Vanessa Bayer on Embracing Her QVC Dreams and Its “Most Beautiful Language” With ‘I Love That For You’
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When Vanessa Bayer left Saturday Night Live in 2017 after seven seasons, she had two project ideas in mind she hoped to pursue: something exploring home shopping networks, after loving them so much as a kid, and another on her journey with childhood leukemia.
Cut to five years later and she has co-created and is starring in I Love That For You, combining both of those concepts into one with the story of a woman who overcomes childhood cancer to achieve her dream of becoming an on-air host at a QVC-inspired network — which she partially got by lying that her cancer had returned. The series came together when meeting up for brunch with fellow former SNL writer Jeremy Beiler, as the two realized they had both been separately crafting home shopping centered-projects and decided to team up. And when it was time to channel her own saleswoman persona, Bayer had a lifetime of prep.
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“I watched it so much when I was little that it’s almost like when a little kid learns a foreign language when they’re young, I immediately picked it up. It’s a language that I so love, like to me it might be the most beautiful language, just because it’s so soothing and so beautiful,” Bayer told The Hollywood Reporter at Wednesday night’s Los Angeles premiere. “It was fun to be like, ‘Oh for research I need to be watching so much of this.’ Every time I turn it on I’m delighted. I love hearing the hosts talk about their lives, it’s so entertaining.”
Bayer is so well-versed in QVC style that she was the personal consultant for co-star Molly Shannon, who plays the network’s star host; “She really taught me, ‘Oh, Molly, when they’re selling things they always touch the objects’ and she really walked me through it. She’s a real expert,” Shannon explained, learning along the way that 24-hour-product-hawking is “really hard to do well.”
Bayer and Beiler visited QVC’s Pennsylvania headquarters while writing the series, meeting hosts and taking a tour of the studio. “We actually gleaned so much from that visit, it was really fun,” Beiler remembered. “And of course we bought mugs that say ‘QVC’ and we use them all the time.”
Seeing inside the home shopping world also changed their perception of the business and those who work for it, Beiler said, as they tried to move beyond “the tendency or the first move to make fun of it.”
“We really realized that the best way to bring it to life was to emulate it really earnestly and to look at what is this actual talent that people have to sell anything and what kind of humanity are they bringing to it,” Beiler said. “The funny part takes care of itself because it’s just to ridiculous no matter what and there’s a lot of artifice to it, but we really view it incredibly lovingly and we watch it and buy things from there.”
The series also looks at cancer, and Bayer’s childhood experience with it, through a more comedic lens, as the star said she wanted to explore “that part of the way I think I got through it was really just enjoying the perks of it and taking advantage of the special treatment.”
“I truly do in my heart of hearts believe that if you are going through a difficult time, whatever you get from that, whatever special treatment or perks or whatever, you’ve earned, you deserve that,” Bayer said of taking that very honest stance. “I always tell people who ask what to do when they’re sick, I’m like, ‘Use it to get out of things, use it to do whatever you want.’ That’s the trade-off.”
The series, which rounds out its cast with Jenifer Lewis, Paul James, Ayden Mayeri, Punam Patel and Matt Rodgers, sees Lewis as head of the shopping network, and after planning to retire following the end of Black-ish, the star instantly signed on when hearing of Bayer and Shannon’s involvement.
“I met Vanessa Bayer and I’ve never fallen in love with anyone so instantly. All I wanted to do was pick her up and give her some sugar because she’s made of sugar. I describe her as an angel made of cotton candy and Christmas morning,” Lewis said. “And Molly, how I don’t laugh at that bitch throwing herself into fucking chairs — she tongue-kissed a tree for God’s sake.”
I Love That For You premieres on Showtime May 1.
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