Michaela Conlin refuses to be shoehorned into any particular TV genre.
The actress, best known for the long-running Fox crime procedural “Bones” (2005-2017) will next be pulling double duty appearing in the Apple TV+ alt-space race drama “For All Mankind” and “Bad Trip,” a wacky Netflix comedy.
“It is such a crazy resume, isn’t it?” Conlin, 42, told The Post. “I realized it today, like ‘Wow this is very varied!’ I feel really lucky to be able to do a lot of different things. It’s been kind of a surprise.”
For over a decade, Conlin starred on “Bones” opposite David Boreanaz and Emily Deschanel as the brilliant forensic artist Angela Montenegro, who was an integral part of the team that solved each episode’s mystery or murder.
“We were [often] filming at 6 a.m. over this fake dead rubber corpse; the whole thing was steeped in this dark comedy” she said. “We laughed a lot during production of that show. It was a long time — we grew up together.”
That’s also what pushed Conlin towards seeking different shows after that series concluded, she said. First she appeared on epic Western “Yellowstone,” (2018-2019) playing ill-fated reporter Sarah Nguyen. “That was such a great experience, we shot in Montana and they taught me how to fly fish — talk about being outside of your element! It was such a different world. I understand why that show resonates, the geography of where you’re shooting just seeps in.”
Next, she’s traveling back to the 1980s in Season 2 of “For All Mankind” (new episodes stream Friday), which posits what would happened if the global space race never ended after the Soviet Union lands on the moon ahead of the USt. Joel Kinnaman (“House of Cards”) stars as NASA astronaut Edward Baldwin; and Season 2 introduces Conlin’s character, Helena Webster.
“She’s a former Marine pilot who becomes an astronaut and she’s one of the only women in the group of guys,” said Conlin. “She’s had to really fight for everything that she’s had. That really resonated with me. It’s such a different style of show; it’s been so nice to go to these different sets and experience the different things after ‘Bones.’ It’s nice to work on other productions, especially different genres.”
After that, she’s also pivoting to comedy for the Netflix film “Bad Trip” (premiering March 26). Co-starring Eric Andre, Lil Rel Howery, and Tiffany Haddish, it follows best friends on a road trip, and includes hidden-camera prank elements. It was a vast departure for Conlin — but she said that was the appeal.
“Comedy is definitely something that I’ve wanted to do for a while. When [‘Bones’] ended, I just wanted to try as many different things as I could — because when you do something for 12 seasons, that’s a long time. I didn’t want the muscles in other places to atrophy. I wanted to try new things and fail at new things. [‘Bad Trip’] was a really good example of something being scary.
“I remember calling my manager and being like ‘I don’t know if i can do this movie, these are comedians!’ I was very nervous about it but they’re such a warm, lovely group of people.”
