Italian actress and icon Isabella Rossellini, 68, talks about her upcoming show, Sex and Consequences, a one-of-a-kind, 40-minute absurdist comedy about biodiversity and the multiple ways animals reproduce. 

The show will be streaming live from her farm, 60 miles outside New York City, and will feature some of her favorite furry co-stars, including goats, dogs, and a temperamental chicken. Sex and Consequences will also feature videos from her award-winning series of shorts: Green Porno, Seduce Me, and Mammas. With many projects on the boil, she also has an upcoming film, Arrivederci, in which she will play an Italian opera diva, as well as an HBO series about famed chef Julia Childs and a documentary for Sky Art about the city of Pompeii.

The daughter of Ingrid Bergman and Roberto Rossellini, Isabella wears many hats as an author, philanthropist, and the face of Lancôme. On-screen, she is best known for her roles in Blue Velvet (1986), Death Becomes Her (1992), and Crime of the Century (1996), for which she earned a Golden Globe nomination. 

How did the concept of Sex and Consequences come about?

Well, actually it was my agent. He said that with COVID, a lot of concerts were canceled but some of his clients, because they have rooms where they record their music, started to do concerts there for their fans. He thought it could also work for monologues, so I am one of the first to do this live from my house. My monologues are always about animals and they are scientifically correct because I have a degree in conservation and animal behavior. And as I live on a farm, the animals will be my co-stars. 

I imagine those four-legged co-stars might be a little more agreeable than some of the other variety you’ve worked with?

But they don’t take orders, they are chaotic! (laughs) But the theaters are closed, and it doesn’t look like they are going to open them any time soon, so we thought that maybe there is a way under COVID to try and experiment. I kept thinking of my Dad, because my Dad, who was Italian, right after the war when Italy was completely bombed and totally poor, totally destroyed, made films with whatever means he had. He made beautiful films that the critics called neo-realistic because there was a roughness to them. And so I thought of him a lot. So with Zoom, because it’s so beautifully interactive, a lot of people can participate. 

What are the logistics? It sounds complicated.

I am working alone in my house, my director is in San Francisco, I have what is called a Zoom manager that is in upstate New York, and I have somebody that is doing the switching, because I am going to do a live portion, and then I am going to use some of my comic videos that I made about animals. And that person is in Texas. Can you imagine? (laughs) And also the shows are worldwide. We are doing it in four different times zones favoring certain cities, New York, Los Angeles, London, and Sydney, because, through my Instagram, they saw I have people that are following me from these cities. I also have, of course, Italian and French followers but for them, I would have to translate the entire monologue in Italian and French and memorize it, so I said, ‘Let’s start with English.’ (laughs) And when we find an audience then I will do it in Italian, and I will do it also in French.

Tell me more about your co-stars – what kind of animals are involved?

So, on my farm, I have turkeys and sheep and goats and dogs and bees, but bees but are not part of it because they are not friendly. (laughs) And last night the chicken didn’t like to be woken up. I was working at eight o’clock in the evening but she didn’t like it, so we are going to try tonight, but otherwise, we’ll just do sheep, goats, and dogs. With chickens, when they fall asleep, they fall asleep really deep. So when you wake them up, they are totally agitated. I don’t want to torture anybody (laughs), but we will try the chicken tonight again, to see if she will cooperate. 

Which is the most cooperative animal?

The dog, of course. I did a show called Link Link Circus with a dog, and so that dog obeys, and loves to perform, and follows all the orders and she was ready to go. So she’s the easiest one. 

What do you hope audiences will take away after watching your performance?

I would like my audience to have two reactions. The first one is to go “Ha ha ha” – laughter.  And the other one is to go “Oh? I didn’t know that.” So it’s to amuse them, but there’s also a solid science behind it. Otherwise, I would be just a crazy lady talking about sexuality, and that wouldn’t make any sense because this subject is about reproduction. So, it is informative – we laugh, but it is informative. 

At one point you were the highest-paid model in the world, and now you’re back with Lancôme again. Can you talk about that relationship?

Yeah. Well, it’s fantastic. I certainly didn’t expect to go back, they called me 23 years later, (laughs) and by then I’d lost hope. I was very surprised when they called me back. They have a woman executive right now, and when she was young, she was offended when I was let go. I think the younger generation of women were offended by ageism and by misogyny, more so than our older generation who just accepted it because we were used to it. But when I was asked back, I was so moved, I cried.

You have such a fantastic, absurdist sense of humor. I’m assuming you inherited this from your parents?

For sure. For me, my father was ha ha funny, to the point where sometimes you had to leave the room to catch your breath. He was serious, but he was also incredibly funny. My mother had a very, very witty, charming sense of humor – she loved humor. She always said humor makes you survive any problem, that as long as you can laugh about it, it’s a tool to survive and make light and move on, even if you have problems. So we had lots of laughs growing up. Laughter was revered, it wasn’t condemned at all.