Cristin Milioti Does “Weird, Morbid Chick” Better Than The Rest

Cristin Milioti has officially found her calling.

The actor, whose career kicked off in 2006, is known for impressive, wide-ranging work in popular series and films including The Sopranos, How I Met Your Mother, The Mindy Project, Fargo, and The Wolf of Wall Street. She’s got serious range, but the four major roles she’s had since 2020 prove Milioti’s found her niche as the Queen of Darkness and Vacation Dramedies™.

Milioti’s starring roles in Peacock‘s new mystery series The Resort and the 2020 sci-fi rom-com Palm Springs mark her glorious Palm Tree Era; a moment in her career when she’s absolutely slaying the on-screen tourist game. And her performances in both — along with those in HBO Max’s dark sci-fi dramedy Made for Love and the “A Dark Quiet Death” episode of Apple TV+’s Mythic Quest — prove she’s mastered the art of playing cynical, brooding, unconventionally morbid characters.

In The Resort, Milioti plays Emma, a high school teacher who’s grieving the loss of her child while feeling stuck in her 10-year marriage to husband Noah (William Jackson Harper). After the two embark on an anniversary getaway, Emma realizes how miserable she is — even in paradise — until she finds an old cell phone in the jungle that belonged to a teen who disappeared 15 years earlier. Once Emma gets her hands on the relic and starts investigating the tragic circumstances surrounding it, her eyes light up for the first time.

After a little research, Emma tries to communicate the thrills of this bizarre mystery for her husband. With concerning levels of passion, she explains, “Now here’s where things start getting really fucking crazy. After the hurricane, this naked dead guy washes up on the shore, but his body is so badly mutilated, his corpse is like unidentifiable, they can’t figure out who it is, they can’t even determine what it is that killed him.” In the middle of an idyllic, relaxing resort, the only thing even remotely impressing this woman is the idea of a gruesome murder and two missing kids. It’s a confusing, dark as hell truth. But one Milioti sells every step of the way.

The unique Peacock series was created by Palm Springs writer Andy Siara, who clearly knows Milioti thrives in vacation comedies. In Palm Springs, Milioti plays Sarah opposite Andy Samberg’s Nyles. After the two get trapped in an infinite time loop situation, Sarah reluctantly looks inward and marinates in her flaws in hopes that a little self-improvement will free her from her Groundhog Day hell. She considers herself “a liability who fucks around and drinks too much,” is fiercely set in her ways, and like Emma, is feverishly turned on by calamity. At one point in the film she exclaims, “This is so fucked up. It’s kinda hot though.” And honestly? Milioti was born to deliver that line.

Meanwhile, in Mythic Quest, Milioti’s edgy “A Dark Quiet Death” character, Bean, also gets off on gruesome revelations. As a video game designer working alongside Doc (Jake Johnson), Bean shows up to work looking like she just dropped some serious dollars at Hot Topic. She keeps a bouquet of black flowers on her desk, rocks black lace and a handcuff necklace, and lives to create dreary games that accurately reflect life’s less than glamorous realities. When Doc shows her a beautiful office space, Bean is set against moving in, until she learns the floor is “cursed” because 40 workers once died in a fire there. She listens to the tragic tale like it’s the dreamiest story she’s ever heard, before excitedly yelling, “We’ll take it!” Later, Doc calls her a “weird, morbid chick,” a spot-on description that’s become Milioti’s specialty.

Made for Love finds Milioti channeling her inner turmoil once again as Hazel, another woman trying to escape a 10-year marriage. This time, however, she’s not bored by a safe nice guy, she’s running from a manipulative tech billionaire who implanted an invasive chip in her brain. Yikes! Milioti’s portray of Hazel is complex and nuanced. She’s a hot mess in distress who’s depressed and pissed off, but she’s also fighting back fear while refusing to give up her smallest shreds of hope.

In some ways, it feels like Milioti’s spent the past two years playing slightly different iterations of the same character. But when she repeatedly perfects strong-minded, independent, high-key jaded, low-key eerie women with delightfully dry senses of humor and dreams of defying expectations, who could ask for anything else? If Milioti plays a character who shares the screen with a palm tree, is heavy-handed on the black eye-liner, or has a borderline unhealthy obsession with all things ghastly, it’s an automatic watch for me.

No one embodies a dark, weird, morbid chick better than Milioti. So I’ll happily watch her play this part a dozen more times.