D'arcy Carden knows exactly what kind of character Luciana is on Loot. She doesn’t hesitate. “Bananas,” she says, laughing. “That’s such a good way to describe this wild lady.” And once she says it, there’s really no better word. Luciana—Adam Scott’s mysteriously glamorous girlfriend in the current season of Loot—arrives with a heavy Italian accent, a slow-motion entrance, and a vibe that immediately sets off alarm bells. She’s too much. She’s too confident. She’s kissing everyone for far too long. Which, of course, is exactly the point.
Carden has built a career out of walking that tightrope between control and chaos, from Janet on The Good Place to her work on Barry and A League of Their Own. But Luciana is something else entirely—a dual character hiding in plain sight, one accent masking another, one persona slipping every time the cracks widen just enough to notice. “When I read this script, I could see it all,” Carden says. “The writers of Loot are so funny. Truly deeply funny people. It really was all on the page.”
Still, that didn’t mean she was boxed in. “They’re really playful and loose, welcoming of ideas and improvising,” she says, careful to add that the improv never meant veering wildly off course. “It’s about sticking with what they’ve given you and not taking us into some new dimension.” For Carden, that balance made the role feel like a gift. “Getting to do this dual character with this reveal—both of them so over-the-top and insane—I just kept thanking them. I was like, ‘This is the gift of a lifetime.’”
The technical challenge came quickly. Luciana isn’t just putting on an Italian accent; she’s hiding a Delaware one underneath it. “Yes, she’s from Delaware,” Carden confirms. “Or Delaware/Baltimore. It’s a little bit of both.” The hybrid came from an unlikely support system: dialect coaching from her friend Brandon Scott Jones, who’s from Baltimore, and from writer Sudi Green, who’s from Delaware. “It was not something I had previously known how to do at all,” she admits.
Surprisingly, the Italian accent wasn’t a free pass either. “Italian is sort of like—we’ve all done some version of an Italian accent,” she says. “But I really struggled with that one too. These two in particular, I don’t have them in my bones.” That meant studying specific lines down to the syllable. “I don’t know if I can improvise in an Italian accent or a Delaware accent,” she says. “I’ve studied these words down to the letter.”
That meticulous prep makes the moments where Luciana slips all the more satisfying. Her first entrance—slow-motion, sunglasses, kiss-heavy greetings—became an instant highlight, and Carden is quick to credit director Carrie Brownstein for the precision of it. “That was her,” Carden says. “She really had that in her mind. The light, the entrance, the slow-mo. When I saw how it turned out, I was like, ‘Oh yeah, you really knew what you wanted.’”
And the kisses went on longer than what made the cut. “There are takes on the cutting room floor where I probably kiss Maya Rudolph for 45 seconds,” Carden laughs. “At one point we laughed in each other’s mouths. That’s where it gets weird.”
As the season unfolds, Luciana’s ambition becomes clearer—and sharper. “You’re kind of like, there’s something off,” Carden says. “There’s no way she could really be…” She trails off, careful not to spoil what’s ahead. “You definitely see more of this woman and her wild brain. She’s ambitious. She’s on another level.”
Working under Brownstein’s direction helped keep that intensity grounded. “I’ve known Carrie for years, but we’d never worked together,” Carden says. “I was always a little quiet around her, because I’m such a fan of Sleater-Kinney.” On set, that melted away. “She’s so giddy about comedy. She’d be behind the monitor just wiggling with excitement. She really knows how to make people feel at ease and let them be their best.”
Outside Loot, Carden’s creative orbit extends deep into music, whether she’s casually stopping Lenny Kravitz in his tracks or singing alongside friends like the Crutchfield sisters at Largo birthday shows that keep expanding into something bigger. “My dream is to be a backup singer,” she says, dead serious. “I love singing harmony. That’s the dream.”
It all circles back to the same thing Luciana embodies in exaggerated form: commitment. To the bit. To the voice. To the confidence of walking into a room and daring everyone else to catch up. And in Loot, D'Arcy Carden doesn’t just walk that line—she sashays across it, kisses everyone on the way through, and leaves you wondering how much of it was planned and how much just exploded in the moment.
Watch the full interview above and then check out the trailer below.
