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Interview with Jane Lynch 2004

In the ten years since she moved to L.A., out actress Jane Lynch has acted in more films and TV shows than many actresses do in their entire career, playing a variety of roles that include a memorable turn as Jennifer Coolidge’s lesbian lover in Best in Show, and a lesbian lawyer on the next season of The L Word.

In an interview with AfterEllen.com, Lynch talks about her career, why she thinks comedy is more challenging than drama, the changes she sees in roles for women, and why there aren’t more lesbian movies.

AfterEllen.com: How did you get started with acting?

JL: I always wanted to be an actress. I majored in acting in college, and then went to graduate school and did a professional training program at Cornell with only six other people in my class. So I got on stage a lot. I was just thrown into parts I would never have played otherwise; I was stretched to within an inch of my life and it really revealed that I had more talent than I thought I did. It was like boot camp: whatever you have rises to the surface. I played ingénues, I played old lades; I learned how to fence, to dance, to sing.

I was in Chicago for awhile after graduate school. I did The Real Live Brady Bunch, where we did the actual episodes of The Brady Bunch on stage. It was terrible – terrible good. It turned into this big cult phenomenon, and we went to New York for eight months, and then L.A. for seven months, and then I went back to Chicago to do more theater. That’s where I did The Fugitive, and that’s what kind of made me think “maybe I can do this full-time” so I went out to Los Angeles. Fortunately my agent in Chicago had an office in L.A., so I had a leg up on a lot of people in Hollywood when I moved there.

AE: Your Mighty Wind co-star John Michael Higgins said you’re a great singer…

JL: (Laughing) Did he? Singing isn’t how I express myself artistically, but I can do it when called up. I just got back from this Olivia cruise, and there was this musician there named Julie Wolff who’s just amazing, and she played the piano at this piano bar. She called me up and I sang about six or seven tunes, it was great!

AE: Were you on the cruise shooting your scenes in The L Word?

JL: No, there was a film festival on board, and I was in one of the short films, so they invited me to be on the panel, which was really generous of them. It was a great time.

AE: Tell me a little about your role on The L Word

JL: I’m playing a civil rights lawyer who takes on the really hard cases that don’t have precedents, but that I think I can win. I’m representing Tina, who is trying to get some money from Bette after the demise of their relationship, since they were kind of in a common-law marriage.

AE: How did you get involved with The L Word?

JL: I went to a POWER UP panel on The L Word with Ilene Chaiken on it – I had just watched the first six episodes of the series and loved it. I thought it was such good writing, and it reminded me of my life. I’m a big coffee drinker with my friends-both straight and gay friends – and the conversations the [L Word] characters had, I thought “these are my people!”

So I went up to Ilene after the panel and she said “Would you do our show?” and I said “Oh my God, in a New York minute!” I actually attended the panel with the intention of asking her, but she asked me first, which was very nice. So my manager sent her some stuff, and about six months later she came up with a storyline for me, and I filmed three episodes. It was great.

AE: What do you want to do ultimately?

JL: I want to direct. I’m going to direct a short that I’m currently in the process of getting funding for, it’s by my friend Patricia Cotter and called Please the Queen. I just finished an independent film called Surviving Eden, and another one called The Californians, which both will be out soon, hopefully. They’re really wacky, goofy films and I’d love to keep doing those. I also recently did Sleepover, which was a big studio picture, and I loved doing that, too. Plus they pay you a lot more, so it’s nice to get one of those every once in awhile.

AE: What don’t you like?

JL: I’m very picky, very critical. I have done projects in the past that I didn’t think were very good, because I was just happy to work – my agent used to say I’d work for a steak and $1.50–but I’m not really doing that anymore. My friend is in this play, and she’s really good in it–I was relieved she was good, so I didn’t have to lie to her – but it’s really directed badly, and you wonder “why do you even bother doing it?”

AE: And you just don’t want to bother with that anymore?

JL: Right. Theater-wise I won’t, anymore. If I’m going to hang my hat on something, I want it to be good. But I don’t mind guest-starring on a show that I don’t think is very good, because it’s fun to get paid, and I love being part of a group.

AE: What’s up next for you?

JL: I have those episodes of The L Word coming out, I have an episode of Veronica Mars, and I’m playing a medical examiner on a few episodes of the upcoming show Blind Justice, that premieres around mid-season.

AE: So have you been on every television show ever?

JL: (laughing) Yeah, I’ve been on a lot of them. I’ve hit all genres, I think.

AE: There are actors who play extras on a lot of shows, like Girlfriend #1 or the Sick Patient, but you actually have fairly prominent roles on these shows –

JL: Yeah, and I thinkit’s getting to the point where if I don’t get my own show, I might not be able to continue this.

AE: Because you’re too familiar?

JL: (Laughing) Exactly.

AE: Do you prefer movies over TV?

JL: Not really. I like them both, and I like theater. They’re all different, and they require different kinds of skills, andit’s always fun to exercise those muscles.

AE: So if you had to do just one –

JL: Oh, I’d be fine doing just one, too. I’ve never really planned my career. I don’t really have a strategy, I’ve kind of just gone with the flow, andit’s been great. I’ve played a great variety of parts – all sorts of people in all sorts of shows. I couldn’t have designed it better.

AE: How did you like your role on the first season of Arrested Development?

JL: I loved it! Jeffrey [Tambor] is so great, and I had such a great time. I am so proud of that, and grateful that I got it. It was a great role, and a joy to play every day. Both directors were fantastic, and I would love to do that show again.

AE: You tend to do a lot of comedy. Do you prefer that over drama?

JL: I do. But I usually get funny stuff, because of my roles in the Chrisopher Guest movies [A Mighty Wind and Best in Show]. But I think if you can do comedy, you can do anything, because you can pick up the ironies in life better. It takes a little more investigation into your own heart with comedy; I think you can get away with a lot more in drama. I think you’ll find that a good actor usually does comedy really well. That’s why I enjoy I playing character roles.

AE: Are you okay with always playing supporting roles? You don’t want to be the next Julia Roberts?

JL: (Laughing) I think my day has passed. No, actually, I prefer doing the supporting roles, because then I can show up in any guise.

AE: What’s made you as successful as you are at working steadily?

JL: I don’t know that this makes me special, but I think when my work really became profound, when I began to think of myself as an artist, was when I began to really get to know myself better – through therapy, through asking my friends “Why do I keep doing this?” Living an aware life as best I can. I then started to translate that into my work, where I was able to use facets of my self and facets I see in other people. Anything that’s in another person, also is in me. We all have everything.

I can choose as Jane Lynch to express it or not express it, but I can always use it for a character. Very rarely have I come across a character – and I’ve played some doozies – where I say “I don’t know where this person lives.” Usually that’s when the writer doesn’t know, either.

I just turned down this role, actually, in a made-for-television movie because the writing wasn’t clear enough, and they really didn’t tap into something that lives in a human being. She was a wacky, drugged-out person, but there was nothing credible about it. As much as I tried – because it was an offer, not something I had to audition for – I looked at it and said “Okay, what do I use here?” and there was nothing I could hook into. In that case, you just have to say no. Maybe someone else will find something, but I think it was just bad writing.

AE: Which character have you played that you most resembled?

JL: Hmmm -‘s really coming to mind. But I did recently play this therapist on Two and a Half Men who jumps to conclusions too quickly. She listens, but she doesn’t hear, and sometimes I do that.

AE: If you could go back twenty years ago to when you were just getting started, what would you tell yourself?

JL: I would say stop worrying, and keep working on yourself. And when people ask me “How do I become an actor? How do I succeed?” I just say “there’s no secret, just keep knowing yourself.” You can apply that to any undertaking in life: the first thing you have to do is know yourself. Because without it you don’t have your material, you’re just making sh-t up.

AE: Which actors do you admire?

JL: Meryl Streep, for one. Anne Heche is a fabulous actress, too, I think she’s one of the best, and Vince Vaughn, I think he’s great. Catherine Keener is fantastic – she did this great film Lovely and Amazing, about women’s self-contempt, and she was brilliant in Living in Oblivion.

AE: What kinds of changes if any are you seeing in parts for women?

JL: I’ve been at this for about ten years, and it seems like women are now more often being considered for what have traditionally been male roles, written for men – authority figures like principals, doctors, psychologists. The doctor I play on Blind Justice was originally named Dr. Paul Taylor, but at the audition, they saw seven men and three women, and then they cast me. So they’re more open to trying women.

There does seem to be this whole fat man-beautiful wife thing going on in the sitcoms that I’m not a big fan of. We haven’t had a woman headline a sitcom recently the way we had in the 80’s and 90’s with Roseanne, Brett Butler, Cybil…

AE: That’s true. The only one I can think of is Reba.

JL: You know, I auditioned for that show. It was a great script. Then they revamped it to fit Reba, which was really smart – look how long it’s been on – but I do remember I thought that script was great.

But you write what you know, and these TV writers – who are actually really nice guys – they know what it’s like to be a guy. So shows like Two and a Half Men are really funny, but they’re mostly about guys. The women on that show – Marin Hinkle and Holland Taylor – just sort-of come in and out, but I think they’re really the heart of that show. Holland Taylor’s character is really one of the breakout characters of that show.

AE: There does seem to be a trend of more women behind the camera

JL: I agree. There’s this great documentary film out called In the Company of Women about women in independent film … there are so many women now who are directing, and actresses who just do independent films, and have become like independent film icons, like Parker Posey, or Frances McDormand, who you’ll see occasionally do a mainstream movie to pay the bills. So many stories would not be told without independent films, the studios just aren’t making them.

AE: What’s your favorite lesbian film?

JL: Desert Hearts just blew me away. I thought it was extremely well done, and the characters were really likeable, and feminine, and it was beautiful watching them in the love scenes. It was gorgeous, and really rang true.

AE: It’s been twenty-five years since that came out, and you’d think that movie would have opened the floodgates, but there really haven’t been a ton of lesbian movies since then –

JL: I think we’ll probably look back on it and say “it started trickling then.” But remember All in the Family? At the time, a lot of people thought we were ushering in a whole new kind of television, it was so groundbreaking, but since then we haven’t been anywhere near the taboos that show blew up.

AE: Why do you think that is?

JL: I think the Christian Right is very powerful, and I think a lot of people in America are conservative. But all these Christians who said that morals were the reason they voted for George Bush, I wonder how many of them were among the 25 million people who watch Desperate Housewives? Which is hardly moral television.

AE: What do you see in terms of lesbian characters, on film or TV?

JL: You know, there’s not much going on there. That’s why The L Word is so good. It isn’t in the popular culture just yet – it’s still on a channel you have to pay for – but we’re at such a really important time in our culture.

It’s almost like you’re going back to the time when we had to decide whether to abolish slavery. “Do we get rid of the gays, or do we accept them and weave them into the fabric of society?” Our history tells us we ultimately weave everyone in the fabric of society, though, so I think it’s just a matter of time.

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