‘The Eddy’ on Netflix: Joanna Kulig is Throwing Down a Seriously Sexy Performance as Maja

The Eddy is Netflix’s ode to the power and magic of jazz. Set in a struggling Parisian jazz club called The Eddy, the series weaves together intimate portraits of pain, high stakes crime, and mesmerizing musical numbers. Filmed in English, French, and Arabic, it immerses the viewer in a cosmopolitan world where everything can change on a beat.

Threading these strings together are the performances of The Eddy‘s all-star cast, and standing out amongst these great performances is Joanna Kulig. Her character, Maja, is the lead singer of the house band, the on-and-off lover of the main character, and a fiery woman pulsing with raw, earthy, erotic energy. When all is said and done, Kulig is throwing down one of the most intensely sexy performances ever in The Eddy.

The Eddy was created by La La Land director Damien Chazelle, BAFTA winning writer Jack Thorne, Six Feet Under producer Alan Poul, and musician Glen Ballard, and everything about it is an ode to the spirit of jazz. From its structure to its sexy, seedy vibe, it puts the polarizing musical genre front-and-center. The series follows celebrated jazz musician Elliot Udo (André Holland), who co-owns The Eddy with friend, bandmate, and business partner Farid (Tahar Rahim). While Elliot chases his own ideas of artistic perfection with an eclectic house band, Farid has been making dirty deals to keep the struggling club afloat. In the middle of all of this, Elliot has to juggle the arrival of his teen daughter Julie (Amandla Stenberg) and the clashing personalities of his band. Chief among them? Joanna Kulig’s Maja.

From the get go, Maja is an electric presence on stage. Her singing style is an erotic purr that climbs up and down the musical scale with giddy abandon. The lights hit her wavy blonde curls in such a way that she looks like she has a halo, and her smile catches your eye and never lets it go. It’s a tremendous introduction to the character that instantly puts you on her side, even if subsequent scenes pitch her as a combative diva, desperate to let her ex-lover know she won’t follow his lead easily anyone.

Now, it’s not surprising that Joanna Kulig can pull off this kind of intense charisma. After all, her international breakthrough role was playing a similarly passionate singer in the Polish film Cold War. But what is exciting is that The Eddy lets Kulig play with her persona, in all its roiling passions. She is absolutely captivating to the point that when her character rudely gets into a fight with Elliot, you instantly take her side. She also gets moments of kindness, like when she cares for a jet-lagged Julie, that let you know that her aggression towards Elliot isn’t symptomatic of her character’s heart. Rather it stems from her heartbreak.

Sexiness on screen often comes from the energy of the performer, but there’s an aesthetic element at play, too. Shortly before filming The Eddy, Joanna Kulig gave birth to her first child, meaning the body onscreen is a postpartum one. Hollywood is notorious for pressuring its actresses to “lose the baby weight” and “get their bodies back” in such an insidious manner that it permeates our culture’s beliefs in ideal beauty. In The Eddy, Kulig’s body is not stick-thin or perfectly toned. She’s got sensational curves that scream of femininity in its rawest, basest form. She’s also understood to be the object of Elliot’s desire, and the audience’s. As lead singer, she is the woman whose spell we need to fall under, and we do! Kulig is fucking sexy, whether she just had a baby or not, and the character of Maja is sexy, too. Energy-wise, and aesthetically-speaking.

There’s a lot of cool stuff happening in The Eddy. There’s great music, brilliant performances, and insightful conversations about what it’s like to experience life as an American abroad. Joanna Kulig’s intensely sexy presence is just another thing that draws you into Netflix’s The Eddy.

Watch The Eddy on Netflix