Carly Chaikin plays fast-talking young women who are more frightened than they let on, and in Darlene Alderson she found one worth four series. She is the person in Mr. Robot you could imagine actually meeting, which is rarer than it sounds.
Fi1m perspective
Darlene Alderson wears heavy eye make-up, and Chaikin has said the look was hers before it was the character's. It is a small thing and it tells you how she works: she brings herself in, then hardens the edges. In Mr. Robot (2015), among the hackers at the centre of Sam Esmail's drama, she is the one who talks the way people talk, fast and rude and funny, and who lets the fear through only when she thinks nobody is watching. Our review called her brittle and funny and the one who feels like someone you might have met, and we stand by it.
She began with small film parts, among them The Last Song (2010), and made her name as Dalia Royce, the mean girl with the comic timing, in the sitcom Suburgatory (2011–2014). There was a supporting turn in the comedy In a World... (2013). Then in 2014 Esmail cast her as Darlene, and she stayed for all four series, until 2019. That is the part that made her reputation, and it is the only one of hers we have reviewed, so it carries the weight here.
What she does in it is worth naming plainly. Rami Malek's Elliot carries the series on a stare and a voiceover; Darlene is the one who says things out loud, and the show needs her for that. She is direct to the point of rudeness, and the directness is a shield, and Chaikin lets you see both at once without underlining either. We liked her more than anyone else on screen, and the reason is simple: in a series built on paranoia and interior monologue, she is the one character who sounds like she has friends and a phone bill. Chaikin's own description of Darlene, 'She's just honest. She's a balls-to-the-wall girl,' is about right, though the performance is quieter than that suggests.
The question, which even her admirers raise, is whether the manner travels beyond television supporting parts. We cannot yet say. Since Mr. Robot she has worked in independent films and short films, some of which she wrote or produced, she paints, and in 2021 she began developing a television series of her own, Messy. We have not seen enough of her outside Esmail's series to know whether the brittleness and the wit are hers or Darlene's.
Our guess is that they are hers, on the evidence of the eyeliner. Messy is exactly the title Darlene would have picked, and we would watch it on that alone.
Biography
Carly Chaikin is an American actress. Her career began in 2009. She received her breakout role two years later as Dalia Royce in the ABC sitcom Suburgatory (2011–2014).
Chaikin played the role of Darlene Alderson in the USA Network series Mr. Robot (2015–2019). Earlier film credits include Blaze in The Last Song (2010) and a part in In a World... (2013). She has also written and produced short films.
