Janeane Garofalo: Comedy is her religion

by Emma Kat Richardson

Her film and television roles have surely helped Janeane Garofalo make an impression on the mainstream; but through the years, her stand-up is what has endeared her to hordes of dedicated comedy fans. So, why did she make them (and us) wait 13 years for a proper comedy special? More importantly, will June 26 get here soon enough?

In my hierarchy of personal intimidation, Janeane Garofalo beats out Rahm Emmanuel.

And she doesn’t just beat him out – really, she blows him out of the water. (One might be able to imagine the trailing oil slick that would follow his dripping wetness.)

When I tell her this, she is genuinely puzzled. In what asinine, sub-normal plane of existence might she, a venerable, savvy stand-up of 25 years and an accomplished actress who claims more than 20 film roles (a few of them iconic) to her credit, outweigh a frightening misanthrope who has the ear of the president, in terms of intimidation?

“You flatter me,” she says, forthright. “Thank you.”

Perhaps I’m gushing a bit too much, and may forfeit the ability to emerge from this profile with my dignity intact, but having grown up with Janeane’s sassy, spitfire presence as a near constant informant upon my pop cultural education, surrendering to intimidation proves a relatively easy cross to bear. After all, films from her repertoire like Now and Then and Romy and Michele’s High School Reunion were sleepover staples in my middle school days; even her work in 2001’s Wet Hot American Summer and the finished product which followed so impacted my life, I was compelled to write my senior thesis in college on it.

But this is certainly no diva, given to bouts of extreme vanity, with whom we are contending. Janeane Garofalo remains an iconoclast of onscreen cynicism and trademark ‘90s snark, but captured in a candid moment, she is gracious and magnanimous; noble and knowledgeable; self-effacing and self-deprecating. She’s got a brand new stand-up special coming out (entitled If You Will, premiering on the Epix network June 26) which she hasn’t seen and never will – she doesn’t like watching herself outside of the fourth wall.

Luckily for us, we like watching her on camera. Witnessing the petite stand-up sling the mic as she spits wry, witty barbs – equal parts personal and political – we see something that even Janeane herself would never cop to: radiance. And I must concede – it’s hard not to be intimidated while staring directly into the sun.

First of all, I wanted to start off by saying that I’d probably be less intimidated right now if I was interviewing Rahm Emmanuel, and you know how scary he is.
Yeah, he’s something. Why would you be intimidated?

Well, I’m a big fan of yours.
Wow, you flatter me. Thank you.

But anyway, since both your parents were employed by the oil industry, I’m curious to hear your take on the whole BP situation.
Well, my mom worked for Conoco before she died – she died very young – so she was only there very briefly. She was a secretary, so she wasn’t really privy to the ins and outs of the business. I don’t mean just a secretary, but a secretary probably isn’t party to the hierarchy of power. And my dad’s an engineer, so he is not also privy to the things I’m certain Exxon does on a daily basis. But even if they hadn’t been working in the industry, I’d still have the same reaction to BP, which is, you know, typical corporate greed, profit motive, cutting corners; treating workers and people and the environment like disposable lighters.

I also am disgusted that the Obama administration kept all the corrupt policies of the Bush administration in place, and helped feed into this tragedy. I don’t even understand it – I don’t understand how the Obama administration kept the same people in the management service in place, and kept ignoring the safety warnings. They had Ken Salazar as the Secretary of the Interior, who’s corrupt. It just makes no sense. I have no idea why the Obama administration has been as heartbreakingly disappointing as it has. So yeah, I’m just disgusted. Other than that, I don’t know what else to say. I’m sure this type of thing will continue to go on and on and on.

I think even a week before the spill happened, Obama was talking about expanding offshore drilling.
Oh yeah, definitely, definitely. But at midnight, when Bush left office – literally, on the night they left – they signed into law all kinds of corporate-friendly things. I don’t get it. You know, the corporation will always dominate; it’s naive to think differently. But I don’t know what it’s gonna take for the political realm to stop allowing the corporate realm to be so blatantly corrupted. It’ll probably never end, because it’s probably just the way it is. I assume that’s just the way it’s always been, and will always be – it just doesn’t get exposed until there’s a tragedy.

Like, you’re always aware of it, but then it becomes shockingly transparent when something like that happens. I’m sure that British Petroleum will find a way to not really pay money and not really clean up. They always do. They’ll just litigate the shit out of it, and wait for the mainstream media to move on, which they’re happy to do.

You were raised both Catholic and conservative. At what point did you make the transition to being a liberal atheist? Was there something specific that made you open your eyes in a different way?
I had always had my suspicions that the conservative ideology I was being fed was kind of mean and exclusionary. I had those feelings as a kid, because certain things just didn’t feel very kind. My dad’s a great guy; I just assumed he knew what he was talking about. He’s an arch-conservative, like from his college days. Now, he’s not one of those Bill O’Reilly conservatives – he’s more of a Bill Buckley. He’s not the type of guy that would watch Fox. He’s more of your highbrow mean guy. [Laughs]

Like small government, less taxes?
All that, you know what I mean? He finds the Fox News and the Glenn Becks to be blowhards, but it doesn’t stop him from voting for people like George Bush. Having said that, because my dad’s such a sweetheart, and such a smart guy, I just assumed he knew what he was talking about. I know I had my doubts, but I didn’t have the wherewithal to assert them.

Then, I went to a very religious, conservative university called Providence College in Providence, Rhode Island. And I started realizing, again, that these people who support these [things], as close to god as they purport to be, in the faculty and in my classmates, they tend to be the most small-minded, nastiest people I keep meeting, when it comes to their worldview, or their cultural vision. They seem to be just kind of petty and exclusionary, so these seeds of doubt just started happening. Then, as I got older and kept meeting new and different people, I started realizing that their vision – their emotional intelligence, if you will – was much more in keeping with a way of living that I thought would be wiser to aspire to.

Then I got exposed to Noam Chomsky and Howard Zinn, Emma Goldman and things of that nature: things that just make you realize that there’s a different way to live a meaningful life. It is pursuing good citizenship, I would think, being a liberal (although some people call it “progressive” because they’ve been bullied by the right-wing into not using the word “liberal.” Liberal is a word to be proud of). Being liberal and being a feminist… when people say they don’t want to be called a feminist, that blows my mind, too. Isn’t that the weirdest copout? All feminism is is, “Do you believe in social justice and gender equality?” How could you be against that?

It’s like, who bullied you into showing your weakness and not wanting to say you’re a feminist? Or how about when people say the fucking stupidest shit: “man-hater,” and all that lazy nonsense. I would say to them who, who? Who are you specifically referring to? Just gimme a name! Or when people say that about liberals: “they hate America,” and all that infantile thing. I would say to them, who? I need a name. Which one hates America? These kind of infantile tropes make me sick, and most of the infantile tropes come from conservative ideologues – just these false narratives that people keep accepting and swallowing. They just keep getting passed off like mainstream news.

Like the Tea Partiers – as if they are a valid group of people to go to for criticism of the president. Now, there is valid criticism, but not from them! Their problem with him is that he’s black. That’s not valid. Why do they get a say? What the fuck? Does that mean you’d allow a slave owner on, and I’m sure they would, if this had been a few years ago. That kind of nonsense makes me sick, and that kind of nonsense tends to be part and parcel with any fundamentalist ideology. They tend to be quite emotionally unintelligent, and it’s just something that I don’t want to cultivate in my personality.

At what point would you say you stopped believing in god?
Probably around 27. I used to go, “I’m agnostic,” which means you’re hedging your bets, and I thought that was cowardly. I thought, if there was a god, that wasn’t very fair. You might as well just go full-blown and say it: don’t be a coward. Don’t try to cover your ass to say you’re agnostic. So I was like no, I should own it. I am an atheist. And if there is a god or a higher power, I am absolutely willing to believe in it if you show me any evidence. I will be fine with it if you show me any evidence. I’m not saying that there isn’t for sure – there just hasn’t been any evidence to support that there is, so it would be, to me, not very interesting to pursue that. There are a lot more interesting scientific things to pursue that answer the big questions as well.

How do you think this evolution of you – from being Catholic and conservative to liberal and atheist – has informed your comedy?
Um, I don’t know, because it’s not like as a kid I would have labeled myself Catholic and conservative. I just was – I was indoctrinated into it, and I didn’t make a decision. There wasn’t a turning point where I went, “I am not Catholic and conservative. I am now liberal and atheist,” I just started evolving as a person, and if you evolve as a person, chances are you’re going to evolve toward knowledge and intellectual curiosity.

So that was unfolding, and then I realized my political views, which are actually just life views, were falling in line with people like Howard Zinn (sorry to use that example again, but he deserves it; the late Howard Zinn). Then reading The People’s History of America, you just realize that there is a far, more intelligent, kinder way to view people and the world and politics; culture and society in general, domestically and internationally, and conservatives don’t seem to do that.

And how did it inform my stand-up? I don’t know: I just in the way of, you know, when you’re just being yourself onstage, obviously yourself comes out. I started doing stand-up when I was 19, so whoever I was at 19 was doing stand-up, just as whoever I am now at 45 is doing stand-up. It just is the way I am in my perspective on things, but it would be tragic if I was still in my mind 19: behaving that way and saying those things. So I guess it’s just informed my stand-up in the way that anything in your life informs your stand-up, unless you’re the type of joke-writer or joke-teller that just doesn’t let themselves show through. That’s not a bad thing – it’s not a criticism – but they don’t really let the audience see who they are.

You mean somebody that affects a persona?
Either that or it’s just a joke-teller, but you don’t get an insight into who they really are. They’re maybe a person who sits down at a desk and writes jokes.

Someone like Steven Wright, probably?
It could be, but that seems like who he really is. I’m talking about like a skewed perspective: a journeyman, working, female or male stand-up who is like, “I’ve got to have six new jokes, and it doesn’t matter if they’re true. I’m going to pretend this happened to me at the bank today, or I’m going to say I had this observation about something.” There are some comedians like that, and as I said, that’s not a criticism of them: it’s just the way they do it, which is not my way of doing it. So if they change whatever’s going on in their life, it may not change how they do stand-up.

So do you always try to strive for a certain amount of realism as a rule in your stand-up?
Oh, I definitely slightly exaggerate. I’ve definitely slightly exaggerated for the sake of a story; just for the sake of entertainment value in a story. But I’ve never made up anything; I’ve never pretended something has happened if it hasn’t. I have certainly embellished. I might have embellished the absurdity of the situation, or I may have moved the timeline of things around for the economy of the story, or stuff like that. I may heighten absurd characteristics of something, but I don’t make shit up, and I don’t pretend something happened to me today that didn’t happen.

When you were a kid, you moved around a lot to different places that were not only geographically very different, but culturally very different. Do you think that played a big role in your comedic voice?
I don’t know. I don’t think so, because it wasn’t actually that traumatic. There was only one move that was traumatic, and it was kind of a bummer. Other than that, it was fine. I kept going back and forth, mostly, between Houston and New Jersey, so I was seeing some of the same people again. It was really bad on my older brother and sister: for some reason, they weren’t extroverts, per se, and it was very hard on them. But I was more of a… I don’t want to say extrovert, but I seemed oblivious to the nerd that I was.

Honestly, I was really like a socially awkward kid, but I didn’t recognize it at the time, and then there was a lot of years when I was a very overweight kid, which I also was impervious to that (I guess luckily). I realized I was kind of a doofus sometimes, but I was just kinda fine with it, so I don’t think that was it. Actually, the only time I really had a hard time, bullying-wise, was in college, where I didn’t expect it. It is weird, isn’t it?

You’d think people would be more mature by then.
Yeah, that’s what I thought. You know, high school was fine: I was neither popular nor unpopular. I was just fine. You’d be hard-pressed to find people who remembered me; it was just fine. And then I got to college, and I was very overweight, and I guess that made me an object of ridicule for some people.

I did have a little bit of a socially awkward personality, so for the first couple years of college, it didn’t go well. But then I started doing stand-up, and I was very happy, but I don’t know that any of this stuff informed it, because I knew from a very young age that I wanted to pursue stand-up, but that was just because I loved it. I would just listen to my brother’s comedy albums, and I really don’t think, to my knowledge, that my environment had an effect one way or the other.

Since you use a notebook onstage, do you perceive of any sort of stigma within the stand-up community about using a notebook onstage?
Some people have a problem with it. I don’t know why. They just take a position for some strange reason. Much less so these days, than it [used to be] in the ‘80s. For some reason, there are a very few people who believe there are rules about how you do stand-up. Why, I don’t know, but they feel the notebook is a real red flag of a shitty comic.

Then, there’s some people that use this term “alternative comedy.” I’ve never used it – there are others that use it. When I’ve used the phrase “alternative comedy,” literally what I’m talking about is an alternative venue to a proper comedy club. It doesn’t mean anything to me about the comic, but some people get tarred and feathered with that. Like, “so-and-so thinks she’s so cool! An alternative comic,” when I have never referred to myself that way. But, “oh yeah, they bring a notebook on.” You know what alternative comedy means? It means they’re not funny – I’ve heard that a million times from people, so there is a stigma. Like I said, it’s not much these days, but it used to be that any comic that used a notebook was not a strong comic, even though there were very strong comics, like Richard Lewis, and George Carlin, at times, used a notebook, but they didn’t get criticized.

You know, musicians use set lists. It’s the same thing. It’s just a set list, and because I don’t repeat myself over and over and over again (that’s not to say I have new material all the time, because I don’t), but I don’t do the same exact shit the same way, so I have a piece of paper. Sometimes, I never even look at the notebook – it’s just there. It’s been 25 years, and I’ve always had a piece of paper or a notebook. It’s just that I’ve never gone onstage without a set list, and I don’t know why some people feel that’s not proper comedy, but some people do.

I would think that would be preferable to someone who gets up there without a notebook and then forgets what they’re talking about.
Which I think is fine, if that’s their thing. If they freeform it, that’s fine. If they forget what they’re going to say and then go on a tangent, I like that. But then there’s some people who don’t have the notebook or a piece of paper because they say the same exact thing the same exact way night after night after night. Their defense would be, “Hey, I’m here to entertain and do a job, and this is my rock-solid set that I do.” And that’s okay; that’s you’re way of doing it, though. Not everybody does it that way.

Do you think that the contemporary comedy scene is more hospitable to female comics these days?
Yeah, and you know, it’s just that it’s always been hard for everyone. You know what I mean? Like, it’s hard for everyone. In ’85, I actually got into comedy at the right time, because there was a comedy boom starting. For whatever reason, between like ’85 and ’95, there was like this boom of comedy clubs and open mic nights, so it was like a really good time to start and get on-the-stage time.

It was always traditionally harder until around the early ‘90s for comics of color and for women. Just like in any line of work; it just was, and in the ‘80s, there would be club managers that had the nerve to say out-loud things like, “We had a woman booked in her last week, and she didn’t do very well, so we’re not going to have a woman again.” Whereas they would never say, “Oh yeah, we had a black comic,” or, “We had a white male comic who didn’t do very well.” It would never occur to them to say that, so that used to happen a lot. I don’t think many men would have the balls to say that out-loud – they might think it, but they wouldn’t say it out-loud.

And then there’s that ridiculous trope: women just aren’t funny. I would say to that: most people really aren’t that funny. There are tons of comedians and comedy actors who aren’t that funny. It has nothing to do with gender, but it just seems sometimes that women aren’t as funny because they are poorly cast in film; they are poorly written for; they rarely have any of the funny lines.

A lot of writers will say, “I don’t know how to write for women,” and that includes female writers. In the casting process, they only want young, pretty girls to play the comedy parts, which knocks about 80% of the talent off. Whereas for guys, they’re putting the best person for the role in. Does that make sense? Whereas with the girl, they’re not putting the best person for the role in: they’re putting whoever happens to look the best in. So then it perpetuates this myth that females aren’t as funny, but they’ve got the issue of casting and writing against them.

Obviously, there are hugely funny females. Obviously. And always has been. But there is just this persistent myth that some boneheads like to trot around, that women aren’t as funny – totally forgetting how many un-funny guys there are. Totally leaving out that there are so many not funny guys in their equation. Most people just aren’t that funny: there’s a lot of great comics, but it’s also subjective. There are plenty of people that are thought of as funny that I don’t find funny; there are some people that the mainstream doesn’t think are funny that I think are genius.

What do you think that you’ve personally done to pave the way for women in comedy? How do you see your career as an attribute to that?
Oh, I don’t know if I have. I’m not saying that to be self-deprecating – I just don’t know if I have. I would say that it’s just happened over the years that more and more females and more and more people of color do it. That’s the natural evolution of society. But I don’t know that I had anything to do with that. That would’ve happened no matter what.

But do you think that maybe your ability to get roles in big-budget studio projects has opened the doors for female comics who might not have been considered for that type of thing otherwise?
Well, that was a very finite period of time. That doesn’t happen anymore. There was a very brief window where I was cast in big studio films; that doesn’t happen anymore, and that was very brief and short-lived, but I don’t think it’s affected anything. I was never cast as an ingenue type, or anyone who was considered attractive. There always has been and there always will be roles for females that mainstream Hollywood deems less attractive, and they get the comedy roles. That happens a lot.

Speaking of your film and television work, would you say there’s a role from your vast body of work that most closely represents the real you?
Um… hm…

Is there one you maybe feel the most warmly about?
Oh, there’s a lot that I feel warmly about. You know, many people have accused me of being a shitty actor who’s just playing myself every single time anyway. (They would find this question funny.) But I was never asked to stretch terribly, and I wish I had been. I wish I did get more opportunities to show versatility through acting, but unfortunately, you get typecast, especially if you don’t look sort of classically attractive to the mainstream. You just get typecast.

But um… I guess the roles that I feel most warmly toward – I’ve enjoyed many of them – but I guess playing Anita Hoffman in the Abby Hoffman movie with Vincent D’Onofrio, called Steal This Movie. I felt very close to that; I felt very close to the role I played in The Minus Man, which was with Owen Wilson.

…Heather Mooney?
But that’s not, that’s nothing like me. [Laughs]. That’s the weirdest thing, is that is absolutely nothing like the way I was in high school for me, ever. People, for whatever reason, they think that, because I’ve been asked to play a lot of that kind of part, that I must be like that. Obviously, I’m quite chatty. And I like to think, quite polite. Neither in high school, nor have I ever been like that. You know, snippy and snarky and [affects voice of Heather Mooney] “Fuck you, Toby!” Never, never. I’ve certainly lost my temper, in certain things, but not related to that kind of stuff. I lose my temper in the political arena and in the “shitty script” arena. I fight for things, but I don’t fight with people.

So let’s talk about your new special a little bit. Can you tell me a little bit about the background of If You Will? What prompted you to record it? Why now?
It was just, honestly, the Epix people asked. Shout Factory had asked a few years ago – I was willing to do it then, but for some reason, I don’t know what happened, but we just didn’t do it. I don’t know why. And then, if nobody had asked, I wouldn’t have pursued it. I have just not felt comfortable with [the specials], because I have a couple that still air that embarrass the fuck out of me, from when I was younger. Because like I said, you change so much, and you say things, and then I’m like, “Oh no! That’s there?” There’s some footage that can still be seen from when I was 24 – it’s just embarrassing – and 30, 32, 29, all this kind of stuff, so I said no more. You know, like no more stuff that gets to be preserved.

And then there’s the aspect of, well, what if I do this stand-up special, and somebody feels cheated if I say the same stuff again? Because there’s some topics that I don’t want to abandon yet. I’m not done with them. They haven’t got to where I want them, but I did them on the special anyway, but they weren’t exactly where I think they could be.

Like what?
Um, probably most of it. I don’t really remember. There’s some things that I’m just not really ready to leave yet: whether it be stuff about the aging process, my ideas on marriage and children and religion, the political landscape, or even just little, tiny cultural things. Little frivolous things. Some of them I feel could’ve been better, could’ve been expanded upon, but I always wonder, did I burn that now? Does that mean if somebody sees the special – maybe people won’t, I have no idea – but if they see it, are they going to feel cheated if I go back to that well? Even though I’m doing it in a different way, are they going to be like, “I saw it. I heard it already,”? So I’ve been reticent to do that.

I have no idea; I’m not saying people in general, just whoever. There might be some people who are like, “I saw that.” And then it’s wrecked. So I don’t know: that’s just something I’ve thought about over the years, and then I always thought, well, why would I do a special? There’s no real audience, like eager, waiting with baited breath – you know, “Please! More content from you!”

But then, I met some very nice people from Epix, and they said, “Do you want to? We’ll shoot it,” and I was like, okay. But it was really that simple. Like I said, I had wanted to do one with Shout Factory earlier, and I don’t know why we didn’t. I love Shout Factory – I think they do great stuff, so maybe one day I’ll work with Shout Factory, but the Epix people were just really nice and friendly, and they seemed interested in doing it. I knew they had done a special with Lewis Black that I loved, and so I thought okay. Let’s do it. Let’s see what happens.

Like most of your stand-up, the special is a really great blend of topical and personal humor. Do you have a preference for one or the other?
I think personal’s easier, in that it just flows out more naturally. It’s just right there, and obviously it’s more evergreen, whereas with topical, some stuff you could talk about and then six months from now, people are like, “What? Why, what are you talking about that for?” That’s old news, and it seems like you’re being hackey, even though maybe you’re just not done thinking about it. There’s plenty of stuff that has happened culturally, from a long time ago, that I’m just not done trying to understand, like what the fuck? But it seems like you’re being a hack. So it’s weird.

So I guess the personal stuff – that’s also ever-changing and evolving. To me, that just flows more naturally: it’s right at the ready, and it’s easier. So I guess I prefer it.

How do you manage to find the balance between the two?
I don’t. I have no idea. Some shows are balanced and some are ridiculously lopsided.

One thing that kind of caught my attention was your love of Natalie Portman, which you mention in the special.
I do love her! That’s not sarcastic at all.

I love her, too. But I was just wondering if you knew that she signed the petition in support of Roman Polanski?
Which, you know what? I have nothing to say about that. The Roman Polanski thing: a) I feel terrible that his wife was killed by the Manson family; secondly, it’s a sexual issue that happened many years ago that disgusts me, but I’ll bet you that in that era, was very common. According to the young girl [the victim of Polanski’s rape], she herself wants this to go away. She has made her peace with Roman Polanski over the years.

And also, if you want to sign petitions – I mean, if you want to hunt people – let’s do the serious shit. Let’s get Dick Cheney. I mean, that’s fine if you want to go after him if you are also going after the people that are really destroying us. Roman Polanski does not negatively impact your life. He has very little to do with you, so whether somebody signs that petition or not, it makes no never mind to me. That’s a personal issue, in the same way that divorces mean nothing to me, and affairs. It doesn’t impact our society.

What does impact our society is white collar and corporate crime, and societal and environmental degradation. These are the things that I would like to see getting discussed on talk shows. You know, when people are like, “John Mayer said a racist thing,” I don’t give a shit! How about when the Republican Party says racist things? How about that? Let’s do a roundtable on that. That’s my issue with that. The Roman Polanski thing is a family issue, do you know what I mean?

So that doesn’t bother me at all, if someone wants to sign that petition. And like I said, here’s a guy who was probably severely traumatized, and I think the young girl in the hot tub’s mother brought her to his home. You know what I mean? I don’t think she was unaware of what was going on, and I’ve seen interviews with that young girl, who’s now a middle-aged lady, who asks that we would all stop talking about it.

Changing topics entirely, I wanted to ask you about your tattoos, since I actually just got my first one this year.
Congrats!

Thank you! Do yours still hold significance for you after all these years of having gotten them?
I suppose so. I don’t even see them – you know, like there’s many of them and my dad was right. I got my first one when I was 18, and he said, “When you’re old you’re going to go ‘what?’” and I was like, no I won’t. But yes, that was true. There’s a number of them that I could do without. They’re here, and that’s that.

Do you plan on getting any more?
I don’t know. I don’t think so, but it’s not completely out of the realm of possibility. But I doubt it. I think enough is enough, and it’s so hard to cover them that it really makes me rue the day that I started getting so many on my arms. On the rare occasions when somebody wants me to show my arms, it’s about a four-and-a-half hour process of all this pancake makeup that never really covers them. And I hate that.

Do you ever think you might get any lasered off?
Oh no, no no. They’re fine, and the laser process looks shitty.

So how do Janeane the actress and Janeane the comedian differ?
Well, Janeane the actress is at the mercy of business I have no control over. I just have to hope that someone wants to hire me, so it makes me feel very out of control and very insecure. As a comedian, I love it. I’ve been doing it so long, and I would miss it if it was gone, and I get to control where I work and when I work, for the most part, which is nice. I also control the content, and what I wear, and stuff like that.

It’s just a very gratifying thing, where with acting it can be very un-gratifying to have somebody else completely directing you, editing it, putting you in a wardrobe you may or may not have chosen; that kind of thing. But having said that, it’s a good job when you can get it, but it’s not up to me when I can get the jobs. I have to always wait, and hope that somebody lets me audition, or meet them, or they just have faith that I can do it. It makes you feel really… what would be the right word… left out of the process.

Do the two Janeanes have anything in common?
Uh, yeah: I am still the same person. I happen to be exactly the same person, and I’m not a good enough actress that can metamorphize into a completely different being. As I said, I never really get offered roles where I have to undergo a transformation of any kind.

Have you ever thought about writing your own screenplay?
Yes. They’re never good, so… I’m not one of those people that will just do it for the sake of doing it. I won’t just create content for the sake of, like, “Look! I wanna do this!” If I was a better writer in the screenplay genre, and if I had a story I felt would be nice to tell, would be worth seeing, I would absolutely pursue that. Until that happens, there’s just no reason for me to create content for the sake of it.

Be sure to watch Janeane’s new special, If You Will, premiering on EPIX on June 26 at 10 pm EST (Details here). And for more info on Janeane, check out her official site at janeanegarofalo.com.