Stand Up Comedy, Theater and Late-Night: How TV’s Top Supporting Actresses Found Success in Very Different Ways
Liza Colón-Zayas’ Off Broadway theater roots proved the perfect training ground for her turn as Tina on “The Bear” — a role that brought her the Emmy as supporting actress in a comedy series last year.
“Theater is how you get your footing and learn to act,” she says. “And this show is about this rag-tag group of people holding each other up, and that was my story with LAByrinth Theater — it was often a mess but beautiful stuff bloomed somehow.”
But Janelle James found that her very different path, going from an open mic night to a stand-up career in her 30s, was ideal preparation for her portrayal as Ava on “Abbott Elementary.”
“Stand-up is performance, so it definitely gave me chops,” James says. “But it’s also one of the more daunting professions, especially as a woman. The environments I’ve performed in, the isolation I dealt with, puts a steel plate around your heart that makes acting for a camera seem like nothing.”
That dichotomy says a lot about the women nominated for the supporting actress in a comedy series Emmy this year — they are diverse not just ethnically and in age, from 30 (Hannah Einbinder, “Hacks”) to 71 (Catherine O’Hara, “The Studio”), but also in their routes to their series. All seven have prior nominations; O’Hara not only has earned acting recognition, she shared a writing Emmy win for “SCTV,” all the way back in 1982. While O’Hara started in sketch comedy, Einbinder, like James, broke out through stand-up.
Jessica Williams (“Shrinking”) is the only nominee whose starting point was a short-lived Nickelodeon series while she was still in high school, followed by a gig as a “Daily Show” correspondent straight out of college.
By contrast, Kathryn Hahn (“The Studio”) studied drama at Yale before doing Shakespeare and Ibsen professionally and then segueing into TV drama on “Crossing Jordan,” and Sheryl Lee Ralph (“Abbott Elementary”) had acted in musicals, earning a Tony nomination for “Dreamgirls” and recording an album before some of her competitors were even born.
Ralph says the eight shows a week rigor of performing, especially in “Dreamgirls” where she was on stage the whole show, still infuses her sense of discipline. “It was like being in the army. You didn’t complain about being tired, or about feeling sick — you need to die onstage.”
Colón-Zayas says she’s still learning the technical side of acting for the camera, but that theater taught her to be prepared. “I sit and marinate with the script so my imagination is there, and my focus is in this world, and I’m not distracted by that boom mic,” she says.
Always staying present in scenes carried over to TV. “A young actor said to me about ‘Abbott,’ ‘Whether you are talking or you’re not talking, you are always acting,’” Ralph recalls. “My college acting professor, Dr. John Bettenbender, is rising up and applauding that in his grave.”
Hahn says theater, especially repertory theater, prepped her for ensemble comedies. “You need the dexterity and flexibility to shift between tones and text and rhythm,” she says. “And you need to really trust each other.” That’s especially critical in “The Studio’s” farcical episodes. “You need this buoyancy where no one is dropping the ball and everyone has your back.”
Williams learned about being a good scene partner doing improv in high school and college. “Every moment counts,” she says. “Don’t try to be cool. Remember you’re someone’s scene partner, otherwise you’ll have a crappy scene.”
She prepares four or five different ideas for ways to do her lines, even takes influenced by Homer Simpson, then makes sure she’s ready to listen and respond to the other actors. “That’s how it becomes a collaboration, which is my favorite thing.”
“Theater is how you get your footing and learn to act,” she says. “And this show is about this rag-tag group of people holding each other up, and that was my story with LAByrinth Theater — it was often a mess but beautiful stuff bloomed somehow.”
But Janelle James found that her very different path, going from an open mic night to a stand-up career in her 30s, was ideal preparation for her portrayal as Ava on “Abbott Elementary.”
“Stand-up is performance, so it definitely gave me chops,” James says. “But it’s also one of the more daunting professions, especially as a woman. The environments I’ve performed in, the isolation I dealt with, puts a steel plate around your heart that makes acting for a camera seem like nothing.”
That dichotomy says a lot about the women nominated for the supporting actress in a comedy series Emmy this year — they are diverse not just ethnically and in age, from 30 (Hannah Einbinder, “Hacks”) to 71 (Catherine O’Hara, “The Studio”), but also in their routes to their series. All seven have prior nominations; O’Hara not only has earned acting recognition, she shared a writing Emmy win for “SCTV,” all the way back in 1982. While O’Hara started in sketch comedy, Einbinder, like James, broke out through stand-up.
Jessica Williams (“Shrinking”) is the only nominee whose starting point was a short-lived Nickelodeon series while she was still in high school, followed by a gig as a “Daily Show” correspondent straight out of college.
By contrast, Kathryn Hahn (“The Studio”) studied drama at Yale before doing Shakespeare and Ibsen professionally and then segueing into TV drama on “Crossing Jordan,” and Sheryl Lee Ralph (“Abbott Elementary”) had acted in musicals, earning a Tony nomination for “Dreamgirls” and recording an album before some of her competitors were even born.
Ralph says the eight shows a week rigor of performing, especially in “Dreamgirls” where she was on stage the whole show, still infuses her sense of discipline. “It was like being in the army. You didn’t complain about being tired, or about feeling sick — you need to die onstage.”
Colón-Zayas says she’s still learning the technical side of acting for the camera, but that theater taught her to be prepared. “I sit and marinate with the script so my imagination is there, and my focus is in this world, and I’m not distracted by that boom mic,” she says.
Always staying present in scenes carried over to TV. “A young actor said to me about ‘Abbott,’ ‘Whether you are talking or you’re not talking, you are always acting,’” Ralph recalls. “My college acting professor, Dr. John Bettenbender, is rising up and applauding that in his grave.”
Hahn says theater, especially repertory theater, prepped her for ensemble comedies. “You need the dexterity and flexibility to shift between tones and text and rhythm,” she says. “And you need to really trust each other.” That’s especially critical in “The Studio’s” farcical episodes. “You need this buoyancy where no one is dropping the ball and everyone has your back.”
Williams learned about being a good scene partner doing improv in high school and college. “Every moment counts,” she says. “Don’t try to be cool. Remember you’re someone’s scene partner, otherwise you’ll have a crappy scene.”
She prepares four or five different ideas for ways to do her lines, even takes influenced by Homer Simpson, then makes sure she’s ready to listen and respond to the other actors. “That’s how it becomes a collaboration, which is my favorite thing.”