Like Brooke, her deliciously misguided character on The Other Two, Heléne Yorke is just trying to do some good. Or at least order something good. We’re at Buvette in Manhattan’s West Village, where she’s considering steak tartare—a favorite, but one that “seems very aggressive” for 1 p.m. We consider sharing the hearty waffle sandwich, but it drips with enough sunny-side egg and maple syrup to intimidate us. “Don’t ever come to lunch with me,” Yorke quips. “We’re fucked…. You check the menu before you go so that you don’t have an existential crisis.”

Thanks to a few gentle steers from our server, Yorke and I wind up splitting the croque-madame and a soft-scrambled-egg toast topped with goat cheese and sun-dried tomatoes, plus carrots on the side. With our order settled, she makes a confession about where we’re seated. “I had a very controversial conversation at this table with a friend,” Yorke says, leaning in. “She was basically trying to convince me to get out of my relationship—a relationship that was new and not a good idea. I’m having post-traumatic stress about it. She ended up being right. They always are.” Before I can ask if she’d prefer to move, Yorke declares that someone close to her called the day prior with news that their on-and-off relationship was finally over. “I was very nice on the phone,” she says proudly. “I was like, ‘I’m sorry.’ I wasn’t like, ‘Ha!’ Which I thought was very big of me.”

Yorke is well aware that this sounds a lot like dialogue from an episode of The Other Two. I ask her if, by season three, she and her character, Brooke, have fully converged. “Sadly, yes,” she admits. “I’ll have gotten through 15 takes trying something, and instead I just do it the way I would say it.”

The Max comedy, created by former SNL writers Chris Kelly and Sarah Schneider, follows Yorke’s Brooke and Drew Tarver’s Cary as they navigate their professional identities and ambitions beside their Justin Bieber-esque brother, Chase (Case Walker), and their daytime-television-mogul mother, Pat (Molly Shannon).

In this postpandemic season, talent manager Brooke tries to swap her shallow showbiz career for a life in service. For Brooke, “doing good” means putting “she/her” and “Black Lives Matter” in her Instagram bio; briefly dying her hair a mousy shade of brown; and in the standout eighth episode, hosting a Chase-fronted mental health awareness telethon.

Despite its branding as “A Night of Undeniable Good,” the event seems like it’s being punished at every turn—by COVID-19 diagnoses, a sexually predatory mental health counselor, and a particularly brutal technical error. (“Insert Name of Parkland Survivor We Can Get,” the screen reads at one point.) “When I read the episode, I thought that they were waiting for the name,” says Yorke. “And when I did ADR, I was like, ‘Wait, guys, this is the joke? You little fuckers.’” Adding insult to the evening’s derailment? At episode’s end, Brooke discovers that her do-gooder ex, Lance (Josh Segarra), has been named People’s Sexiest Man Alive, gracing the magazine’s cover alongside other attractive nurses.

From here on out, “it gets really dark for Cary and Brooke. That jealousy, that desperation, that self-doubt, is universal in all of us,” Yorke says. “And if you say it isn’t, you’re a liar. I’m not above seeing that somebody got a cover and losing my goddamn mind.” And Lance isn’t completely absolved in this, either. “We all kind of suck. He kind of sucks. Anybody too good, that’s annoying,” she says in defense of her character. “So to give Brooke flak is like, What the fuck? You’re so good? Maybe you just need somebody who meets you where you’re at. My husband does that.”

Between being cast on the show and now, Yorke married her partner, Bary Dunn, and gave birth to their now one-year-old son, Hugo. “I did my entire life in between seasons,” she says. “I highly recommend marriage and babies. If there was something I could be the face of, it would be that.” But Yorke didn’t always feel that way. “I was a New York girl and I loved dating. I loved being single. I loved being a ho. I loved being Brooke Dubek,” she says. “And then I met my husband, and he’s the hottest man I’ve ever seen in my life. I was like, All right, I’ll do forever with this.”

“We got married, and I was like, I’m old. Who knows how long it’ll take to get pregnant? And I got pregnant immediately,” Yorke adds. Production was shifted from June to September to accommodate her maternity leave. “I had a hard time full-time momming. It was almost like, not that I forgot who I was, [but] I was becoming somebody else.” Gradually, that changed, though there have obviously been growing pains. “I realized, in going back to work, that I could be me and a mom at the same time…. I was pumping milk out of my titties on the corner of 53rd and Lexington, under a rain tower, before making out with somebody who wasn’t my husband. So it was bizarre in that, and trying to figure out how to finagle a pump in a costume with no bra. But it felt good.”

Yorke, who was born in Canada and raised largely in Los Angeles, pictured Gwyneth Paltrow—specifically, Paltrow clutching her Oscar in that iconic pink dress—as the quintessential actress. “And that seemed so far away to me, to a point where I was like, I should really do musical theater.” And she did just that—making her Broadway debut in the 2007 revival of Grease before originating a role in the musical version of American Psycho in 2016. In between, Yorke played Glinda the Good Witch on the second national tour of Wicked.

“When you meet people that are not in the biz, they ask for a list of your credits. Oftentimes, my mother-in-law will introduce me to people and be like, ‘She played Glinda in Wicked,’ because that’s the thing that’ll mean something to them,” Yorke says. “You often get comments like ‘Good for you,’ because, certainly, if they don’t know who you are, that means you’re broke.” For a while, Yorke says, even she didn’t realize “that you could have a full career and [yet] be niche…. I used to think you had to be Gwyneth Paltrow to make a living—literally feast or total famine.”

At age 29, Yorke starred in Bullets Over Broadway, a stage musical adaptation of Woody Allen’s 1994 film. She thought it was her big break. “I’m working with [Tony Award–winning director and choreographer] Susan Stroman. I’m in this big show. I’m giving a really funny performance. I’m going to win a Tony Award,” Yorke remembers thinking. Not only was she not even nominated, but also “ripped to shreds by Ben Brantley of The New York Times.” Wounded by the review, which referred to Yorke’s performance as “unrelenting,” she struggled to conceive of what could be next.

“I always say that the work of being an actor is the moments when you’re not working,” Yorke says, “how you can tie yourself into so many knots thinking this is the end.” In a triumphant twist not often afforded to Yorke’s onscreen counterpart, Brantley tweeted in 2021 that The Other Two “is the funniest show around about the absurdities of our insta-celebrity culture.”

This season has seen Brooke flailing through increasingly absurd scenarios: becoming literally invisible at a party after leaving the industry, traveling to literal space with an Elon Musk–esque billionaire suitor, and, in next week’s episode, crossing all sorts of boundaries while sporting prosthetic makeup. “The mental gymnastics that they write for Brooke to backflip through is the most fun,” Yorke says. “And it almost feels like you can make theater choices for a television character.”

Despite booking early onscreen roles as “Hot Girl” in an episode of Louie and one of Jenna Maroney’s daughters on 30 Rock, Yorke says her theatrical training often clashed with the constraints of TV. Creatives often asked if she could tone things down. “To book an episode of Law & Order, which I never was able to do, it was: ‘smaller, smaller, smaller.’ It’s the idea that TV catches every nuance on your face, as opposed to massive choices played to the back of the house,” she says. “What’s so great about The Other Two is that you’re doing both…. It’s almost to the point where I’m like, Have I become a monster? Am I too much of me? You’re playing out full manifestations of your jealousy, your insecurities, things that we all feel but work to conceal from the world and oftentimes from ourselves. It’s cathartic to splat it out.”

And there is still plenty to be splat. “The obstacles are never-ending, no matter where you end up,” Yorke says—for her as well as Brooke. “You think, Oh, my God, I’m a series regular on this beloved show. I’m going to get nominated for an Emmy. And then you don’t, and it doesn’t get Emmy attention. Or, I’m just going to get offered stuff. And they’re like, ‘No, we’re out to names.’ I read a pilot the other day, and they’re like, ‘Just a heads-up, they’re out to Kate Hudson.’ Okay, well, what the fuck am I doing?”

Unprompted, Yorke reveals, “I didn’t get something recently that I should have gotten.” She declines to name the series on record, but allows herself a moment to indulge in what could’ve been. “It was really funny. It’s weirdly British and theatrical. It would’ve been amazing, but it didn’t happen,” Yorke says of the project, which hails from an Oscar-winning filmmaker and shoots in London. Taking advice she once got from her manager, Yorke allows herself a 24-hour window to be upset. And then—she pauses. “Try not to projectile vomit on me after I say it,” Yorke warns before lobbing a cliché: “Everything happens for a reason.” “Oh, no!” she shrieks. “The food is ruined by my vomit.”

Does a part of her still clamor for Paltrow-level fame? “No, I think it’s a prison,” she says. “I only want to be known to the point where I can get restaurant reservations. I want to be famous enough that Grub Street wants to have me.” Both of those desires have already been fulfilled. Yorke first fell in love with food thanks to her mother. “Then I dated a chef for two and a half years, and I got free expensive cooking lessons,” she says. (Yorke and Food Network star Bobby Flay were linked from 2016 to 2019.) The actor was at the New York restaurant Jack’s Wife Freda when she met Olivia Wilde, who revealed that “she and her ex-boyfriend loved watching the show,” Yorke says with wide eyes. “It was one of the more unbelievable moments in my life. I was like, ‘Uh-huh.’”

Yorke encourages other fans—celebrity and civilian alike—to make themselves known. “People want to walk up to me and tell me they watch the show or tweet that I deserve a trophy? Fuck yeah.”

Yorke was reluctant to audition for the role of bubble-bound Glinda in the upcoming Wicked movie. “‘They’re not going to cast me,’” she assured her insistent team. “‘They’re going to get Dove Cameron or somebody.’” And yet Yorke did try out in front of Bernard Telsey, the same casting director who landed her a recurring role on Showtime’s Masters of Sex. “We had a lovely time, and my voice remembered the key that the song was in. But I literally was an old woman, just being like…” She rolls her eyes. “I had coffee with Annaleigh Ashford”—another former Glinda and Masters of Sex alum—“afterwards, and she was like, ‘I think they’re going to cast Ariana Grande.’ Then they did. I’m a huge supporter and I’m very excited.”

Her fandom is real; Yorke walked down the aisle to “POV,” a deep cut off of Grande’s 2020 album, Positions. And the adoration appears to be mutual—Grande started following Yorke on Instagram. “I wonder if she still is—let’s check,” she says, eagerly pulling out her phone. “That’s going to be the headline of the article: ‘Ariana Grande Still Follows Heléne Yorke’—or doesn’t. Maybe I’ve gotten too annoying for her. There’s been a lot of food posting.” For the record: Grande still follows her. Does avowed Other Two fan Harry Styles? “No,” Yorke says after a quick scan. “He does follow, however, Ariana Grande.”

Yorke orders dessert for us, raspberry-filled pastries sprinkled with powdered sugar, as well as a cup of coffee to go. After this, she’s headed to Crate & Barrel. “This will be the real age difference between us. I kind of want to buy a new tablecloth,” she says. Yorke is hosting a dinner party “to celebrate me giving birth to my son.” With a laugh, she adds, “We’re celebrating his birthday as if it’s mine.” There will be gin and tonics upon arrival, she tells me, followed by slow-cooked lamb shoulder served alongside a steady stream of wine. (“You just have to have nice booze and then people really linger.”) Food columnist Alison Roman, fresh off of publishing her Sweet Enough cookbook, is bringing dessert. Pocket doors in Yorke’s Park Slope apartment will isolate the kitchen from a candlelit dining room as R&B or ’70s rock music plays. “Sometimes it gets a little too sexy, and you’re like…nobody’s going to get undressed at this,” she says. “Please don’t disrobe.”

Hearing Yorke describe the event in meticulous detail, I get the sense that planning it offers the sort of certainty missing from her fickle day job. There’s no word on a fourth season of The Other Two amidst the ongoing writers strike. She doesn’t even know yet what she’ll be working on in July. But Yorke has been here before. “At this stage, and I think motherhood does influence this,” she says, “it’s less about acting and more about life. I feel like, in so many ways, I already have everything.”

Then again, there’s that temptation to set the record straight—to insist that you are doing good, by whatever metric that may be. Yorke has a friend’s wedding coming up, where she’ll inevitably be asked: “What would I know you from?”

“I think a part of me, because I am such a hamster-wheel person,” Yorke says with the deadpan conviction she and Brooke share, “[wants to say], ‘I’m talking to Vanity Fair. People respect me.’” Alas, “you can’t say that in polite conversation. You list a couple credits, and then, maybe if you’re desperate, you end up on: ‘I did play Glinda in Wicked.’”