For Natalie Portman, her “Lady in the Lake” Apple TV+ series is more than a formidable murder mystery inspired by two dramatically different homicides in Baltimore over 50 years ago.

“Lady” marks the Oscar-winning veteran’s first foray into television as both producer and star.

Her Maddie Schwartz is, in 1966, a mother and wife at a crossroads.  Maddie is determined to leave her husband and, despite a hostile male environment, carve out a career as an investigative reporter at the city’s major paper.

When an 11-year-old Jewish girl disappears after visiting a tropical fish shop and days later found murdered, Maddie is determined to expose what really happened. Another murder soon consumes her as well, that of Black bartender Cleo Sherwood (Moses Ingram) who is found after being long submerged in a lake.

Only one homicide – the Jewish child – gets enormous coverage, while Cleo gets barely mentioned in the city’s only Black newspaper.

“What’s interesting is these two communities live side by side and they’re still so far apart. It’s still that way to this day in a lot of places and in Baltimore,” Ingram said in a joint Zoom interview.

“We’ve seen historically that there has been beautiful moments of collaboration and unity. Like many Jews were very active in the civil rights movement,” Portman noted. “In Baltimore when this young girl went missing, there were many Black Baltimore citizens who went in search parties to look for her.

“And then there’s also been extreme disunity and instances where Jewish members of the community were active in excluding Black members of the community from certain institutions. In this time period, there were prejudices against Jewish members of the community as well.

“So, there’s this combination of an ability to see each other as allies in a fight against all forms of hatred occasionally. And also occasions of holding prejudice against each other as well.”

As for her television executive producing debut, “That means a lot. It was so creatively fulfilling and was just the most extraordinary group of people and such an inspiring and creative experience.

“As producer, it’s exciting after 30 years of working as an actress” – now 43, she made her film debut at 12 – “to step out of this kind of childlike role where everything’s taken care of for you and other people fix the problems, to be the person who’s like, going to fix things if there’s something wrong.

“It wasn’t just me,” she clarified. “There were eight ‘suspects’ I think, or 10 of us, a wonderful producing team. It’s very empowering to step into that role of taking care of things and making sure everyone’s every one’s being taken care of.”

“Lady in the Lake” streams the first 2 of its 7 parts on Apple TV+ July 19.