Don't Call It a Comeback

in�brief in�brief DON’T CALL IT A COMEBACK “Veep” star Anna Chlumsky has been here for years By HUNTER R. SLATON Photography by NAHO KUBOTA TRONG SUNLIGHT streams through a wall of windows in the Brooklyn bar where “Veep” actor Anna Chlumsky is Sseated, dutifully posing for Rhapsody’s photographer. As she faces into the glare and squints, trying to shield her dazzling baby blues, a makeup artist touches her up, a hairstylist teases her dirty-blond hair and the photographer asks her to perch awkwardly on a stool. After the shoot is finished, and after her husband and seven-month-old baby girl arrive from their apartment just a short walk away, I ask the 33-year-old Chlumsky if it bothers her to have people poke and prod at her. “I don’t notice it, I think because I started so young,” she answers cheerily. “Modeling started at 10 months old. My first commercial was when I was 2. My first play was 8—‘Annie.’ And then My Girl at 10.” That is the role—of Vada Sultenfuss, the troubled, mother- less daughter of funeral director Dan Aykroyd—that until recently Chlumsky was best known for, and you can still very much see the girl in the woman. Yet as a teenager, Chlumsky abandoned acting, choosing instead to go to college, move to New York City and get an entry-level job in publishing, first as a fact checker at the restaurant guide Zagat Survey and then working on sci-fi and fantasy books for HarperCollins. CREDIT�TK�TK�TK�TK�TK�TK�TK�TK�TK CREDIT�TK�TK�TK�TK�TK�TK�TK�TK�TK — may 2014 may 2014 — RHAP0514_028_IB_AnnaChlumsky.indd 28 08/04/2014 12:06 RHAP0514_028_IB_AnnaChlumsky.indd 29 08/04/2014 12:07 in�brief She enjoyed it—to some extent. “It’s the most fun 9-to-5 job that I can think of, really,” she says. “Especially with science-fiction and fantasy books, you get to look at art, these crazy paintings, and you’re reading about goblins and mages—and that’s really fun. But I wasn’t happy. I was still crying on my lunch breaks. So that was the clue that I was supposed to be pursuing other things.” Chlumsky enrolled in the Atlantic Acting School’s intensive summer “boot camp” program and knew from day one that she was back in the right place. “It’s a real gift to be a part of the storytelling tradition and to be the conduit of good text to the audience,” she says. Fresh out of training, Chlumsky performed Shake- speare—Isabella in “Measure for Measure”—in a church basement in Queens. Later she scored an appearance on “30 Rock” and, in a true sign of “making it” for an East Coast actor, a role on “Law & Order,” playing an erotic novelist who had been assaulted by a TV show host. “I got to be that official New York actor,” Chlumsky quips, “who when you read the Playbill there’s like 100 ‘Law & Order’s on there.” SECOND BANANAS Anna Chlumsky and Julia Louis- Dreyfus, who plays U.S. Vice President Selina Meyer in “Veep” ‘Uh-huh—let me see that contract first,” she adds, with just a smidge of playful sarcasm. HBO’s “Veep,” which stars Julia Louis-Dreyfus as U.S. Vice President Selina Meyer and is now in its third season, was inspired by In the Loop. Chlumsky plays the VP’s chief of staff, Amy Brookheimer, one of the more pulled-together characters on a show with no shortage of frayed nerves, short tempers, preposterous situations, cutting one-liners and unprintable expletives. But even though the show is laugh-out-loud funny, Chlumsky doesn’t believe it’s all just fun and games. “It’s actually taking a look at some- thing that I think is very true and real. These She got her second big post-sabbatical break in 2009, people who are expected to be perfect—and are trying to when she landed a part in In the Loop, the political satire be perfect—aren’t. They’re children.” by Scottish director Armando Iannucci about the run-up to It’s a point of view that resonates with the very people a war in the Middle East. “It was heaven,” Chlumsky says “Veep” is sending up. Last year Louis-Dreyfus had lunch with of acting in a film that would get an Oscar nod for best actual U.S. Vice President Joe Biden, and certain members adapted screenplay. “It was the best thing I’d done. I loved of Biden’s staff introduced themselves as the “Dan,” “Amy” it, and I would write in my journals, ‘Can’t I just work for or “Sue” of the office. “People who are consultants or fans Armando Iannucci again?’ in D.C. say all the time to us, ‘You have no idea how right “So when the pilot for ‘Veep’ [created by Iannucci] you’re getting it,’” Chlumsky says. “It’s frightening, it’s came along, and Arm was like, ‘We want you,’ I was like, troubling—but we may as well laugh.” HAIR��JOHN�RUDIANT�@�ANNA@SEEMANAGEMENT�COM�� MAKE-UP��KIM�BOWER�@�CROSBY@CROSBYCARTERMGMT�COM�� LOCATION��THE�ROOKERY��THEROOKERYBAR�COM��LACEY�TERRELL��STILL� — may 2014 RHAP0514_028_IB_AnnaChlumsky.indd 30 08/04/2014 12:07.

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