This past Sunday, Jane Lynch sat down with her former costar from Party Down, Adam Scott, to discuss her journey through a show business career as laid out in her new memoir, Happy Accidents.
Lynch, whose success on Glee has made her a household name, did not always see the clearest path toward her current success, but attributes her current good fortune to a series of happy accidents, saying she was always at the right place at the right time
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Her early acting years were halting at best: upon getting her first lead in high school, Lynch recalled dropping out due to “not getting the character,” an excuse she invented as she was so afraid of failure. She even saved the newspaper clip of the casting in her childhood scrapbook, which Lynch calls “a tribute to mediocrity,” rife with C and D report cards, fifth place swim team ribbons and rejection letters from agents.
Lynch described how the crushing feeling of that self-sabotage changed her entire approach, and how she has said yes to everything since, except porno. (Replied Scott, “We’ll see,” and Lynch added, “There’s a lot of career left for me.”) She went on to major in the “theatre adjacent” study of Mass Communications, and eventually got her M.F.A. at Cornell, or as she put it, “I became a huge pain in the ass… well, I was classically trained.”
Lynch describes herself as “born with angst,” which carried on during much of her life due to her repressed sexuality (she only came out at age 32), and made building relationships difficult across the years. Ensemble acting became a huge part of her life, and through the Second City, she found “her people” — in speaking of Glee, she said, “We’re all in high school, in that regard, we’re all looking for our people.” It was by staying with these people and pursuing the happiness she found with them that Lynch eventually attained the career she’d hoped for. That, and a little luck: she met Christopher Guest while shooting a commercial, and got cast in Best in Show after randomly running into him at breakfast in the Newsroom.
The conversation was not without its small surprises: Scott brought up a “controversy” that parts of the memoir were supposedly lifted from Jane Fonda’s book, which he kindly asked Lynch to read from. The excerpt was a description of vibrators such as the Magic Wand and the Rabbit, and when Lynch asked why he’d asked her to read it, Scott responded, “it just turns me on.”
Another unexpected delight was a drunken man appearing from backstage to give Lynch a hug and say “thank you” for all she’s done. The two, of course, handled the situation with aplomb: “Anyone else want to come up here?” Lynch joked. “That was odd… I thought I was going to get stabbed,” added Scott.
In closing, Lynch spoke briefly of those who inspired her, including the ladies of Absolutely Fabulous for their fearlessness, and the true ensemble playing comedienne, Carol Burnett, Lynch’s once-idol who’s since played her mother on Glee. She also mentioned how Amy Poehler won’t even dignify the “are women funny” question with a response, and Adam added, “to prove that wrong once and for all, Amy came up with the Fonda joke.”
It was inspiring to hear the true gratitude, generosity and humility still present in Jane Lynch’s demeanor. She is nothing but grateful for her arrival at stardom, saying that it was “perfectly timed” in her life, as with age she’s become relatively immune to criticism: “I know who I am at the end of the day.” She has a wife, a daughter, and “the house Nexium built” (referring to the commercial that paid for her home) and is finally settled in to who she is — a comedic rock star.
