Alia Shawkat has been looking for her first play for years

“Then as the years passed, I never read anything that I loved. It was kind of a timing thing,” Shawkat says about reading a couple other parts that weren’t quite right before You Got Older made its way to her. “It’s definitely asking a lot of me. It’s a big role. But I just connected to the piece immediately.” You Got Older sees Shawkat star as Mae, a twentysomething lawyer who recently lost her job—where she was dating her boss. She’s back home in Washington state to lick her wounds and care for her father (played by Succession‘s Peter Friedman) as he undergoes treatment for cancer. 

This is only the second time Clare Barron’s play has been staged since its 2014 premiere, and that is where the characters in You Got Older still live, even as the world outside has gotten older. But Shawkat describes the show’s themes—themes of “not being able to be present with not only your own pain, but with your family”—as timeless, especially compared to some of her other especially millennial-coded projects. 

“I think with Search Party, we were very much commenting on millennials, but it was of the time. It’s just crazy how, not that it’s aged, but that was capturing a moment and a generation,” she reflects. “And now how different the next generation is from that time and the things they were going through and just the sense of humor and what we were making fun of… it was very prescient. It was happening as we were doing it.” You Got Older meanwhile is about topics that anyone can relate to: Realizing your parents are getting older, and that you’re getting older, too. “The timing of when Clare wrote it, not that it’s necessarily millennial, but it’s of a time where we’re commenting on what we’re experiencing. The way familial dynamics are, the way we’re relating to death, to cancer in the home, how we relate to female sexuality. All these things are very pertinent in this play.” 

But looking toward the future, it does sound like Shawkat wants to do more theater. “I see now how actors who, even if they have these big careers in TV and film, always come back to doing a play,” she says, adding that it obviously depends on schedules and traveling and finding the right project and all the other considerations a working actor has. “It’s very utilitarian almost, like, I’m just an actor! You know, I do a show, go home, wake up, do it again.” As for the future of this show—it’s already been extended once—Shawkat demurs, though she does suggest she’s ready for another New York phase of her bicoastal life. “We relocated here for the play, but I think we’re gonna stay for a while,” she says. “We’re enjoying it.” 

Drew Gillis is the news editor at The A.V. Club.