TBI 206 Jane Lynch
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1 The Big Interview Episode Number: 206 Episode Title: Jane Lynch Description: Emmy and Golden Globe award-winning actress Jane Lynch opens up about her late break into Hollywood stardom. From movies to television to life off-screen, Lynch has a unique take on all of it. ACT 1 DAN RATHER (VOICE OVER) TONIGHT… ON THE BIG INTERVIEW… JANE LYNCH - ONE OF HOLLYWOOD’S MOST RECOGNIZABLE STARS HAS MADE A CAREER BY PLAYING CHARACTERS WHO ARE WILLING TO SAY THINGS MOST OF US WOULD NEVER DREAM OF SAYING. DAN RATHER I was tempted to try something with you, but I lost my nerve. JANE LYNCH Oh no, do it. Do it. Jump off the cliff. RATHER (VOICE OVER) YET LYNCH’S LIFE HAS NOT ALWAYS BEEN ABOUT LAUGHS - LIKE HER DECADES-LONG STRUGGLE TO COME TO TERM WITH HER SEXUAL IDENTITY. LYNCH I didn't tell my parents until I was 31. Yeah, I was really deeply ashamed and afraid RATHER (VOICE OVER) MOVIE AND TELEVISION STAR, EMMY AND GOLDEN GLOBE WINNER… JANE LYNCH ...TONIGHT ON THE BIG INTERVIEW. ACT 2 DAN RATHER (VOICE OVER) IF THERE’S ANY ACTRESS WHO FIGHTS THE CONVENTIONAL HOLLYWOOD OBSESSION WITH YOUTH, IT’S JANE LYNCH. HER BREAK-OUT ROLE AS A 2 CAUSTIC CHEERLEADING COACH TURNED SCHOOL PRINCIPAL ON THE FOX HIT GLEE CAME AT THE AGE OF 49… A TIME WHEN MANY ACTORS AND ACTRESSES ARE FINDING IT DIFFICULT TO FIND WORK AT ALL. SHE GREW UP IN THE MIDWEST, NOW LIVES IN LOS ANGELES… AND AT 6 FEET SHE CUTS AS IMPOSING A PRESENCE OFF SCREEN AS ON. DAN RATHER Well, first of all, thank you very much for doing this. JANE LYNCH Oh, it's my pleasure. RATHER (VOICE OVER) I RECENTLY SAT DOWN WITH JANE LYNCH IN HOLLYWOOD… WHERE SHE DISCUSSED HER GLEE CHARACTER, THE INDOMITABLE SUE SYLVESTER… WITH SEASONS-FULL OF FAMOUS POLITICALLY-INCORRECT ONE-LINERS, LYNCH (From Glee) “You think this is hard? Try being water boarded, that’s hard.” RATHER (VOICE OVER) IT HAS BECOME THE ROLE OF A LIFETIME…AND IT WAS WRITTEN SPECIFICALLY FOR JANE LYNCH. LYNCH (From Glee) “And once again I am making fun of your incredibly stupid hairdo.” RATHER Did you say to yourself, when they asked you to read for it or to take this role, "Boy, that's just the role for me. I'm the right person at the right time to do this?" LYNCH Yes. I love big stuff. I love huge choices and-- you know, and I loved that I was gonna be wearing a track suit-- that just, in itself, says so much about this person. You know, she has a frickin' uniform. She thinks she's in the Special Forces. You know, she's done a lot-- she coached Hillary Clinton in debate. (LAUGH) You know, she's got this whole thing that she makes up about herself and-- you know, she kind of sees herself as larger than life and has her own movie going on at all times in which she is the-- the hero and-- fighting battles and even if there is not a battle in front of her, she will create one. I love that. 3 RATHER A lot of us can relate to that, that is of saying, you know, life is pretty mundane today, but I want to imagine I'm the hero. I sink the shot with-- at the buzzer that wins the game or I-- LYNCH Exactly. RATHER --score the touchdown that wins the game. LYNCH And for some reason, everybody is afraid of her and believes her. (LAUGH) You know, and they're afraid to, like, you know, antagonize her. RATHER Well, did you know anybody like this coming up or is this straight out of your imagination? LYNCH Well, I-- you know why? Because I get asked it a lot now, I had to really think about it, and yes, I had a teacher at Illinois State. Her name was Jean Sharpfenburg. And she was grand and cruel. And she could tear you apart with a look. And she had an English accent, but she was raised in Iowa. And she was, you know, studied with-- Uta Hagen or actually, she's probably a contemporary of Uta Hagen, but she knew all of those people. And here she is in the cornfields of Illinois, kind of holding forth. And everybody was afraid of her. She would walk down the hall and people would look away. You wanted her to notice you, but then again, you didn't. You were-- it was one of those things where everybody was frozen and-- I-- you know, as I-- got older and I realized, you know, she did it with a kind of a little bit of a wink and-- was a wonderful teacher. But really tough. RATHER (VOICE OVER) AND BUILDING OFF OF HER MEMORIES, LYNCH HAS CREATED ONE OF THE MOST UNIQUE CHARACTERS ON TELEVISION. RATHER Let's review some of your favorite lines-- from Glee, if you like, or wherever. What are some of your favorite lines? 4 LYNCH Oh, let's see. Well, from Glee, one of my favorite lines is I go up to-- Chris Colfer's character, Kurt, the gay kid and-- I say-- "Loving musical theatre doesn't make you gay. It just makes you awful." (LAUGH) That's a good one. And I love saying-- RATHER Vicious. LYNCH (LAUGH) Vicious. And then-- I have-- Dianna Agron, who plays my head cheerleader, and she's gorgeous, like breathtakingly gorgeous. And I'm-- I sit across from her at my desk. And I say, "You remind me of a young Sue Sylvester, but without my bone structure." (LAUGH) That's a good one. And then both she and Santana are in my office and they have failed-- on a mission I'd sent them. And I say, LYNCH (FROM GLEE) "This is what we call a totally disaster. Ladies, I’m going to ask you to smell your armpits. That’s the smell of failure and it’s stinking up my office." LYNCH Or another one. "I've decided I will no longer be carrying photo ID.” LYNCH (FROM GLEE) “You know why? People should know who I am." RATHER With that attitude, you could anchor in a major market. LYNCH (LAUGHTER) Yeah, I really could. Yeah. Actually probably not a major market. Probably a really small-- small market, you know, maybe where they-- they-- they're a lot-- bigger than they think, a lot-- yes. RATHER So how did you get to Hollywood and the big time? 5 LYNCH I was doing-- a show called The Real Live Brady Bunch with a bunch of my friends. We took the scripts from The Brady Bunch off the TV and we put them onstage and we were a huge hit. People lined up for blocks to watch us (LAUGH) act this show out that we all grew up with and that we all idealized as a child. And we kind of made fun of-- but it actually was kind of an-- an homage to that show. RATHER Time moves along and you're making a living. You do voiceovers. You do commercials. You do small, independent films, sort of bit parts in other films, but you haven't cracked through the big time. LYNCH As much as there was a part of me wanting to be famous and get big jobs, I was kind of happy. I was-- I felt successful. I was doing sketch with my friends and I-- I'd created a one-person show with three other people. (LAUGH) And-- and it was-- it was-- a great-- it was a great time. It was-- it was probably, one might argue, my most creative time and hopefully I have more creative times to come, but I had kind of-- a little bit of a restlessness, but that restlessness was to keep creating. And-- I was in great therapy. I was learning a lot about myself. And I was embracing all of this stuff that was kind of hiding away in the shadows. And that's where my work was coming from. So there was a profound change in how I was creating characters was I was actually, literally, pulling from myself and unashamedly and going, "This is what I think. And this is-- this is the part of me that I'm afraid. And I was putting it into-- into characters and I found the audience going, "Yeah, me too," or, "I know somebody like that." (LAUGHTER) And I-- that's when things really changed for me in terms of my work. It became much more profound for me. RATHER (VOICE OVER) BUT IT WAS A CHANCE ENCOUNTER THAT WOULD ULTIMATELY CHANGE THE COURSE OF HER CAREER. LYNCH I was doing commercials, a lot of commercials at that time. It was kind of my time. Or I'd hit some, you know, was riding some wave in commercials. And I had a callback for a Kellogg's Frosted Flakes commercial. And it turns out Christopher Guest directs commercials all the time and his name was now underneath the-- it said, "Callback for Kellogg's Frosted Flakes. Director, Christopher Guest." And I was like oh. RATHER (VOICE OVER) 6 DIRECTOR CHRISTOPHER GUEST HAS CREATED SOME OF THE MOST LEGENDARY ENSEMBLE COMEDY FILMS OF THE LAST FEW DECADES - LIKE THIS IS SPINAL TAP... AND WAITING FOR GUFFMAN. NOW HE WOULD BE DIRECTING LYNCH IN A COMMERCIAL. LYNCH KNEW HER COMMERCIAL COULD BE HER BIG BREAK.