[Exclusive] Margaret Qualley & Talia Ryder’s Alter Egos Smoke Up NYC in Surreal New Music Video

“We infamously met at the 1992 Republican National Convention in Houston, Texas,” says Lace Manhattan, with a straight face.

That’s her version of how she and Dixie Normus first connected. And it only gets more serendipitous from there. They also crossed paths “many years later at Chautauqua’s institute for the performing arts” while studying ballet. Then again, while walking alone along the Mississippi River. Over and over, across lifetimes, the universe kept tossing them into each other’s orbit.

Eventually, they decided to stop running into each other and start running with each other. We’ll form a pop duo, they thought.

That’s how Margaret Qualley and Talia Ryder became Lace Manhattan and Dixie Normus, two alter egos as surreal as they are magnetic. Their new track, Girl, arrives with a music video that looks like a VHS fever dream: rooftops, graffiti walls, basketball courts, cosmic overlays, and even splashes of blood. The idea took root on the set of Ethan Coen’s Honey Don’t! (they both co-star in the film) and blossomed in the studio with producer Jack Antonoff. But Girl isn’t a side project. It’s its own trippy world.

A city that smokes

“NYC is the place we now call home,” Lace says when asked why New York was the perfect backdrop. It fits. Cannabis is legal, smoke drifts through parks and sidewalks, and the city’s chaos already feels like one long contact high.

The video makes it explicit. Lace and Dixie pass a joint — or try to.

“She was hogging the joint,” Lace says.

“I was hogging the joint,” Dixie admits.

It’s a quick joke, but it also points to something deeper. Asked why they wanted smoking in the story at all, Lace answers: “I guess it’s a good reminder to people that weed can help with period pain.”

That balance of humor and honesty runs throughout their work. And when it comes to their place in the lineage of weed and music, they’re still figuring it out. “I guess we sort of have a Bob Marley thing going on in a way,” they say. “People have told us that before. But I don’t know, maybe it’s too soon to say.”

Blood and stars

Of course, Girl isn’t all smoke breaks and rooftop dances. Some scenes leave the duo drenched in blood.

“Our cycles were synced up the day we were filming, I guess,” Lace offers.

Then there are the otherworldly flourishes: stars, flashes, dreamlike overlays. “We try our best to show you what the music we’re making looks like,” Dixie says. “We want to make all your dreams come true.”

Not human, not ordinary

Lace doesn’t blink when the subject turns to what makes them different: “Because we are not human. We are pop stars. Living and breathing sculptures. We are both the artists and the muses. A constant death and rebirth of ideas.”

Then comes the rooftop question: who would they most like to share a smoke with? Dixie keeps it close to home: “Probably her. Due to unforeseen circumstances, we have had to spend some time apart. It’s easy to take for granted the friendships you have and the time you spend with people when you see them all the time. Distance makes the heart grow fonder. Maybe my high school ex-boyfriend, too. That could be a fun group. Sort of random!”

Lace answers like only Lace can: “I want you to speak for me, Dixie. I want you to breathe for me. I want you to bleed for me. Love you.”

A secret, revealed

• So what should High Times readers know about them that no one else does yet?

Lace doesn’t hesitate: “My secret talent? Remembering embarrassing things I said in 2011 at 3 a.m.”

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