DORÉ

Have you seen Love? Ibiza? Life of the Party? Then you’ve witnessed the talent of my guest, Gillian Jacobs. I met her in LA, at Cliff’s edge, and we talked about life, her Lenny letter, being labeled “untalented” and how she learned to open up…

[podcast_episode episode=”269390″ ]

On hanging out in department stores after hours…
When I was little, my mom worked at a department store that no longer exists, called Kauffman’s. I used to go with her after hours and she’d have me sleep in the pillow display if she was working late. It was really fun as a kid to be in a department store after it was closed and no one was there and all the lights were off, so I have fond memories of going and hanging out there as a kid.

On making friends in acting class…
It was kids from all around my city, not just my suburb, so I got to meet kids from all over Pittsburgh. I connected with them, they were nicer to me, I was good at acting, so for me, I lived all week to get to Saturday so I could go to acting class. I just had to get through Monday to Friday, and then I got to go to acting class!

On her education of acting in the theater vs. TV…
I was going to a school that was training me to do theater. It was theater or nothing! It felt like doing theater is worthwhile and everything else is mmmm..maybe you’ll do a movie, but a TV show, that’s beneath you!

On being on probation at Juilliard…
The thing I wish I’d been able to do was talk more openly about it with the people in my life. I didn’t even tell my mother and I didn’t talk about it at all. My technique was to just bottle it all up inside and try to get through it and figure out what they wanted me to do. I was so used to pleasing teachers and at this school, I felt like I couldn’t do anything right, which was so strange for me.

On coping with rejection…
I always tried to take the long view on my career and not get devastated by any one job if I got it or not. But certainly there are ones that hurt more than others. I want to be in this for the long run and I want this to be my life and doing this for decades. So then you realize ok, if I’m going to get so upset every time I don’t get a job, I’m going to burn out and never make it because it’s too painful. So I tried to let myself get upset and keep going. I think that’s helped me, despite all the rejection.

On deciding to let her natural hair color shine…
For years, it was just getting more and more blond. My hair was so damaged and breaking off and I lost half the volume of my hair. I just realized, I don’t have to keep doing this, I can choose to stop. So I haven’t dyed my hair in three or four years now, which seems like nothing, but here in LA, people are like, “You don’t dye your hair? That’s your natural color?” People are so amazed and can’t believe I’d go out in the world without dying my hair!

On the role of social media in promoting her work…
It’s a hard thing because I don’t want to become obsessed with it, but it also is an important tool especially if you’re in a smaller movie or a TV show that’s not getting a lot of promotion. To have the ability to tell people directly, “I’m doing this thing and I want you to check it out,” is powerful.

On being a private person…
I’m a pretty private person in general which makes this career choice a little strange. I have a hard time talking to the people who are close to me in my life about what’s going on, let alone telling the world, so I try not to share too much or everything. It’s probably why I talk about my mom so much, because it’s a safe thing to talk about and she’s funny and always doing something entertaining. But I don’t want to share everything about my life, but I’m trying on the other hand to not feel like I can’t share and that it’s ok to be vulnerable. It’s weird! You want to be vulnerable in your work but you don’t want to give the world your whole life on a platter. It’s hard to figure out what’s appropriate and what’s good for me vs. what other people might want me to do.

On directing the short documentary on Grace Hopper, The Queen of Code...
I would like to do more about women in STEM because there are so many stories there. STEM is science, technology, engineering and math. There are so many incredible women in STEM that I would like to highlight. The woman I made the documentary about is no longer living, but there were other women from her era that were also incredible that nobody really knows about who did amazing things in the earliest days of computers. I get excited about bringing these women to a larger audience.

On never having been to Ibiza…
I haven’t been anywhere near Ibiza! We shot the movie, Ibiza, in Serbia and Croatia, which are beautiful! Someone emailed me, “You have to give me restaurant recommendations for Ibiza for a wedding,” and I was like, I’m not the person to tell you, we weren’t anywhere near it!

On working with Melissa McCarthy on Life of the Party…
She really is one of those people when she walks into a room, everybody turns and stares. There is a twinkle in her eye and something about her, I don’t know how to describe it that just draws your eye to her. But she is also really kind and generous and it was such a supportive atmosphere on set. It was like a slumber party of a movie shoot!