Erik Madigan Heck/AMC
July 18, 2018
In The Mix

The Knockout

A lead in an AMC series seemed out of reach — but with her personal approach, Joy Nash knocked out the competition.

Mara Reinstein

"Nobody has been paying attention to me," Joy Nash says. "I toiled in obscurity right under your noses!"

The actress has emerged from the shadows big time by starring in the dark comedy Dietland, which premiered June 4 on AMC.

Based on Sarai Walker's best-selling 2015 novel and developed by onetime UnReal and Buffy the Vampire Slayer executive producer Marti Noxon, it's the story of Plum Kettle, a mousy, obese New York City ghostwriter working for an upscale fashion magazine. While preparing for weight-loss surgery, she gets caught up in a rivalry between two radical feminist factions.

"She thinks her life will start once she's thin, and she finds that it starts before then," Nash says. "It's a transformation that has nothing to do with her body. And it's an exciting journey."

Nash's own journey is the stuff of fiction. The daughter of a substitute teacher mom and a bookkeeper dad "who made 30 grand a year," she grew up in Redlands, California, longing to act because it meant she could slip into another character's skin. But because of her size — "five-foot-eight and fat," in her words — she spent 17 years searching for quality roles.

"In school I played authority figures and mothers, but once I graduated college, I realized nobody was going to cast me in these roles until I was old enough. People weren't writing parts for fat people. I was biding my time."

She played the mysterious Señorita Dido in an episode of Showtime's Twin Peaks last year, but many of her screen credits read like "stage manager" (The Fosters), "drunk girl" (the short Friday Night at Crystal) and "woman at pool table" (Casual) on her IMDb profile.

So when Nash went online last fall and saw the casting notice for Dietland, she jumped at it.

"I figured there was no chance I'd even get an audition," she says. "But I knew this character. Your body is not your masterpiece — your life is." First she bee-lined it to the address on the ad, only to arrive at a UPS mailbox center. Then she did a Google deep dive, found the casting director's actual location and literally knocked on the officer door to hand over a headshot. Three auditions later, she snared the role.

"I've been on TV for a grand total of five minutes," she marvels. "To be in all the scenes, all of a sudden, that's a big change. It's really exciting and totally surreal."

To that end, she's received helpful counsel from costar Julianna Margulies, who plays the magazine's ambitious editor-in-chief. Having carried her own show (The Good Wife) for seven years, Margulies "said to pace yourself and make time for yourself," Nash recalls. "It's important after an 80-hour work week."

Best of all, Nash is feeling great — about herself and how she spent her first paycheck. "I wiped out all my debt," she says. "Oh my God, my credit score is so sexy now!"


Viewers can catch up on Dietland at AMC.com and on AMC apps.


This article originally appeared in emmy magazine, Issue No. 6, 2018



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