“If I take these home to my kids and they don’t like them, I’ll kill them,” actress Morena Baccarin said.
This was on a sopping morning at Rio Supermarket, a Brazilian supermarket in the Astoria neighborhood of Queens. Mrs. Baccarin, an Emmy-nominated actress, moved from Rio to New York City when she was ten. She still craves the childhood foods such as coxinhas, chicken and potato croquettes, shaped into a golden brown kiss. She placed two orders—one for her, one for her kids—in quick Portuguese, then bit into a croquette, somehow managing not to smear her lipstick.
“It’s not part of my diet, but I can’t not eat these,” she said. “It’s deep-fried and it’s heaven.”
Mrs. Baccarin, 42, had recently come to Rio Market on Friday at the suggestion of two of her cousins, the same cousins who had given her the pink flamingo earrings she was wearing. She had an afternoon shoot for “The Endgame,” the thriller series that recently premiered on NBC. But she hoped to have just enough time to buy ingredients and then run home to make moqueca, a Brazilian fish stew, for her three children: an 8-year-old son, whom she shared with her first husband, producer Austin Chick. , and a 5-year-old daughter and 11-month-old son with her current husband, her “Gotham” co-star Ben McKenzie.
She picked up a basket and began to fill it with frozen cheese bread, bay leaves, herbal teas, and a carton of brigadeiros, Brazilian sweets made from condensed milk, cocoa powder, and butter.
“The kids will forgive me for working all day if I take that home,” she said as she strode down the aisles in a camel-hair coat. Her demeanor was energetic, efficient, self-effacing. Her hair hung like a strand of silk, immune to moisture.
Mrs. Baccarin started acting early – her mother was an actress in Rio, her father a journalist at Globo. “I like to hide in character,” she said. “I mean, sure, it’s me, but I like to pretend it isn’t. I tell myself that I am creating this whole new person.”
So even as she struggled to assimilate with life in Manhattan, she continued to work on it, first at the Fiorello H. LaGuardia High School of Music & Art and Performing Arts, then the Juilliard School. She never felt like she belonged.
“I wasn’t a favorite,” she said. “I had a lot of attitude.” Juilliard taught her technique, stamina, survival, but not how to embrace her strengths or her ethnicity. After graduating, she thought she would take up classical theater; Hollywood called instead. “I felt like I was disappointing everyone,” she said.
She had a breakthrough role as a courtesan in Joss Whedon’s short-lived space Western “Firefly.” (She hasn’t experienced any abuse from Mr. Whedon, but she doesn’t dispute that others have too.) On set, she found that her training helped her process lofty, stylized text and make it sound natural, which probably explains why she found her way into so many superhero projects, including “Gotham,” “Deadpool,” and “Justice League Unlimited.” Her work on the Showtime thriller “Homeland” earned her an Emmy nomination.
Her character in “The Endgame”, an arms dealer and criminal mastermind named Elena Federova, has no superpowers. She doesn’t need them. “What’s really nice about this character is that I’m constantly dealing with people and poking into their weak spots,” said Ms. Baccarin. She also gets to do stunts. In heels.
That day she wore sensible ankle boots, which flapped against the floor as she put palm oil in her basket and then hot sauce for her husband. She saw a 12-pack of soda flavored with guaraná berries. “It’s the best. So sweet,” she said. She upgraded her basket to a cart.
After adding coconut milk, herbal tea, hearts of palm, biscuits, juice, cheese, and a pair of Havaianas slippers for her sitter, she paid and dragged her haul to a waiting SUV. Half an hour later, it took her to her kitchen in South Brooklyn, in the basement of a brownstone.
Growing up, Mrs. Baccarin rarely cooked. “My mother always swore I would never cook for a man,” she said. But as a working actress, she learned to cook for herself and her friends. “It feels like the most caring and loving thing you can do,” she said.
She learned some Brazilian dishes from her cousins, others from cookbooks. Despite growing up in Texas, her husband still taught her a few things.
After she took off her coat, she set down the ingredients, then donned goggles while quickly slicing an onion, which she slipped into bubbling palm oil. Chopped garlic followed, then sliced bell pepper, then leek, a last-minute substitute for lemongrass. “I do it a little differently,” she said.
From the fridge she took a pack of fish and another pack of shrimp that her husband had bought that morning. The shells were still on the shrimp. “Guys never get it right, but he’s so sweet I can’t complain,” she said. The prawns, not yet peeled, went in too, along with a bottle of coconut milk, a squeezed lemon, coriander and salt.
“And bay leaves,” she said. “I’m a rebel.”
She stirred the soup, blew on it, tasted it. She added more salt and coriander and tasted it again. Then she took a sip of a freshly chilled guaraná soda.
“I’m such a typical Brazilian right now,” she said.
