And I left the class, like, 'That's not for me.' In college, I took one acting class, and we all had to pretend to be an orange that day. "If they had said, 'actors learn improv,' I never would have responded to it. "They were teaching acting to nonprofessionals, and that was the important part of it," Sweeney recalls. I was always crying on my way to work."Īnd then she spotted an ad for the Groundlings, the legendary improv and sketch comedy troupe that has a litany of famous performers amongst its alumni - Will Ferrell, Kristen Wiig, Paul Reubens, Maya Rudolph, Kathy Griffin, Lisa Kudrow, Phil Hartman (who was one of Sweeney's improv teachers) and Craig T. "It was weird to be good at something I didn't enjoy," Sweeney says. "But no one ever said, 'You should go into show business as a funny person,'" she says.Īfter graduating from the University of Washington, where she double majored in economics and European history, Sweeney moved to L.A. I assume everyone has the best intentions."Īs an example, she says she didn't realize comedy was a viable career option "until way too late." Born and raised in Spokane, Sweeney remembers being exposed to comedy of the '50s and '60s - Bob and Ray's radio routines, the cartoons of James Thurber, the monologues of Brendan Behan - by her father. "Some people have conspiracy theories or they're paranoid about stuff. "I'm just f-in' oblivious," Sweeney tells me. S weeney says the thread running through her entire career has been her own lack of self-awareness. She then looks down at a bowl full of yolks and deadpans to her mother, who has emerged from the bedroom: "I guess we're having eggs for dinner." "I feel a lot better about this," Sweeney says. Even when she trips over a piece of dialogue, she charges through with the determination of someone who's fought in the trenches of improv.Īnd now watching the footage back, that earlier trepidation has melted away. She modulates the intensity of certain lines. Sweeney goes through the scene three times, and each go-around is slightly different from the last. Julia Sweeney as Pat alongside Harvey Keitel in a 1993 Saturday Night Live sketch. Could she play it meaner? But she doesn't want to be too mean, either. During her last audition, the producers told her she was a bit too nice. This is Sweeney's second callback for the show. The Hulu series, premiering in March, is inspired by former Stranger writer Lindy West's memoir and will star SNL cast member Aidy Bryant as an alt-weekly journalist living in the Pacific Northwest dealing with her Dan Savage-like editor (to be played by Hedwig and the Angry Inch creator John Cameron Mitchell) and, of course, her eccentric mother. The show Sweeney's trying out for is called Shrill, and one of its producers is Lorne Michaels, who gave Sweeney her big break on SNL back in 1990. She offers dubious dieting tips ("almonds are the cheeseburgers of nuts") as she prepares dinner, while her husband, sick with cancer, vomits in the next room. The character is concerned about her 30-something daughter's weight. Observations tumble out of her mouth that are no doubt meant to salve emotional insecurities, but land instead with all the delicacy of a knife in the gut. In the scene, Sweeney is playing your standard sitcom mother - well-meaning but overbearing, protective but suffocating. She brought it up in passing but quickly changed the subject, because there was just no way she'd ever land such a great role on a show as high-profile as this, and what if she blabs about it to every journalist in town and then doesn't even get the gig?īut now I'm sitting at her mom Jeri's dining room table on a Friday afternoon in early July, as she runs through a short scene - some of which she's written herself - in front of a camera, and it seems pretty damn effortless. She's nervous, which is surprising when you consider she was once on Saturday Night Live, which has one of the most famously cutthroat audition processes in all of show biz. Ten years? Maybe longer.Ī day earlier, Sweeney had been hesitant to even mention the audition to me, let alone invite me to watch. It's the first role in a major production that she's tried out for in. They've become props in an audition she's filming in the kitchenette of her mother's Spokane apartment. J ulia Sweeney has cracked nearly a dozen eggs before she's satisfied with the scene. Julia Sweeney at the Fox Theater, where she'll perform her show Older & Wider.
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