Brienne Rose interview: ‘Russian Doll’ music supervisor

Music supervisor Brienne Rose gave the second season of “Russian Doll” a distinct musical tapestry. While Season 1’s soundtrack had a timeless feeling, evoking the time loop structure, Season 2 found Nadia (Natasha Lyonne) and Alan (Charlie Barnett) traveling to different time periods. “Because we’re time traveling I think there was more of an effort for us to use music in a way that time-stamped a little bit more,” says Rose in an exclusive new interview for Gold Derby. “We needed those songs to still capture the ‘Russian Doll’ world and capture the characters’ persona but be of the era.” Watch the full video chat above.

While the first season had the repeating theme of Harry Nilsson‘s earworm “Gotta Get Up,” Season 2 doesn’t have a song that repeats to such a significant degree. However, at different points in the season, we hear two different versions of Depeche Mode‘s “Personal Jesus” and two songs by Pink Floyd, which Rose suggests are essentially the main themes of the season. She notes that both bands are “different cultural touchstones in their own right,” with Depeche Mode representing the show’s gothic feel and Pink Floyd as its mind-bending, psychedelic themes. The latter band is extremely selective about licensing their music, so it was particularly huge to get two tracks from them — “The Thin Ice,” which plays during the Episode 6 train sequence, and “Shine On You Crazy Diamond,” the closing song of the season.

Of course, we do also get a recurrence of “Gotta Get Up,” which is heard at the end of Episode 6 and the beginning of the finale. While there were some discussions about dropping the song earlier in the season, it felt more appropriate to deploy it as Nadia had returned from her time-traveling journey. “I think it was always in the cards,” explains Rose, “but we had to make sure once we were in the edit and once everything was coming together that that was going to really work and feel like it fit the story.”

“Russian Doll” isn’t the only show that can call Rose its music supervisor. This TV season, she has lent her expertise to numerous shows, including “Emily in Paris,” “Minx,” “The Other Two” and “Search Party,” each with their own unique difficulties. “Any show that really has a great challenge of music where you just get to dive in and get granular and get very excited about all the pieces, I think that that those are my favorite shows to get to work on,” she states. “It’s the best job.”