Tiny Beautiful Things Star Sarah Pidgeon on Sharing Role With Kathryn Hahn

Days into shooting Tiny Beautiful Things, the cast convened for a workshop led by acting coach Kim Gillingham, who also consulted on Honey Boy and King Richard. The timeline-hopping Hulu show required multiple performers to play each character, so finding a consistent tone was essential. Through some sort of actorly alchemy, Sarah Pidgeon realized that she and Kathryn Hahn — both of whom portray Clare Pierce, an analog of writer Cheryl Strayed — were cultivating a symbiosis even though they weren't sharing scenes.

"Kathryn and I have completely different life experiences," says Pidgeon. "But by bringing ourselves to it, there was a commonality — that live-wire element that Clare has, whether she's 20 or 49. We developed a physical vocabulary."

That vocabulary manifested in the form of touch. When Clare is anxious or annoyed, she rubs her chest — a gesture that Merritt Wever, as Clare's warmhearted mother, also adopted. It's a subtle detail, but it adds credibility to the poignant limited series based on Strayed's essay collection of the same name. In the present-day storyline, Clare still longs for her mom, who died of cancer at age 45. Her marriage and professional life are strained until she starts writing an anonymous online advice column, Dear Sugar. In flashbacks, Pidgeon was tasked with depicting Clare's rich relationship with her mother and her response to the earth-shattering news that the latter wouldn't live much longer.

Pidgeon's years of admiration for Hahn came in handy. The 27-year-old was familiar with Hahn's effusive screen presence, and a resemblance to her helped Pidgeon land the part. She was growing accustomed to auditions that led nowhere, but this one felt special. In addition to Hahn and Strayed, the show was backed by Reese Witherspoon's production company, Hello Sunshine, which also adapted Strayed's best-selling memoir Wild.

Tiny Beautiful Things, developed and co-written by Liz Tigelaar, could be read as a sort of spinoff of Wild, but it exists in a separate universe. "The way Liz tells it, this is what would happen if Cheryl didn't hike the Pacific Coast Trail," Pidgeon says. "This is its own thing, but it was incredibly inspiring to read those texts. Cheryl was so generous with her time in talking to me."

Pidgeon's acting pursuits began at the Michigan nonprofit Interlochen Center for the Arts, where she attended summer camp. After earning a theater degree from Carnegie Mellon in 2018, she moved to New York in search of a career. Things were slow-going. But Pidgeon booked appearances on Gotham and the Paramount+ thriller One Dollar, and then came Prime Video's The Wilds. That show's plane-crash intrigue never reached Yellowjackets’ popularity, but it nonetheless provided a decent foothold in the industry.

Pidgeon recently wrapped production on the Vertical movie Lazareth, starring Ashley Judd as an isolationist trying to protect her orphaned nieces. For Pidgeon, the impact of Tiny Beautiful Things still looms large. "It really made me confront my own life and the emotions that I carry with me," she says.

This story first appeared in a June stand-alone issue of The Hollywood Reporter magazine. To receive the magazine, click here to subscribe.