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Interview with Jennifer Coolidge

Everyone remembers Jennifer Coolidge as Stifler’s mom, the voluptuous, boozy MILF from American Pie, but real comedy lovers also know her to be a hilarious improvisational comedienne with an innate sense of timing, an affinity for the absurd, and an appreciation for the dim-witted. It takes a smart lady to play dumb.

No wonder she’s one of writer-director Christopher Guest’s to-go actors for films such as A Mighty Wind, For Your Consideration and of course, Best in Show, in which she played Jane Lynch’s gold-digging, poodle-owning girlfriend.

Jennifer’s deft touch gives her the ability to play lascivious, loathsome or low-wattage women without ever making you feel like she’s really mocking them. She’s saving the mockery for more deserving people in her new stand-up act, which she’ll be premiering at the Girlbar HRC benefit event during Dinah Shore Week. Frankly, she could just stand there and I’d laugh.

Coolidge talked to AfterEllen.com about her latest foray into stand-up comedy, the awesomeness that is Jane Lynch, and why she wants to join the Ice Capades.

AfterEllen: You’ll be doing stand-up at the Dinah Shore Weekend this year. I didn’t know you did stand-up.

Jennifer Coolidge: I started this past summer. I was looking for something different to do. I had hosted a couple of substantial awards shows, and that gave me confidence. Some of them had scary audiences but I made it through. So, I thought if I can make it through that, I can try stand-up. I started doing it around the country this year, and I liked it.

AE: I was at the LA Gay & Lesbian Center’s “Evening with Women” event last year, where you filled in for scheduled host, Gina Gershon. You were a big hit.

JC: When you step in to do something like that, there’s an instant panic. I had to overcome [that.] And you have to remember, there were jokes written for Gina Gershon that I had to deliver – it was too late to change them all. My friend Michael came in 10 minutes before the show and helped me re-write some stuff.

 

AE: Now that you’ve done a few events and some stand-up, which live audience is less daunting?

JC: Doing the award show thing is less daunting than doing your own material and saying things that could be offensive to some people. You’re more vulnerable doing stand-up. That’s one thing I have to say I didn’t think about when I signed up – how vulnerable you are.

AE: Maybe it’s better not to know.

JC: Yeah. I think sometimes it’s my true ignorance that’s helped me so much.

AE: [Laughs]

JC: No, I really mean that. I came out to LA to be an actress. So many people said to me, “Oh my God, it’s so hard, what you’re trying to do.” I think it was my naiveté about how hard it was going to be that kept me in the game, and kept me from being overwhelmed. Because I was just so stupid about how small the odds were that I would get any work at all. I just thought, “I can do this. This is good. Sure, I’ll book a movie.”

AE: And you did!

JC: Yeah, but it was blind, naïve confidence. It was true ignorance.

AE: Has anyone warned you about the Dinah Shore Week? Going in blind might be the best thing.

JC: This is what is so great about doing this event: when people ask me what I’m doing, and I tell them I’m doing it, everyone says, “Oh my God! I want to go!” All my friends want to go, so I think that’s a really good sign.

AE: Well, we know how to party.

JC: Yeah!

AE: Is there a reason you’re doing more LGBT events?

JC: It’s most of my friends, so that works out well. But you end up at events you’re attracted to, and ones that want you, so it’s a mutual thing. Sort of like the acting field. There are a few TV shows, (which I won’t mention) that I think are awful. But they would never pursue me to be on their show. It works out. They find you and you find them. It’s sort of neat.

 

When my agent called me and told me [Girlbar] wanted me for Dinah Shore weekend, I thought, “Great.” My agent said, “The woman talked to you at Basix, a restaurant in West Hollywood, today and really enjoyed it. She thought you’d be great for the event.” But I haven’t been to Basix in quite a while. It could have been Jane [Lynch] who had this great talk with this woman. And somehow, I’m getting the credits.

AE: That’s impossible. Everyone in town knows you and Jane.

JC: Then who did they talk to? It wasn’t me. But I’m not telling anyone, ya know? I’m showing up.

AE: [laughs] Speaking of Jane, I loved you guys together in Best in Show. What was it like to play Sherri Ann Cabot, Jane’s character’s out-to-lunch girlfriend?

JC: That was a great on many levels. Best in Show was probably one of the best experiences I’ve ever had making a movie. It was my first with Christopher Guest. Jane and I were teamed up and we hit it off. We got to go to all these dog shows together and then, hang out in Vancouver and come up with stuff.

You know, my ATM card didn’t work in Canada and Jane lent me a bunch of money. That could have gone horribly wrong. I thought that was pretty cool. She didn’t really know me and I could have left town.

AE: Well, that was unlikely.

JC: [laughs] We were a good combo. It was the first time I did a movie where [the director] just said, “You can all do your thing.” That was something I’d like to do again. And Jane is much smarter than me, so she can make up for all the intelligence that I’m missing.

 

AE: Oh stop. I don’t believe you can’t hold your own. To be funny, you have to be smart.

JC: I know someone who’s not bright, and they’re funny. But Jane has all the qualities I’ve always wanted. She’s really articulate. What I try to say in an hour, she sums up in a sentence. Jane is one of those people who knows something about just about everything. I never quite know what’s going on.

AE: [laughs] Christopher Guest is known for letting his actors do improv.

JC: Yeah. And he was incredibly generous in letting us come up with what we wanted our characters to look like. Normally, you show up for a film and it’s so cut and dry what they want you to do and be. He lets us be creative and come up with a lot of our own take [on the characters.]

AE: He and co-writer Eugene Levy create some of comedy’s best female characters.

JC: They do! And they both really like women, and so, they give great parts to women, as opposed to others in Hollywood. With a lot of movies, you think, “Wow. That was a great movie.” The guys had amazing stuff and the girls had nothing.

AE: Some are making their mark – Tina Fey, Chelsea Handler, Amy Poehler – but they’re all young and conventionally attractive. Do you think a Roseanne Barr-type would get her own TV show today?

JC: Women that aren’t conventionally pretty can have a great career in stand-up. I really believe that. My biggest gripe is – I won’t list the big men in comedy who are not attractive, I think we all know who they are, but the female equivalent to those guys? Those women would not have the same movie careers. That woman can be the weird best friend, she can be the kooky neighbor. I wouldn’t appear as the lead in a movie, ever.

As Stifler’s mom in “American Pie”

 

AE: But you’re not the female Seth Rogen. You’ve got a great face, a great figure.

JC: I wouldn’t get cast as the lead. And there are a whole lot of funny women that don’t get the same breaks as their male counterparts do. And that’s a bummer.

AE: That’s a total bummer. What do you think of women like Tina Fey?

JC: I’m very impressed with her career. She’s winning at a guy’s game. I can only imagine what it was like, coming up the ranks and how hard it must have been. She beat the system and she’s very powerful. She’s creating a show, writing a show, acting in it, and making it look effortless. I have a hard enough time being on a show as the actress. I don’t get it.

And each time I see her, her stuff is funnier than the guys. Her stuff isn’t lame. But then I remember, “Oh yeah, she’s writing her own stuff. That’s why it’s not lame.”

AE: Will you be writing your own stuff for your stand-up in Palm Springs?

JC: Well, I haven’t finished it yet. [laughs] I don’t quite know what I’m going to say. Believe me, I’ll be calling up a lot of friends and doing the material over the phone. My friend Michael will listen to me try it and he’s very honest with me.

AE: Who’s your friend Michael?

JC: Michael Patrick King.

AE: That Michael? Jennifer, it sounded like “your friend Michael” was your neighbor or something.

JC: Well, he’s a really funny friend, and he is my neighbor, too. And you know what’s funny? When I want to try out stuff, like a few jokes in front of 10 or 20 people, Michael will call up his famous friends. And I don’t want the famous friends to be hearing the stuff I’m trying out.

AE: No?

JC: I don’t want to look out and see Norman Lear.

AE: Norman Lear?

JC: No, I’m joking. It wasn’t Norman Lear. But I mean, it’s people like that; famous people sitting there while I’m like, “This isn’t what I had in mind.”

AE: Do you think you’re funny?

JC: I think I’m good re-creating someone else. That’s my forte. I’m able to mimic someone really well. Am I born to do stand-up like Kathy Griffith? I don’t know. I’m good at doing people I’ve had a negative experience with. There’s such a need to say exactly what they said.

AE: Well, mockery is great revenge.

JC: That’s exactly what it is. It’s better than therapy. And you can do it over and over, and get revenge each time.

AE: Right! And skewering stupid people is fun and that’ll take your mind off how scary stand-up can be.

JC: I feel so vulnerable when I’m doing stand-up. Sometimes it can be a blast, sometimes it can be incredibly painful. I think in my next life, I want to say nothing. I want to join the Ice Capades. I just want to wear nice tops and not say anything.

Hopefully, Jennifer will continue to say things that make us laugh for a long time to come. But just in case, catch Jennifer’s stand-up act before she joins the Ice Capades on Saturday, April 3 at Hotel Zozo in Palm Springs. I’m pretty sure she’ll be wearing a nice top.

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