Amy Sedaris sounds exhausted. I don’t blame her, considering that this is the first of 20 odd interviews she’ll have to do today, which as a 45 year old celebrity on her first press junket for her first film, Strangers with Candy: the Movie can be more than a little exhausting. And yet, she’s answering my increasingly nervous, increasingly uneasy questions almost cavalierly, rejecting my questions with flippant replies of “I don’t know” and “maybe” with an air of ease. So maybe Amy’s good at being the anti-celebrity.
For an actress who has worked with J-Lo and Sarah Jessica Parker (Sedaris has had bit roles on Sex and the City and in The Wedding Planner), Amy has carved out a niche for herself in the competitive world of stardom.
“It’s difficult for me to answer that question”, she replies when I ask her where she would sit at the Hollywood lunch table, after all Strangers with Candy is set in a high school. “I don’t even think I’m on the radar. I don’t know anything about Hollywood,” she halfheartedly confesses.
But perhaps that’s true. Sedaris hails from Raleigh, North Carolina where she originally planned to graduate from high school and then work in a women’s correctional facility. It was her star-bound brother David Sedaris (an American essayist known for his hilarious tales inspired by his crazy childhood upbringing) who convinced Amy to make the leap from prison guard to improvisational theatre. Soon after Amy landed a steady gig with Chicago’s revered Second City sketch-com troupe. It was at Second City that Sedaris met her future co-stars of Strangers with Candy, Paul Dinello and the now incredibly influential Stephen Colbert. Together, the trio worked on the sketch comedy show Exit 57 (search for it on Youtube and find an awesome sketch featuring Dinello and Colbert making out) and eventually created the cult hit Strangers with Candy for Comedy Central. Sedaris explains the three of them have been working together for 20 years, which is no easy feat.
For those not familiar with Strangers with Candy, the series chronicles the life of Jerri Blank, an ex-con/junky/prostitute (how’s that for a COV?) who returns to her old alma mater, Flatpoint High, to start her life over. During the show’s 3 year run, Blank learned many important lessons, like how having an eating disorder will give you more attention from family members, or what to do when people from your past (like illegitimate children) return to remind you of the person you once were. Strangers with Candy was a twist on the traditional after-school genre, playing up the saccharine values of the American dream while ridiculing them for all they’re worth. There was a humanity to Jerri Blank that made you look forward to seeing her ruin her life time and time again. As Amy explains to me over the phone, “I never play anyone who doesn’t like themselves.”
There’s a silence now on the other end of the line. Finally something I can work with. “That’s really interesting Amy…” I reply. “I don’t know, maybe”, she says. And with that, the inner psychology of Sedaris’ erratic character persona is dismissed in under a second.
Sedaris has had a long history of playing people who, while having high self-esteem, are incredibly hideous both on the outside and on the inside. Among her regulars is the character “Piglet” which she performs with her nostrils taped to her forehead, giving her the appearance of a barnyard animal. “Piglet” always unleashes a frantic stream of swear words at the audience, and attacks the world in a series of different ways. But Amy has also played it straight, acting for instance, as David Spade’s stalker on TV’s Just Shoot Me and as a key witness to on Law and Order.
“Do you like pretending to be other people?” I ask Amy, twisting the coil of the phone chord around my finger like a vise. “Yeah” she offers. “Because it seems like you spend, you know, a lot of time inside your own head…”, I say. “I guess so…but probably not more than other people”, she replies. More silence. I’m sweating bullets. “And do you, you know, like being inside your own head?”, I press. “Well, where else am I going to be?” she shoots back. Ouch.
And so we soldier on, Amy’s voice sounding increasingly more distant from her St. Christopher street apartment in New York City (she’s lived in New York for 12 years and “likes it a lot”). She tells me that she takes on projects which sound like they could be interesting. If it’s somebody else’s work then she’s adamant about only taking a small role because “I don’t want to have any responsibility. But it’s my own work then I want to be heavily involved.”
In both the television and film version of Strangers with Candy, Sedaris is certainly a key player, heading the film as the main protagonist, a member of the writing team and apparently working through an increasingly frenzied publicity schedule to promote it. “What are you going to do next?” I ask her, completely in vain. “I don’t know…I’m looking forward to taking some time off so I can go on vacation…maybe to the beach”, she replies. Wow.
It’s funny that a woman so animated on her regular David Letterman and Conan O’Brien appearances can sound so lifeless in conversation. Amy is known for her high manic energy, gushing with Dave about her new imaginary boyfriend Ricky, recipe for her famous line of cupcakes and detailing her life as a single woman with a pet rabbit to feed, Dusty. As she runs from one side of the stage to another, jumping out of her seat only to change personas and voices, the audience is amazed at the level of charisma and personality Amy can interject in a room. “You sound exhausted”, I say to Amy over the phone. “I am”, she replies.
