Jane Lynch has had an amazing last few years. She’s hosted the Emmys and won them. She’s appeared in a handful of films including The Three Stooges and Wreck-it Ralph. In 2012 she was named Entertainer of the Year by Out magazine and narrated a video for Barack Obama supporting his re-election. So how can she make 2013 even better?
“I never try to top myself,” Jane said during the TCA Fox party. “In fact I rarely take account of it so thank you for bringing some of these up. I just lay low and let things come to me. So we’ll see.” Besides her regular role on Glee, Jane has two films at Sundance.
“One’s called Adult Children of Divorce. Stu Zicherman – he’s a writer for The Daily Show, or was – he wrote this. Adam Scott is in it, Catherine O’Hara, Richard Jenkins, Amy Poehler. Then I did a film with one of my best friends in the world, Jill Soloway, wrote and directed – Afternoon Delight. So she’s like my best friend in the world and that’s a really funny movie. I haven’t seen the whole thing yet.”
Jane plays a therapist in both films, which is a role she’s pretty familiar with considering she’s played them before, including her Emmy-winning role on Two and a Half Men.
“It’s funny, my wife is a therapist,” Jane said, but she doesn’t take on any of Lara’s characteristics. “I started playing therapists before we even met and I don’t think she’s my kind of – what I play. I have this great therapist, I have a wonderful therapist who had a certain way about her that I was able to twist into something comedic. So I kind of do her.” Besides acting, Jane is actually working on some of her own projects behind-the-camera.
“I’ve got three or four things I’m developing and I would love to direct and produce my own things,” Jane said. “I don’t necessarily have to act in them. In fact I haven’t written anything that I’m in, but I’d like to produce. TV. More like black comedies, they end up being funny. As I pitch these people ask ‘Is this a comedy?’ And I say “Yeah, if you put Fred Armisen in it, you betcha it’s a comedy.’ I think if you’re funny and you understand comedy and you’re worth your salt at it, you can do anything.”
But these projects would not steal her away from her role as Sue Sylvester, as Jane said she’ll ride the Glee wave “as long as they’ll have me.”
“I’m not in every episode, I’m not in every scene so I don’t work half as hard as the kids do,” Jane siad. “I have a lot of free time. It’s a cushy job.” Jane said the rest of the current season will be more of the same Sue. “My function has stayed the same, I’ve just become a little softer, a little bit of an advocate as opposed to your worst enemy,” she said. “I love the extremes they write for me. It keeps me interested and it keeps me entertained.”
And she’s thrilled the show has been able to move into a new direction while keeping its heart.
“I think it’s the same old show at its heart and that’s why it works. We follow the kids to New York and now they’re just in a bigger pond trying to make their way there and I love that. We have great new crop of kids in the Glee club and they’re terrific and it just shows the formula works,” Jane said. “It’s about celebrating what’s special about these kids and the audience gets to identify. You don’t have to be in a wheelchair to feel like the kid in a wheelchair. You don’t have to be gay to feel like a kid who’s gay. There’s someone of every color and they all come together, not just in spite of their differences but because of them, and raise their voice in song. And it works.”
