- I love you for so many reasons
and over so many years and in every capacity
but I also wanna zero in, if it's okay,
on Christy Cummings.
- Please, please, "Best in Show." (laughs)
- I've probably seen that movie at least 100 times.
No hyperbole, you and Jennifer Coolidge in that movie.
It's my favorite thing in the world.
Did you guys have as much fun making it
as it feels watching it?
- Yes, we did.
We shot that in Vancouver, Jennifer Coolidge and I
with everybody else.
We had just met.
We were the new kids on the block
in terms of that unofficial Christopher Guest ensemble.
We were both very nervous, but we had a lot of time
to just walk around through Stanley Park
and come up with funny, funny things to say to each other.
Yeah, we improvised, but we also set some stuff
up for ourselves that made us laugh.
So we had a blast,
we became very good friends and I adore her to this day.
- What is it like to be with, you know,
such an incredible cast?
People, I mean, people are cultish
about the Christopher Guest world
which you're such an important part of.
- Well, thank you.
Yeah, I'm really happy that I am,
and I will say this about working with that group of people.
They're all kind of insecure comedy people,
we all are, all of us together, and we're all kind of normal
and weird at the same time,
and we appreciate each other's kind of oddities.
And Chris is one, he doesn't laugh very much,
he doesn't give you much direction.
He's very quiet.
He's a man of very few words.
But when you do get him to laugh
and it usually looks like this (chuckles)
that's a good laugh for him.
And then your heart fills with joy
and the clouds part and the sun shines.
- Was there a moment that the clouds parted
and the Oprah aha, and everything made sense
of why you wanted to go into comedy.
- Oh gosh, that's a great question.
And you know, the little things of making the joke
in class, where you get the attention and everybody laughs
and all of a sudden
you're the coolest person in the world for one second.
But, you know, I grew up in a family of, you know
we weren't yakka, yakka comedian type people
but it was a great, it was a badge of honor
to be the butt of the joke (laughs).
And we loved, we had a very healthy
sense of self deprecation.
And you know, when I was able to take that
out on stage and to take those little subtle things,
I still do this about people,
I notice really subtle things about people
mostly what they're trying to pull off in the world.
And those are the things that I kind of stockpile
in my brain, and I invest my characters
with those things that they think they're pulling off,
that kind of their Achilles heel that they're hiding.
And that is probably the most fun and creating a character.
"What is this person hiding?
"What does person think they're very good at
"but they're not at all."
So I love doing that.
- I never ever thought of trying to act
like there's something
that I don't want other people to know.
- Yeah, he Achilles heel, "What is my tenderness
"that if anybody pointed it out to me
"I would dissolve into a pile of dust."
- That is such a great thing to portray
about the human condition.
Speaking of humans and family, and you have an aunt Marge.
- Yes, or as we call her
in Chicago aunt Marge.
Marge is not only my godmother
but she is my father's only sister,
and they're first generation from Ireland,
so my grandmother was basically a farm girl.
The Irish girls, all the brothers are treated
like kings, but the Irish girls do all the cooking
and the cleaning and everything,
so she grew up basically serving her family
and, you know, took care of my grandmother till she passed.
Took care of my uncle, John, until he passed.
And now, like in the last 20 years,
she has just come alive in a way.
She always lived pretty happily and pretty openly
and with great faith, but she just came alive.
She's 91.
She had a boyfriend, he just passed away.
She had a boyfriend
for 20 years and you know, she never married,
so it was just, she's living her life the way she wants to.
And she is the most joyous,
at peace person I've ever, ever met.
I always say, "My aunt Marge is free.
"She's a free human being."
- I love that story because I feel
like it's a great lesson to everyone right now
in the face of thinking about mortality
on a daily basis, the epicness of us all having to think,
listen and behave differently in 2020.
But I think I have a personal fear
of reaching my own death bed
and having not escaped some of the patterns
or behaviors that I would like to let go.
Like in here it's crazy and it's self critical.
And I'm such a happy person, honestly
like it's such an oxymoron and I'm like,
"I will not get to that deathbed
"having still this much noise in there
"I want to feel calm and let go."
And so I was really inspired by aunt Marge
because I feel like she has something to teach us all.
- She sure does.
There is, you know, for her, her gateway to this life
is she's Catholic and she's quite faithful,
she goes to church every day and she prays
and she's, you know, she's filled with the joy of the Lord.
And for me, and I know that you practice
mindfulness as well.
And I do TM in the morning and at night,
which is transcendental meditation.
And there's, it's not that you get rid of any thoughts,
like I don't think my aunt Marge
like, you know, is trying to get rid of thoughts,
I think you just come to peace about it.
And then they're kind of like a radio in another room
you're like barely, barely hear them
and you barely pay attention to them.
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