50 Fun Facts About Russian Doll

Which Harry Nilsson song plays every time Nadia comes back to life at her birthday party in Russian Doll?

Gotta Get Up opens Nilsson's 1971 album Nilsson Schmilsson, and his estate capped how many times the series could replay it.

What hits and kills Nadia the first time, as she runs across the street after her missing cat in Russian Doll?

A taxi strikes her outside the deli on the first night, and in the finale it is Alan who trails her to steer her clear of it.

Which Parks and Recreation star co-created Russian Doll and shares a writing credit on its first two episodes?

Amy Poehler stayed behind the camera as an executive producer, and her company Paper Kite Productions made the series as it had made Broad City.

Russian Doll's second-season finale takes its title from which Russian word for a set of wooden nesting dolls?

Matryoshka dolls date from the 1890s, and although many people call them babushka dolls, that word simply means grandmother or old woman in Russian.

Which Schitt's Creek star joined Russian Doll's second season to play Ruth as a younger woman in 1982?

Annie Murphy, an Emmy winner as Alexis Rose, plays the therapist Ruth Brenner in the past while a stage veteran keeps the role in the present day.

Devin Ratray, the deli customer Nadia interrupts in Russian Doll, played big brother Buzz in which Christmas film?

Home Alone made Ratray famous in 1990, and in the series he is trying to buy a lottery ticket when Nadia cuts in.

Russian Doll's first season premiered on the day before which annual observance?

Groundhog Day falls on February 2, and the 1993 Bill Murray film of that name traps a weatherman in a loop of that single date.

Which New York subway line carries Nadia back to 1982 in the second season of Russian Doll?

The 6 train, the Lexington Avenue local, picks her up ten days before her 40th birthday and later sends Alan into his own family's past.

What is the name of Nadia's wandering cat, which she keeps searching the East Village for in Russian Doll?

Oatmeal is played by a cat called Louie, and the search for him leads Nadia to several of her deaths and to her friendship with a homeless neighbor.

Which platform released all eight episodes of Russian Doll's first season on a single day in February 2019?

Netflix ordered the comedy in 2017 and brought it back three years after the first run for a second season of seven episodes.

Natasha Lyonne says Russian Doll's tightly wound Alan was loosely based on which Saturday Night Live alumnus, her ex?

Fred Armisen, the Portlandia star she dated for years, is in her telling the neat, sealed-up opposite of the chain-smoking Nadia.

Which Oscar-nominated star of Boys Don't Cry plays Nora, Nadia's troubled mother, in Russian Doll?

Chloë Sevigny, who had starred beside Natasha Lyonne in the 2016 horror film Antibirth, was a guest in season 1 and a regular in season 2.

Which actor, later the lead of the film Past Lives, plays birthday-party host Maxine in Russian Doll?

Greta Lee plays Maxine in both seasons and went on to The Morning Show, a role that brought her an Emmy nomination.

Which gold coin does Nadia wear on a necklace in Russian Doll, a relic of her grandmother's lost fortune?

Krugerrand coins, South African gold, were how her grandmother, a Holocaust survivor, chose to hold the family's wealth, and season 2 follows Nadia's hunt for the rest of it.

What does Alan plan to give his girlfriend Beatrice on the night that keeps repeating for him in Russian Doll?

An engagement ring sits in the box he fidgets with, and the jeweler's name on that box is how Nadia tracks him down.

Where are Nadia and Alan when they first speak in Russian Doll, moments before both are killed together?

In a falling elevator, Alan stays eerily calm, which is how Nadia learns she is not the only person who keeps dying.

In which East Village park does Nadia fall asleep beside a homeless friend and freeze to death in Russian Doll?

Tompkins Square Park covers about ten acres of Alphabet City, and Nadia first wanders in while looking for her cat.

What pushed the start of filming on Russian Doll's second season back by a full year?

The COVID-19 pandemic halted the production in March 2020, so the second season reached viewers three years after the first.

Charlie Barnett, who plays Alan in Russian Doll, spent three seasons as Peter Mills on which NBC drama?

Chicago Fire cast him as a firefighter and paramedic from 2012 to 2015, and he later played a Jedi Knight in a Star Wars series.

Which L. M. Montgomery novel, a childhood favorite of Nadia's, does she give to John's daughter in Russian Doll?

Emily of New Moon, published in 1923, follows an orphan girl sent to live with relatives on a Prince Edward Island farm.

Which Russian Doll co-creator ran its first season and later created the Star Wars series The Acolyte?

Leslye Headland directed four episodes, including the first, and is married to Rebecca Henderson, who plays Nadia's artist friend Lizzy.

Which District 9 lead plays Chez, the charming con man of 1982, in Russian Doll's second season?

Sharlto Copley plays Nora's boyfriend, who makes off with the family fortune while Nadia is stuck inside her mother's body.

In Russian Doll's second season, where does the subway deliver Alan in 1962, inside his grandmother's body?

East Berlin is where his Ghanaian grandmother Agnes was a graduate student, and where her friends were planning a tunnel under the Wall.

To which European capital does Nadia take Maxine in Russian Doll's second season to trace her grandmother's past?

Budapest also gave the season its last big location, an underground cistern where the closing sequence of the finale was filmed.

Which real New York group does Nadia enlist to track down Chez in 1982 in Russian Doll?

Guardian Angels wear red berets and were founded in New York in 1979 by Curtis Sliwa, who went on to lose the city's 2021 mayoral election.

Which former talk-show host voices the subway announcements in the second season of Russian Doll?

Rosie O'Donnell is heard but never seen in the role, and she had been a guest at the premiere of the first season three years earlier.

Which series beat Russian Doll, Barry and The Good Place to the 2019 Emmy Award for Outstanding Comedy Series?

Fleabag won four awards at the main ceremony, including the lead actress prize for which Natasha Lyonne was also nominated.

Russian Doll's first-season finale is named after which princess of Greek myth, who helped Theseus escape the Minotaur?

Ariadne gave Theseus a thread to find his way out of the labyrinth, a fitting title for the episode in which Nadia and Alan finally escape.

Whose Piano Concerto No. 4 plays each time Alan restarts his day in the first season of Russian Doll?

Beethoven wrote the concerto in G major, and the production chose it as Alan's own reset cue to set against the pop song that greets Nadia.

Nadia Vulvokov, the heroine of Russian Doll, earns her living as a software engineer making what?

Video games are her trade, and she tackles the loop like a programmer, dying again and again until she can work out its rules.

In which room of Maxine's loft does Nadia find herself again each time she dies in Russian Doll?

The bathroom is where she always wakes, facing the mirror, and the first episode's production design went on to win an Emmy.

What does a homeless man give Nadia in a park on the night they both freeze to death in Russian Doll?

A haircut is his gift to her, and in a later loop she repays him by spending the night guarding his belongings at a shelter.

What kind of religious school once occupied the building where Maxine holds Nadia's party in Russian Doll?

A yeshiva is a school for Jewish religious study, which is why one of Nadia's early theories sends her to a synagogue and a rabbi for answers.

In Russian Doll, Nadia argues that Steven Spielberg's finest work as a director was the first episode of which show?

Columbo starred Peter Falk as its rumpled detective, and Natasha Lyonne is an avowed fan who cites one of his films as an influence.

What are Nadia and Alan seen joining in a tunnel in the closing shot of Russian Doll's first season?

A parade of artists fills the screen as the two split timelines merge, putting the pair back together in a single world.

Which Russian Doll character is both Nadia's party hookup and the professor having an affair with Beatrice?

Mike, played by Jeremy Bobb, teaches literature, and the overlap is an early sign that Nadia's and Alan's lives are tied together.

Which Orange Is the New Black co-star of Natasha Lyonne plays Alan's girlfriend Beatrice in Russian Doll?

Dascha Polanco played Daya Diaz in the prison drama, and several more of its cast turned out for the first-season premiere in New York.

Which actor, Oscar-nominated as Paulie in Rocky, appears in Russian Doll as Joe, a tenant in Alan's building?

Burt Young earned that nomination for the first film and went on to play Paulie in all six Rocky movies through Rocky Balboa.

After Russian Doll, Natasha Lyonne starred as Charlie Cale in which mystery series created by Rian Johnson?

Poker Face casts her as a drifter who can tell when anyone is lying, and as on her earlier series she wrote and directed episodes too.

Natasha Lyonne, the star of Russian Doll, played the worldly Jessica in which 1999 teen comedy?

American Pie took more than $230 million at the box office, and she came back as Jessica for two of its sequels.

Natasha Lyonne co-founded Animal Pictures, a producer of Russian Doll, with which Saturday Night Live alumna?

Maya Rudolph and Lyonne launched the company together, and it went on to make Loot, the comedy in which Rudolph stars.

Jamie Babbit, a director on Russian Doll's first season, had directed Natasha Lyonne in which 1999 cult comedy?

But I'm a Cheerleader was Babbit's first feature, a satire starring Lyonne as a teenager sent to a conversion-therapy camp.

Station to Station, a Russian Doll season 2 episode, shares its title with a 1976 album by which English musician?

David Bowie opens the ten-minute title track with a noise like a train, apt for a season that sends its heroes through time by subway.

Which stage veteran, a Tony Award winner in 1962, plays Nadia's therapist and family friend Ruth in Russian Doll?

Elizabeth Ashley won that Tony for Take Her, She's Mine, and her Ruth is the godmother Nadia consults about the loops and her mother's illness.

Russian Doll's first season was a finalist for which science-fiction prize for Best Dramatic Presentation, Long Form?

Hugo Award voters shortlisted the whole season as a single long-form work, but the 2020 prize went to the first season of Good Omens.

Which real New York electronics chain employs Danny, the man Nadia meets in a 1982 bar in Russian Doll?

Crazy Eddie was famous for eccentric ads and low prices, and Nadia can warn Danny it will not last: a co-founder was later convicted of racketeering.

Allison Silverman, Emmy-nominated for writing Russian Doll, was earlier head writer of which Comedy Central show?

The Colbert Report had her as head writer and executive producer until 2009, and her nomination here came for the episode A Warm Body.

Exquisite Corpse, a Russian Doll episode title, is also a collaborative drawing game invented by which art movement?

Surrealism's founder André Breton said the game began as fun: each player adds to a drawing or sentence without seeing what came before.

Coney Island Baby, a Russian Doll season 2 episode, shares its title with a 1975 album by which rock musician?

Lou Reed opens that album with a song the producers had once considered as Nadia's reset tune in the first season.

Which comedian, author of the essay collection Survival of the Thickest, pepper-sprays Alan in a Russian Doll cameo?

Michelle Buteau plays a woman who takes Alan for a stalker, and she later turned that book into a comedy series of her own.