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Pajiba 10 FYC: Greta Lee Is All of Us, but Better

By Emma Chance | Pajiba 10 | December 13, 2023 |

By Emma Chance | Pajiba 10 | December 13, 2023 |

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Greta Lee has been quietly appearing in everything for a while now. Her face was one I recognized in the, “What else have I seen her in?” way, but if you had said her name to me before June of this year, I wouldn’t have known who you were talking about.

June was when Past Lives, starring Lee, came out. June was also the month I fled back to my hometown of Portland, Maine, after living in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania for two months. I moved to Pittsburgh in a desperate attempt to shake up my painfully ordinary life, and I left amid a friendship breaking down, my bank account inching ever close to $0, and finally understanding the phrase, “Wherever you go, there you are.”

Past Lives is a movie about love. It’s a movie about memories. This isn’t a review of Past Lives, so I’ll leave it at that, but suffice it to say, I saw a version of myself in Lee’s Nora—a creative, contemplative woman who leaves someone she loves behind and then gets to find them again, and when she does, she mourns the loss of them anew, and in that process of mourning her lost love she also mourns her past self. Everything that happens in Past Lives, including the life Nora chooses, is painfully, beautifully ordinary.

As if giving the best performance in the best movie of the year wasn’t enough, Lee also did The Morning Show this year, because this woman has range. She’s had a banner year for both acting and haircuts. Need I say more?

You know when someone is described as having a twinkle in their eye? Greta Lee is the twinkle. She glitters with poise and elegance and cool-girl charm. She is so ordinary in the best possible way.

But don’t take my word for it. Here’s Lee herself speaking at the Elle 2023 Women in Hollywood ceremony, where she was an honoree:

“And so there is one other person that I would really like to thank, someone I know very well, who has been with me this whole time. I would like to thank myself.”