4 Reasons We Love ‘Future Man’s Eliza Coupe

Future Man - Eliza Coupe
Smallz and Raskind/Hulu
Future Man -- Tiger (Eliza Coupe)

Killing, maiming and torture aren’t funny. But when they’re perpetrated by Future Man’s kickass lady rebel leader Tiger, who has uneven purple hair, a dark sense of humor and a surprising soft spot for babies, those things seem disturbingly amusing. It also helps that the quirky sci-fi series’ star is played by veteran scene-stealer Eliza Coupe, whom we adore. Let us count the ways.

1. T&A isn’t her thing.
“I had no interest in playing a heroine in some completely unfunctional outfit just to get the male demographic all excited,” says Coupe. “That’s not me. So Tiger looks like a powerful warrior woman, not a pinup.”

2. She says the darndest (and dirtiest) things.
Coupe, who studied improv with the Upright Citizens Brigade, didn’t hold back when she was told to come up with the dialogue for sex scenes (which we can’t print in a family magazine). She also loved that in the dystopian future she comes from, soldiers didn’t have sex for pleasure or emotion but to “recharge” their energy before battle. “It was awesome because I didn’t have to take my clothes off,” she says.

3. She’ll do anything for her art…
to the point where she’s black and blue. “I had a great stunt double,” Coupe says. “But the actors had to learn how to do everything because we never knew whether they wanted the double in it or to throw the actors in. I had a lot of bruises.”

4 She isn’t afraid of color.
“The purple hair was my idea,” Coupe admits. “I’m a blonde, and they wanted to make it brown. No offense to anyone with dark hair, but I was like, ‘That’s boring!’ In real life, I have a lot of tattoos. So between that, the purple hair and the bruises, I looked rough. And I live in Malibu, where that is not a thing!”

Future Man, Hulu