The Vulnerable Edge

John Sedlar

Taryn Manning – actress, model, and musician, all rolled up into one.

By Catherine Wagley

The actress known for her rough-and-tumble on-screen vulnerability is about to take her career in a new direction with a solo album full of grown-up pop

Just over a year ago, Taryn Manning pointed a gun at actor Michael Rady. They were on the set of campy-chic drama Melrose Place and Rady, one of the show's regulars, was playing tentative, up-and-coming director, Jonah. Manning, best known for her wrenching turn as an impish hooker in Craig Brewer's Hustle & Flow (2005), was playing herself: Manning-the-actor in the role of Manning-the-musician. While her music had appeared on soundtracks of her films and she has sung on-screen, the dual strains of her career had never come together quite so explicitly.

The on-screen run-in between Rady and Manning went something like this:


Manning, opening her trailer door: Who the hell are you?

Rady: I'm your new director.

Manning, pulling and cocking a pistol she'd apparently been hiding: Says who?

Jonah, with hands raised: Whoa! Um. . . hold on.

Manning hollers for security then slams her door.


It's a power trip of a scene that, while far from profound, is catching, all the more so given that Manning most often acts the part of the down-and-out, tough-skinned, acid-tongued girl caught in the dregs of a man's world, not the woman who calls all the shots. Even now, she's moonlighting on Law & Order SVU, playing an ex-child prostitute who has to confront her past. "It's a past my character's been trying to forget her entire life," Manning explains.

"There's something that I've mastered," says Manning, who's speaking over the phone from a New York hotel room. "It's like a vulnerable edge, kind of a hard exterior but mushy in the middle."

Because she is currently working on the set of Law & Order and I'm home in L.A., we've had to settle for a long-distance conversation. Shooting went late this morning, so we've pushed our call back and, when we finally catch each other, I half expect Manning to sound frazzled – she's said that the week-to-week nature of TV can make its sets more precarious than in film. But instead, Manning's tangy voice, buffed up with get-it-done professionalism, sounds more or less relaxed.

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