Gillian Jacobs is the very funny, talented actress who plays Britta Perry on Community, and has guest starred on The Venture Bros, Robot Chicken and Comedy Bang! Bang. On the other hand, I ask hard-hitting interview questions about magical suitcases and saving God’s life. These are 5 hypothetical questions for Gillian Jacobs:
1. You’re one of the very talented stars of the beloved sitcom “Community” on NBC. Your character, Britta Perry, has a funny trait – she pronounces “bagel” as “baggle.” Let’s say you saved the life of the current Editor-in-Chief of the Merriam-Webster dictionary. (You pulled him out of the path of a car that sped through a red light.) He says because of your heroism, you can create a new, official pronunciation of any word. Which word would you choose and how would it now be pronounced?
How about salad would be… snaaalad.
2. You’ve been in a number of independent movies. Let’s say you auditioned for and got cast in this low budget indie movie. You read the script, and the character you’re playing is you. Not similar to you, but exactly like you in a creepy, voyeuristic way. The character’s name is different, but everything else is clearly you – really personal life details, things you’ve said to people in private written out verbatim. You’ve never met the director or producers before. What do you do?
I guess I must assume they have a government job and the NSA was supplying them information about me. So I would do the movie.
Would you try and report them?
Who could I report them to?! If it’s a government-sponsored movie, I should probably just do it, right?
Would you say anything to anyone? Like friends? Or is there no one you could trust, because you knew you were being spied on?
Well, I think we know there’s no one we can trust.
That’s true. If The X-Files has taught us anything…
Right? We’re all alone in this world. I guess I’ll have to make this government-sponsored movie that the government wants me to make.
3. According to IMDB, you were in 5 movies scheduled to be released this year, which is amazing…
Wow!
I know! You’re so busy, you don’t even know. So, let’s say some tech entrepreneurs came to you asking if you’ll be the star of their Final Cut Pro plug-in, which would allow filmmakers to put a lifelike, fully controllable version of you into any movie. They estimate the year this plug-in comes out, you’ll be in over 250 movies, and you’ll receive royalties for every film you’re in. You will become the most seen actress ever in the history of film, but you have no control over the way the filmmakers use you in their movies. Will you sign off on the plugin?
Sometimes it already feels like that being an actor, so I think I’ll have to go with no.
But you could be the most popular actress of all-time!
I think if I was in over 250 films, the world would get pretty sick of me. I would probably never get put in anything ever again.
But of course, you’d be in this plug-in. So you’d probably still be put in a lot of things.
I don’t know. They might realize there’s no benefit to putting me in their film and just stop. I’d be overdone. You don’t want to wear out your welcome.
4. Let’s talk about your terrific new Jash short, “It’s Not You, It’s Me.” In the film, you play a woman who gets really, really mad at the annoying things her boyfriend does. Let’s say you saved God’s life. (You pulled him out of the path of a car that sped through a red light.) God rewards you by saying you can eliminate one annoying trait that many guys have. Which would you eliminate?
Not all men are the same. Come on! That’s a very sexist question.
Hmm… Having fallen into a toilet because a man left the toilet seat up, I think I’ll go with that old, clichéd, but still very dangerous habit of leaving the toilet seat up.
It’s not just a cliché, it’s a dangerous cliché.
It’s a dangerous cliché for women, and I don’t think men fully appreciate what happens to us. They haven’t thought it all the way through. They haven’t thought it alllll the way through.
5. Without giving too much away, suitcases play a crucial role in the film. Suppose you could put anything – or anyone – into a suitcase, bury it, and it will never be seen again. Gone 4 ever. What’s going into the suitcase?
God, these are really complex moral questions you keep asking me! I feel like you’re passing into the darkness of humanity with these. I don’t want to put anyone in a suitcase!
Or anything. I gave you the choice of anyone or anything.
Oh, anything. That’s much easier to answer. How about cancer? Is cancer a thing?
It’s a little abstract, but sure. You can synthesize… all the cancer cells… or something and put them in a suitcase. That’s very kind of you to do that!
Thank you!
Geoffrey Golden is the Editor in Chief of The Devastator: The Quarterly Comedy Magazine For Humans!
