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Playing a wistful single mother in last year’s indie gem “Janet Planet,” Julianne Nicholson landed some of the best reviews of her career.

“He mentioned that he liked the idea of Sinatra having a real humanity to her,” says Nicholson, who in flashbacks is soft and in the story’s present all brittle, escalating fierceness.

As it turns out, bringing reality to a role also was what inspired Nicholson’s guest arc on HBO’s “Hacks” as an outsize TikTok personality called Dance Mom.

“They thought that, as big a character as she is, she needed to be grounded in the human experience,” says Nicholson, whose energetic routines were kept secret from everyone except the “Hacks” producers until she performed one for the first time before the cast, crew and a studio audience composed of extras.

Nyweide also shared the screen with James Franco and Julianne Nicholson in the 2010 feature “Shadows & Lies,” and appeared alongside Jessica Alba and Chris Messina as an elementary school student in “An Invisible Sign.”