Rachel Marsh is having the kind of screen moment that can change the temperature around an actor fast.
The 34-year-old actress is stepping into Prime Video’s romantic comedy The Love Hypothesis, playing Anh, a graduate student and best friend to Lili Reinhart’s Olive, in the streamer’s adaptation of Ali Hazelwood’s widely read novel. At the same time, Marsh’s work as Carly in Adults has taken on a life of its own thanks to a fake K-pop track, “Hiccups (Body Go Crazy),” that has been circulating with viral force over the last month.
For Marsh, both projects share a welcome throughline: funny women being allowed to matter. “I love anytime women are funny,” she said. In The Love Hypothesis, that meant making sure Anh was not flattened into a familiar rom-com sidekick type. Director Claire Scanlon and writers Sarah Rothschild and Hazelwood were not interested in simply reworking the “quirky best friend” trope, and Marsh has been clear that Anh’s function in the story goes beyond comic relief.
“She is important in this story,” Marsh told The Hollywood Reporter during a recent Zoom interview. “She also is funny.”
Marsh described the friendship between Anh and Olive as central to the film, and said that dynamic was also foundational in Hazelwood’s book. She and Reinhart built that relationship during the shoot in Montreal, where Marsh said the off-screen connection helped feed the on-screen one.
“Building that trust was pretty easy. Lili is so amazing. She’s so sweet,” Marsh said. “She’s such a good actor and a great scene partner. It was really fun for us to get to develop their best friendship over the course of the summer in Montreal.”
Marsh had known of Hazelwood’s book before joining the movie, saying she had seen it in airports and bookstores and recognized it as a long-running top seller. She had not read it before booking the role, which she said allowed her to come to the material without a firm preconception and then discover the connections between the novel and the script.
The first fan screening for The Love Hypothesis had already taken place when Marsh spoke about the film, and she said the early response made her more excited for its release on the 23rd. “The first batch of people saw it, and they really like it,” she said.
A viral K-pop detour on Adults
If The Love Hypothesis puts Marsh inside a beloved literary adaptation, Adults has given her a very different kind of attention. On the series, she plays Carly, the girlfriend of Samir, played by Malik Elassal. The role has recently gained added visibility because of “Hiccups (Body Go Crazy),” a fake K-pop song featured in the show.
Marsh said the idea began with a call from series co-creator Ben Kronengold, who told her the show was considering making Carly a K-pop star and asked whether she would be comfortable with it. Her response, as she recalled it, was enthusiastic.
“I was just tears in my eyes, full body chills,” she said jokingly. “No one’s ever asked me this before. My dream.”
Former Saturday Night Live video director Paul Briganti directed the sequence, bringing what Marsh described as music-parody energy to the scene in which Carly shoots a video for the song. Marsh said Briganti encouraged her as she tried exaggerated hand movements and facial expressions, a process she loved.
The song also seems to have awakened a mock-pop-star confidence in Marsh. “It sparked something in me, which I think every single girl has. Where I wondered, ‘What if I can sing and I just haven’t been vocally produced in the right way,’” she said.
There is also more “Hiccups” material that viewers have not seen. Marsh said an entire choreographed version of the song did not make the final cut, and she mused that perhaps it could still be released. She is also pushing for the track itself to land on streaming platforms.
“I really think they should put the song on Spotify or something,” Marsh said. “I think people yearn for things like that, to just have a moment of joy.”
Comedy, drama and what keeps pulling her back
Marsh said she came from comedy, even as her screen work has included dramatic roles. She described comedy and drama as closely linked and said moving between them has been rewarding, though not without moments of self-doubt.
“For me, comedy has always been what I am trying to be really great at,” she said, adding that she considers it the most challenging thing to do as an actor. “I will always want to be doing that and pushing myself to be better at it.”
She also pointed to other projects that have challenged her in different ways. Fallout, she said, has a comic element that feels familiar, while the fact that it shoots on film was new for her. On The Morning Show, she described the job as high-pressure because of the number of celebrities involved, and joked that much of her work involved delivering bad news to Jennifer Aniston in multiple ways.
Off camera, Marsh’s path was not always pointed toward acting. She said she went to business school, did not initially know she wanted to be an actor, worked in the nonprofit space and later sold homemade almond milk to a coffee shop in Los Angeles before becoming a co-owner. She said she loved having a small business and left open the possibility that she might one day own another coffee shop or similar shop.
For now, though, Marsh’s calendar is defined by screens rather than espresso machines: a Prime Video rom-com adapted from a beloved novel, a viral fake K-pop moment on Adults, and a career that keeps circling back to the thing she prizes most — making women funny, specific and essential to the story.