Rachel Marsh Is Living Her Best Carly With A Y Life Off Screen

After the year that Rachel Marsh has had, you’d never guess the Adults and Love Hypothesis star never considered being in the spotlight. “I was small in stature, small in personality, small in memorability, and small in worldview growing up in a very tiny Christian community outside of Seattle,” she recalls. Being an actor wasn’t even an option.

“I thought everyone was a nepo baby in Hollywood. I did theater and improv in high school, but I didn’t know that that was a way to earn money,” she says as we sit down at a table at And Destroy coffee shop. It’s a surprisingly cool day in October, by Los Angeles standards, and we’re chatting before we head to her comedy show at the Elysian Theater. She may not get to perform as often as she used to, but about once a month, Marsh gets back onstage to flex her improvisational skills.

Marsh took her first improv 101 class in 2017, after she worked “every job” in the book after college (“I imagined myself as a corporate girl”). A few years later, we met as performers at the UCB Theater in Los Angeles. Before the comedy theater and school cofounded by Amy Poehler temporarily shut down in 2020, she was a cast member in a few shows and took the stage weekly. “I really owe UCB every opportunity that I got early on,” she says.

Nowadays, the 34-year-old has major TV projects keeping her busy. Along with starring as Carly in Adults and Anh in The Love Hypothesis this year, Marsh is set to return in 2027 as Claudia in Season 3 of Fallout and Remy in the final season of The Morning Show.

Working alongside a cast of A-listers on the Apple TV series was especially scary for the up-and-coming actor. “There are so many celebrities in that show. Everyone’s so stressed out all the time, but that was fun for me,” she says over her roasted tea. “In a cool way, everyone cared about making The Morning Show a great drama, down to the rewrites that would come in a second before we filmed. It was very old-school in a way that I hadn’t really experienced in comedy.”

We kept being like, ‘This is a good song. Maybe we should try to make it a little bit worse.’

She was also nervous about working so closely with Jennifer Aniston, but Marsh says the Friends star is one of the good ones. “She’s honestly an angel. Everyone was so warm and welcoming.” Marsh is particularly excited to have shared scenes with Renee Rapp, who is joining Season 5 as her return to the screen after taking a break to focus on music in 2023.

In this season of Adults, Marsh also got to dabble in music when her character Carly followed her dream of becoming a K-pop idol with the song “Hiccups (Body Go Crazy).” “It’s so funny the song actually went viral, because when we were recording it, we kept being like, ‘This is a good song. Maybe we should try to make it a little bit worse.’” Secretly, Marsh wanted “Hiccups” to succeed.

It just encapsulates that time in your life in your 20s when you desperately want to find something that you might be good at outside of your 9-to-5 job.

“It just encapsulates that time in your life in your 20s when you desperately want to find something that you might be good at outside of your 9-to-5 job — like how we did improv. We really were trying to find something else besides what everyone else has to do.”

Thankfully, “Hiccups” was so well-received that it hit streaming services IRL in October. Lena Dunham loved it so much that the Girls star asked for one of the “Carly with a Y” tees Marsh took from set. “She has a shirt with my face on it,” she says proudly. The two haven’t connected yet, but Marsh is a huge fan and admits she would love to pitch herself for the Girls reboot. “I really saw myself in Shoshanna, in the way that she has her hands in a lot of different things. I would love to be a manifestation in Shoshanna’s life in some capacity.”

Marsh has shown she’s really good at playing a BFF in Prime Video’s adaptation of The Love Hypothesis. The romantic comedy may be about Lili Reinhart and Tom Bateman’s characters falling in love after fake dating, but the relationship at its heart is between Reinhart’s Olive and Marsh’s Anh.

It would be a really good storyline for Samir and Billie to finally have something, and then it fails because I came back in the picture.

“The friendship storyline has been what people really love about the film, and I feel so honored that people like the way I portrayed her character,” says Marsh. The two may have an incredible bestie connection on-screen, but there was actually no chemistry read in the audition room. “I met Lili when I got to set,” she says. To build their bond, they had lunch in her trailer. “We became good friends, and she’s someone that I really respect. It was very easy to become friends with everyone on that set, because they are all amazing.”

The Love Hypothesis cast is so close that they have an active group chat where Reinhart and Claire Scanlon (the director) share reviews and fan edits. Marsh and Bateman even went to see Harry Styles in concert while promoting the movie in New York City. “I love Tom. He’s my buddy.”

The film hit No. 1 on the streaming service when it premiered in September, and the novel’s author, Ali Hazelwood, is working on a sequel that Amazon also hopes to adapt. “I don’t know anything about it, but I hope Anh’s in it,” says Marsh.

She would also like to return to Adults. When Season 2 ended, Carly and her boyfriend Samir (Malik Elassal) broke up, and it was also revealed that he and Billie (Lucy Freyer) hooked up. Before FX officially announced a 16-episode order to bring the series back, Marsh admitted it was “definitely possible” fans could see Carly again. “There’s some fun to be had with that love triangle,” she says. “It would be a really good storyline for Samir and Billie to finally have something, and then it fails because I came back in the picture.”

Along with manifesting some kind of revenge for Carly, Marsh wants to land a project for herself that scares her. “Whatever way that makes sense, whether that’s just a straight drama, a procedural, or something that’s with people who are intimidating to me. It’s so nice to not be the most talented person in a room.” Her ultimate career goal is to make a “show and only cast Asian people and not talk about it at all.” The Filipina says, “That’s my biggest dream.”

As we sit there daydreaming of what a great show that would be, we realize we’re running late for her comedy show. Tonight, it’s a Halloween-themed monoscene show, so she needs to get to the theater early to change into her magician costume, which includes a top hat, cape, and wand.

Without realizing it, the outfit choice mirrors exactly what she’d told me earlier about why she loves her career. “There’s something so magical about acting. It’s keeping me on my toes in a way that a lot of people don’t ever get to experience in their jobs.”