‘Lady in the Lake’s’ Natalie Portman and Moses Ingram on their special connection to the film

Of the many things Natalie Portman has done in her career, starring in a TV series hasn’t been one of them, until now. She stars opposite Moses Ingram in the new Apple TV+ drama Lady in the Lake, premiering Friday. The show follows the very different lives of two women, one Black, one Jewish, in Baltimore in the 1960s — two very different lives that share some striking similarities.

Portman tells ABC Audio that when this role came about she had been in the process of researching her family tree, leading to a discovery that gave her a special connection to the role.

“I discovered … the immigration papers of my family when they moved from Eastern Europe to Baltimore and the addresses where they lived in census data,” she shares. “And walking into the Jewish deli that still exists after 100 years thinking, like, my great grandmother probably came here and bought her meat.”

Ingram is actually a Baltimore native, and noted show creator and director Alma Har’el “would have people from the community come and set up chairs and watch. And so we were all there together, you know. It was really beautiful.”

Har’el says telling Jewish stories is very important right now: “I think as a Jewish person you are a living contradiction … in some ways, you are a person who can easily be shunned, persecuted, seen in the wrong light, stereotyped. And at the same time, you can also be an oppressor … somebody who is tone-deaf to your assimilation into white America or privilege or however you want to call it. So there’s a lot of duality in that existence. And I think that’s very relevant to our time.”