on March 3, 2022.
Aliandra Calabrese is a supporter of USA for UNHCR.
If you'd like to donate, you can do so here, via their website.
Click the play button below to hear an excerpt from the interview where Aliandra discusses her charity selection.
Please note that interviewees select their own charity. Any charities mentioned or linked are neither vetted, nor endorsed, by the author or this site.
Mike Reflects
Like I told her, Aliandra was great in Joe vs Carole.
Those of you who have, by now, seen Joe vs Carole might raise an eyebrow at that statement, so I'd like to explain.
Those of you who haven't seen all 8 episodes yet, be forewarned that you may consider some of what follows to be spoilers.
Jeff & Lauren Lowe, played by Dean Winters & (obviously) Aliandra Calabrese, arrive in Episode 6. Dean Winters' Jeff takes on a prominent role in everything that follows while Aliandra's Lauren is, for lack of a better term, rarely seen again.
Her appearance in episodes 6 and 8 is noticeably short, while she doesn't appear at all in episode 7.
But, yes, she was great in role.
I'm not saying this to take away from anyone else—far from it. The acting on this show, from everyone, was one of my favorite things about it. Everyone, at least as far as I could tell, embodied and became their characters—the same characters many of us know from the Netflix documentaries, the podcasts, or even possibly having interacted with them.
But—and this is the gentlest "but" possible—pretty much everyone else in this show had more lines, and more screen time, to show the audience who their character was.
It's harder to embody a character, especially one that people are familiar with as a real person, when you don't have those lines. You have to convey the very fiber of that person's being with just your posture and expression.
It reminds me a bit of the performers in Star Wars that had mime roles. They were generally in full body costumes with no lines and had to convey everything by how they stood & moved.
Aliandra, of course, wasn't in a full body cover, so we could still read her face, but the essence is still very similar. She had to take Lauren and condense her down primarily to a few looks, a posture, and, frankly, an aura.
And she did. Very well, from my perspective.
This show is an interesting one, because, as with the actual people, pretty much no character on that screen is likeable. Note that this isn't a dig against any of the actors. They were tasked with embodying this person, and, well, it's not their fault that person wasn't likeable. The fact that they were just as unlikeable as their real life counterparts meant that they did the job well.
Aliandra's Lauren is no different.
I didn't like Lauren in the Netflix documentary (or anything else) any more than I liked her husband or the other major players in this saga. That is to say, I really did not care for her at all.
Despite having little screen time, and even less lines, Aliandra managed to capture all of those things about Lauren that I didn't particularly care for & embody them perfectly. That personality was in stark contrast, I'll add, to the Aliandra that I spent more than my fair share of time talking to during this interview & beyond it.
There may be some Lauren left on the cutting room floor, and I'd love to see it, but I have no qualms about saying, from what I saw, that she was great in the role, as were all the other actors