Happy Accidents (29 page)

Me and Kristen Wiig on
Saturday Night Live.

Photo courtesy of Dana Edelson/NBC

The most challenging part so far has been remembering that she needs to eat with some regularity. Lara loves to cook and is usually in charge of this activity, but once a month she travels back to Florida to see her other daughter (she and her ex are now working together to repair and unite the family) and meals are left up to me. One Friday when Lara was in Sarasota and Haden had the day off from school for Cesar Chavez Day, I was in the midst of writing this very book you have in your hands. We arose at
8
A.M.,
and I sat her in front of the TV on one couch and myself with my computer on the other, and we both proceeded to lose ourselves in our activities.

Now, when Haden watches TV, she goes away and becomes completely disconnected from anything in the room other than what’s on the screen; I have had to literally “wake” her from this all-consuming stupor. When I write, I go away, too, and I don’t mean that I drift off peacefully into a land of creativity and inspiration. It’s more like exercise: I grunt and sigh, slap my head trying to find the right word. I growl when the thread of an idea gets away from me, typing furiously with two index fingers. It was
1
P.M.
when I looked up to find Haden standing at the foot of my couch. She said, “I’m
sooo
hungry.” I was, too, and neither of us had gone to the bathroom for hours, either. We took care of that first, and then I microwaved a piece of leftover pizza for her. The most amazing part is that when this sort of thing happens (and we both know it will again), she eats her pizza, and forgives me.

When I went back to work for the second season of
Glee
late that summer, I felt like I had finally found my work home. To be able to return to the same cast and crew for the second season was wonderful. I was more than ready to get into my comfy tracksuit and menacingly destroy the glee club.

The cast and crew of
Glee
is filled with talented, funny, and hardworking people. The
Glee
kids are all very sweet and professional and really seem to be enjoying the roller-coaster ride of a lifetime that is our show. They work so much harder than me; when they are not shooting, they are rehearsing or recording. They are up at the crack of dawn, and it’s not uncommon
for them to work fifteen-hour days
.
It tickles me when I see them work together as a creative group getting through any differences for the good of the whole. Just like the glee club at McKinley High, in real life these actors support one another and allow one another to shine. They are loyal friends to one another both on the soundstage and off. My niece Megan was a production assistant on last season’s
Glee
tour, and she has become a part of their group, and I couldn’t be more pleased with her new friends.

In particular, I have become a fan of Chris Colfer, our fashionable boy soprano. I not only admire Chris the actor but also Chris the human. When we shot the pilot, Chris was a mere nineteen years old and just fresh out of high school. His coming of age and coming out of the closet has mirrored that of his character, Kurt, and it has played out in full view of the public eye. I couldn’t be more proud of him, as he has walked his own path with such grace and dignity. He has become an inspiration not only to gay and lesbian kids all over the planet but to all kids who feel less than “normal” and fear exposure. Even as adults, and I’ll speak for myself as a fifty-year-old one, we’re all still in high school in that regard. I am so happy we have a courageous and fashion-forward role model to look up to. It’s a lot to put on his young shoulders, but luckily Chris has an inner grandma that helps him keep his feet on the ground and his eye on his work. He’s already writing and producing his own projects, and I fully expect to be begging him for a job in the future. I will be sure to bring along this paragraph of praise when I do, hoping it will net me something.

Chris Colfer and me.

I’ve worked most with Matt Morrison, our steadfast glee club director, Mr. Schuester, and my affection for him runs deep. The extent of his gift as a singer and dancer just floors me, and his sex appeal is off the charts. But what I value most of all in Matt is that he is kind. When he talks, all of his impressions and thoughts are first filtered through his compassionate heart. His sense of humor is still off-color and can be as crude as I like it, but cynicism is not his thing and I love him for that. Whenever I’m tempted to engage in gossip and pettiness, all it takes is one look into Matt’s soulful eyes (complete with the fullest set of lashes ever given to a person) to get me right back into my heart.

Matt and I find something very amusing that Cory does not.

Photo courtesy of (Justin Jay)/FOX

On-set, he has claimed Will Schuester’s school office as his own, and I often see him in there during downtime, on his computer, with his headphones on, working on his own music. He always seems completely content with his own company; he loves to travel and go off on adventures all by his lonesome, doing things like jumping out of airplanes. The thought of doing anything like that, much less by myself, terrifies me, but I greatly admire his wanderlust and his need to try new things. I count myself lucky that when we work together he often hangs out with me and talks; I appreciate so much that he lets me into his private world. He also has genuine affection for Lara and Haden. He lights up when he sees them and gives them huge hugs. In this way, he feels even more a part of my family, and working with him hardly feels like a job at all. It really
is
my work home.

The second season of
Glee
also brought me the gift of another amazing guest star. Soon after we all returned, Ryan told me he’d gotten Carol Burnett to agree to play Sue Sylvester’s mother. My first thought was
God, I love this job
.

This wasn’t the first time that I’d had the chance to work with Carol. I’d first met her back in
2007
when we did a movie together called
Post Grad
. Except for Carol playing my mother-in-law, and Michael Keaton my husband, the film was unremarkable. As Carol would say much later, it could only be seen on Airbuses bound for New Zealand. But for me the experience was magical. My childhood dream to work with the great lady of comedy came true, and I didn’t even have to go through Vicki Lawrence. I was in my trailer, having just arrived for my first day on the movie, when I heard an exuberant, “Jane?” and up the steps bounded Carol Burnett. She greeted me with a hug and I thought my heart would burst. She is one of the loveliest people I’ve ever met, and we had a great time getting to know each other. No one tells a story like Carol, and because of my childhood fascination with
The Carol Burnett Show
, I couldn’t have been a more willing ear. And in the male-dominated world of television, she was a true pioneer; no woman in television since Lucille Ball had been as powerful. I ate it all up, and she took great delight in reliving those heavenly days with me. By the end of that shoot, I barely had to cue her for a good anecdote. I did, however, have to occasionally step outside of myself to remark,
I’m hanging with Carol Burnett
.

I’m also proud to say I made Carol Burnett laugh. It was in between takes, and we were all sitting in the car in which the scene was set. I was in the driver’s seat, and Carol was in the backseat. Killing time, I said, “Carol, look at my backing-up face.” Pretending to put the car in reverse, straining to see what was behind me, I looked over my shoulder with the most ridiculous and horrific face I could make. She howled with laughter.

Now I would have the chance to work with her again, as Sue Sylvester. She had signed on to play my mother, who was a Nazi hunter. We both had to wait awhile to find out what the story would be.

If you look at the staff of most TV shows, you will find anywhere from ten to twenty writers. On
Glee
, we have three—Brad Falchuk, Ian, and Ryan—making the task of getting each hour-long episode written on time a herculean one. It also means that the scripts sometimes arrive the night before the scene is shot. Brad has said that the three of them together make one very good writer. I’ve figured out that if you laughed at something, Ian wrote it; if you cried at something, Brad wrote it; and if you said “What the —— was that?” Ryan wrote it. Judging by the Nazi hunter business, Carol would be in an episode featuring Ryan’s touch.

Mother and daughter. Carol Burnett and I sing “Ohio.”

Photo courtesy of FOX.

Because of that eleventh-hour arrival of scripts, Carol hadn’t read anything about the episode she would be in when Lou Eyrich, our costume designer, called her to discuss the different looks she’d be dressing Carol in for this episode.

“I’ll be getting you a dress for Sue’s wedding,” Lou told her.

“Oh, Sue is getting married! Who is she marrying?” Carol asked.

“Herself,” said Lou.

“. . . What’s that, dear?”

She listened as it was explained that Sue Sylvester would be marrying herself in this episode, and she and my sister, Jean (played by the wonderful and sweet Robin Trocki), would be the only guests at the wedding. Carol Burnett is nothing if not game, so she embraced the role’s outlandish story line.

As the writers were working, Ryan asked Carol for a song suggestion for her character. Carol’s musician husband, Brian, suggested Carol should sing “Ohio”
from
the
1950
s musical
Wonderful Town
(“
Why, oh why, oh why, oh—why did I ever leave Ohio?
”), and Ryan thought it was a perfect fit. It was, in fact, the very question Sue had wanted her mother to answer for years: Carol’s character had left Ohio and a very young Sue all alone to raise her handi-capable older sister, and Sue had never understood why. We shot the scene with Carol’s character rehearsing the number on the bare auditorium stage. As she began the second verse, Sue reluctantly joined her in harmony. Mother and daughter shared a very touching and poignant moment.
But at the end of the song their moment of togetherness was cast aside, and Sue was again rejected by her mother. I, on the other hand, was overjoyed to be singing with Carol and having a wonderful week pretending she was my crazy, Nazi-hunting mother.