Odessa A’Zion is having a breakout year. The 25-year-old Jewish actress is currently starring in Rachel Sennott‘s hit show “I Love L.A.” and plays Timothée Chalamet’s girlfriend Rachel Mizler in “Marty Supreme.” W Magazine heralded the daughter of actress Pamela Adlon as “in a league of her own,” while L’Officiel USA dubbed her “Hollywood’s newest It Girl.”
So naturally, people are being very weird about her online.
Following the New York City “Marty Supreme” premiere on Tuesday, red carpet photos of Odessa made their way on to social media. Despite her appearance being fairly run-of-the-mill for Hollywood fashion — Odessa wore a self-designed black beaded corset dress with her dark curly hair super-teased and skin tanned — some online were inflamed. “Is she latina in the same way Mikey Madison is wasian?” one X user wrote. “She’s using makeup to change her ethnic presentation,” said another, while someone else compared Odessa to Rachel Dolezal. On TikTok, users began discussing whether or not she is donning a wig.
From there, the conversation shifted to dissecting her name and her relationship to Zionism. Some said Odessa A’Zion stood for “Ukraine Israel.” Meanwhile, one tweet that receive 20,000 likes reads, “Her name is actually Odessa Adlon and ‘A’Zion’ is a stage name. Pretty crazy to pick that as a stage name in 2024 and even crazier that she gets almost no shit for it, like an actress naming themselves Catherine d’Reich in 1943.” Actually, you know what’s really crazy? This tweet. For the record, Odessa’s stage name “A’Zion,” which she took on around 2020, is a portmanteau of her given last name “Adlon” and her middle name “Zion.” It’s also worth mentioning her that the full nuance of someone’s political opinions cannot be deduced from their name or from social media posts. Duh?!
All of this to say: Can we stop being weird, vaguely antisemitic and/or blatantly antisemitic towards Odessa A’Zion and any other Jewish woman or person, online and off, PLEASE?!? While there is certainly a conversation to be had over white celebrities Blackfishing, that’s absolutely not going to happen on Elon Musk‘s X. Nor is it going to happen when we compare an Ashkenazi Jewish woman’s appearance to Aryan standards of whiteness, or misogynistically overanalyze it.
Ultimately, it’s as writer and comedian Jourdain Searles assessed on X, “it’s just a spray tan an some curls. she’s not trying to hide the fact that she’s white and jewish. she plays a white jewish woman in MARTY SUPREME, the film she is currently promoting lol.” Furthermore, as comedian Amelia Elizalde joked, “can you guys figure out how you feel about ashkenazis and ethnic ambiguity and white hispanics i have errands to do.”
Now, if you’ll excuse me, I’ll be enjoying this very Jewish palate cleanser: Odessa’s spot-on impression of the original big-haired Jewish fashionista, Fran Drescher.
