Wiig plays the agency's media director in The Martian, a role written as the person who must explain an unfolding catastrophe to the public. She plays exasperation rather than jokes, and the film's comic register depends on her treating an absurd situation as a professional problem.
She came from improvisational comedy and a long run on a live American sketch series, where she developed a large repertoire of characters. She writes as well as performs, including a comedy screenplay that drew an Academy Award nomination, and she has increasingly taken dramatic roles alongside the comic work.
Recurring subjects: social discomfort, women holding themselves together in public, and comedy built on characters who are almost, but not quite, coping. She plays awkwardness with real precision and never asks the audience to enjoy it, and her dramatic work uses exactly the same technique with the laughs removed.
Her sketch characters are among the most recognised of their period, and the ensemble comedy she co-wrote is credited with changing what studios believed a female led comedy could earn at the box office. Her move into dramatic work has been steady rather than sudden, and it draws on exactly the same skills.
For viewers who want comic performers doing straight material. Suited to anyone approaching the survival film, and to those who should follow it with the ensemble comedy she co-wrote herself.
