MACKENZIE DAVIS

🚭 Quitting Smoking, 🧙 casting little spells, 🌯 ARARAT Bread, and more.

Mackenzie Davis is a London-based actress, who gained recognition for early roles in projects like Black Mirror, The Martian, and my personal favorite, Denis Villeneuve's Bladerunner 2049. She’s gone on to kill it in HBO’s series Station Eleven alongside Himesh Patel, among many other neat projects, like Speak No Evil with James McAvoy (available to rent now). WOACA, her directorial debut short film (which she also wrote) just released on Vimeo and you can check it out here. Keep your eyes peeled for The Undertow, her upcoming limited series set in Scotland that comes out on Netflix this year. Lucky for us, Mackenzie’s here to tell us what she’s been into.

🚭

Quitting Smoking

I have a vivid memory of being 18 years old, my parents just moved me across the country into my dorm, and as I watched their car turn a corner away from view, I pulled out a pack of Gauloises and lit up. I was a woman now. I loved smoking, I was never a heavy smoker, but I always wanted to keep it light enough so that it could forever be in my life. Anyway, years later there was a pandemic/heart break/lots of life changes and the idea of long term planning (staying alive/having nice skin) flew out the window for me and cigarettes took a much bigger role in my life and that freaked me out. So I read the same stupid book that everyone does, I rolled my eyes the whole time thinking NO WAY and then I finished the book and was freed. Last page done = no desire for another cigarette again. Probably it’s a form of hypnosis, and an essential element is being ready to say goodbye, but if you ARE ready: The Easy Way to Stop Smoking by Allen Carr is some type of witchcraft. Also, Anthony Hopkins and Angelica Huston blurbed the edition I read, and I thought that was convincing evidence. They probably smoked a lot.

@mackenzie-davis

Jan 21, 2025

🧌

@synthetic_pink

I just joined Instagram at the perfect age of 37 and OH BABY! I have been loving the things I've learned so far! This account is kind of scary, AI “Body Horror and Weirdcore Surrealism” (their words) but it doesn’t feel malevolent or cruel, and that is important. It feels a bit like being scared of an actor in a haunted house experience and then realising you can choose to feel fear, or choose to engage with this person, this razor-toothed clown, with curiosity. So I open my eyes and look: and I like what I see :)

@mackenzie-davis

Jan 21, 2025

🥐

Kitchen Projects

This is an incredible baking newsletter from a genius baker/recipe developer called Nicola Lamb. She walks you through all the phases of her recipe development so you get a proper education on the chemistry of each bake as she tries different fats/moisture levels/types of ingredients until she arrives at the finished product. You can skip all this and go straight to the recipe or you can linger over her tests (often there are GIFs!) as she makes her way there, but I love it and have made the best Rhum Baba and Burnt Basque Cheesecakes because of her tireless efforts. It's a Substack, there's a free version but if you have the means please pay for it because that’s the decent thing to do!

@mackenzie-davis

Jan 21, 2025

🧙

casting little spells

I really believe in doing things with an intention and then attributing whatever good thing happens to that intention. For instance: quitting smoking. I said: I’m going to give up this thing I love so it will make room for other things that I might love even more. Or running. I just started training for a marathon, as a confirmed non-runner, do-not-want-to-run type of girl. And when I started I said: by investing in yourself in this unpleasant way, you are casting a spell of loving and believing in yourself that will bring those same things back to you. When I was 7 I threw a ring I loved out of a car window as we searched for my dog who had run away, as an act of sacrifice to get her back. Well, guess what? She came back. And I’m still doing little spells to this day 😈

@mackenzie-davis

Jan 21, 2025

🐏

RAM by Linda and Paul McCartney

This album is so good, I love it forever, it's utterly shocking that Paul McCartney made it and Monkberry Moon Delight is one of my favourite songs of all time. It rules.

@mackenzie-davis

Jan 21, 2025

🌯

ARARAT Bread

This is a stall in Ridley Road Market in Dalston, they make the fluffiest flatbread in front of you, then smear it with this mystery meat spicy paste, put it through their giant revolving oven, roll it up for you, and then you eat it. Some things almost scare me in how they can supersede the sum of their parts and blow my socks right off with only 2 components. This is one of those things. There's a vegetarian version as well but I haven’t tried it, I’m sure it’s fine.

@mackenzie-davis

Jan 21, 2025

MACKENZIE DAVIS

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