Kristin Chenoweth Works Hard to Make You Laugh

Kristin Chenoweth is not the actor you hire if you just want someone to read words on a page. She shows up with the backstory questions of a seasoned reporter. She'll want to know not only what makes her character tick, but also who built the clock in the first place, and what model the clock is, and if it's the only clock of its sort, and in which stores you might be able to buy the clock. She'll read the script between the lines. She'll read between those lines and find cracks and crevices so small that only a woman of her size and talent could possibly traverse them, but, days later, she'll emerge with a map she's drawn, ready to show you her work.

Chenoweth probably doesn't need to hustle as hard as she does. Her success is on full display as we sit in her silver-and-white clad midtown Manhattan apartment on a sweltering July afternoon. (This isn’t just a writer’s crutch; the day we convene, her apartment building’s air conditioning system goes down, and hard.) There are the awards neatly arranged across three shelves feet away from our chairs. She has best-selling album plaques (from Glee and Wicked) lining her hallways. She's recurred on both BoJack Horseman and Sesame Street. She steps onstage on Broadway in any role she wants and tickets sales skyrocket. She has a freaking Barbie doll made in her likeness on display in her (it must be stated, well-adorned and very tasteful) living room.

But Chenoweth doesn't like coasting, or complacency, or ruts. She likes a challenge. It’s why she moved to Hollywood after her Tony win (as Sally, a role created just for her, in You’re a Good Man, Charlie Brown) to film an NBC series built around her called… Kristin. It's why she later pivoted from TV (Pushing Daisies, for which she won an Emmy) back to the theater (Promises, Promises). And it's why she's pivoted back again, now stealing scenes in the second season of NBC's criminally under-appreciated Trial & Error: Lady, Killer.

"It's scarier with the more success you get," she says. "I read somewhere that Audra McDonald once said, 'I was so much easier on myself when I was younger.' I understand that. I wish I could say that I graduated from caring. I care less about what people think of me, more about the work itself. I don't want to repeat myself. I would love to do another diva, but I've got to make her a different kind of diva. I'm not going to repeat myself."

Chenoweth is a director's dream. She's the woman you call when your work needs a jolt of energy the size and caffeination of a strong pull of espresso. That energy radiates through her home during our time together too; she has a particular way of locking eyes with you and making you feel important, and special, and wanted. That energy's there in her Tony-nominated turn in Wicked as the equal parts bubbly and chilly Glinda the “Good” (read: complicated) Witch. And there she was brightening up The West Wing as Annabeth Schott, a fan favorite (she turns every role she takes into a fan favorite). Then Bryan Fuller's cult-favorite Pushing Daisies as Olive Snook, for which she won an Emmy in 2009. Then Glee as April Rhodes (a “drunk, old, has-been hot mess” in her words, for which she was Emmy nominated twice, natch). Every single time, she treats screen time like it's a gift, not a right; she's never greedy, but always shines just a bit brighter than her co-stars.

"When Bryan brought me Pushing Daisies, I was only in two or three scenes in the pilot," she says. "But it's not about the size of the role for me. I'm called in to do a thing, right? I just want to make sure I honor what's going on and also land what I'm supposed to do."

But if that were the whole story—if Chenoweth just showed up and read the words on the page and smiled and did that laugh she does and sings with that voice she has and leaves the set—we'd have nothing to talk about, right? That's just not how her story ends. Because even when people write roles specifically with her in mind, or for her, or with her, she's still there on the sidelines making adjustments, making it work for herself.

"Here I was being asked to be every woman," she says, using her role on Pushing Daisies as an example. "Here I was being asked to be the neighbor, the best friend, the girl the guy doesn't fall in love with. How am I going to be a great waitress? Well that changed immediately. I said, 'Bryan, please let her be terrible. Please just let her be bad at her job and people just like her anyway.'"

And now she’s touched down on NBC's Trial & Error: Lady, Killer, a breezy summer series that just entered its second season. Chenoweth plays (embodies, really) the suspected Lady Killer, Lavinia Peck-Foster. The ageless kook (truly, her age is never diverged, though the actress says she's created her own truth about it) is a wealthy small-town legend who's barely ever left her old-money mansion and has just been accused of murdering her husband. In a winking sendup of The Jinx, Peck-Foster is also—in Chenoweth's able hands—a fucking nutcase. She dresses in male drag (the best fake mustache you've ever seen) and steals a pre-made sandwich from a local convenience store, caught on security cam footage looking unhinged. She brings her own china plates to the courtroom and smashes them on the floor for dramatic effect. She dons a Busby Berkeley era swim cap and dives into a pool that's also an active crime scene. She's equal parts Lisa Vanderpump and Gypsy’s Mama Rose. She also definitely killed her husband. Or... she didn't. She for sure didn't. She couldn't have. Could she?

Chenoweth's success in the role lies in the fact that even when presented with irrefutable evidence on both sides of the coin, you're still left wondering. But part of her talent is also how the balance she strikes between deeply immersing herself in roles like Lavinia while also maintaining that glowing, magnetic Chenoweth charm. "In comedy I always look for why my characters are so mean, unhappy, and funny," she says. "What is it? It's usually built in sadness. Comedy is tragedy sped up. I wanted to know what those points were going to be so that I could get the payoff from Lavinia."

An example of how she shows up ready to work harder than you: For Trial & Error, she read about a pair of slapping gloves (they're exactly what you think they are) in the script and immediately told the prop team that the gloves had to be leather ones—"It makes it pop. This is how my brain works."—because she wanted the slap to fucking land. Why spend time trying to get the perfect slap sound effect in post-production when you can get it right onscreen? "I'm a sage slapper," she says. "I've been slapped, which isn't fun, by someone who doesn't know how to do it, and I know how to stage slap. The pop of the leather is the key. I can't believe I'm still talking about it. This is what keeps me up at night."

Chenoweth invested so much time and effort in Lavinia that when filming wrapped after three months, she found it hard to shake her. "It's a weird line. I didn't know if I was becoming her or she was becoming me. I have an emotional support dog and she's supposed to be allowed to be on the set. There was a question towards the end, a stranger said, 'Is that dog allowed to be here?' I went,"—she clenches her jaw, punctuating her words, her eyes steely now—"'This. Is. My. Emotional. Support. Dog.' I stepped back and I asked [creator] Jeff Astrof, '...Was that Lavinia?' He goes, 'Scarily so.' I knew it was time for me to say goodbye to her. It was creeping in. It was tough to shake her off. I was in a lot of neck pain. I have a pre-existing neck injury and I had to take a minute. I had some concerts I had to cancel. Literally I had to decompress."

Maybe it's weird to think of a Russell Crowe quote at this moment, but it's hard not to hear his thundering voice bellowing, "Are you not entertained?" when you hear Chenoweth describe her process. She is utterly committed to giving you the best version of herself, whether it's as Mary Jo Gornicke in Robin Williams' R.V. (you've seen it on TBS, come on), or as Vicky Lansing opposite Jennifer Lopez in the pulpy gay favorite The Boy Next Door, or a Tony-nominated turn in On the Twentieth Century, or an opening slot on Andrea Bocelli's recent U.S. tour. She knows how long its been since she's been able to take more than two or three days off at a time ("No exaggeration, 10 years. I don't like to take time off. I don't like to cancel. I'm the girl that shows up.") She does it for you. But she does it for herself, too.

"Maybe that's why I'm still an actor," she says. "I still have a need that I want people to like me. I'm sure that comes into play, but how about just being born an artist and wanting to create and wanting it to be at the top level. I think that's it for me. I just want to be great. I want to be the best at what I'm doing. Not better than anyone else, best at what I'm doing."

She hasn't screen-tested for a role in years. Her last one, she thinks, was for Effie Trinket in The Hunger Games. But she’s not against it. "I walked in [to a screen test once and] there was a very famous actress testing for the mother," she says. "Very famous. Academy Award winner. When I walked in she goes, 'I can't believe I'm meeting you. I saw you in Charlie Brown. You're amazing!' I said, 'I'm sorry. I'm having a moment. You're you. What are you doing here?' She said, 'I'm testing to play the mother.' I go, 'You have to audition? You have to test?' She said, 'Yes, darling. You always, always audition. Even when you're working, you still audition.'"

For now, though, the roles are still coming, tailored to her as has become the norm. She's attached herself to a musical version of the Meryl Streep classic Death Becomes Her. ("Everybody's like, which part? I'm like, maybe I'll play both," she says, her eyes widening.) Hurtling her way much sooner is a long-gestating musical about Christian singer and evangelist Tammy Faye Bakker. She's expecting a script within the next week, she says. "Tammy Faye Bakker was a woman during a time that was pre-#MeToo, who was judged so harshly. She was an addict. She was the first person ever to have a guest on her show that had AIDS. She told everybody we shouldn't be judging, we should be loving and reaching out. She had to survive an affair in a public way and be a Christian. It reminds people to understand that no matter what your faith is, you still battle demons."

Recently, Chenoweth was a guest judge on RuPaul's Drag Race when RuPaul himself pulled her aside for a heart-to-heart about the Bakker musical. "He said to me that he did Roe Messner and Tammy Faye's marriage, her second marriage. He married them. He said—this is out of his mouth—'That has to happen Kristin. You must play her. I know she wants you to. You're it.'"

Chenoweth laughs. Not even that moment has convinced her she's "made it." She says, "There was a lady one time, I was leaving one of the my concerts and she goes, 'We drove from Mississippi to see you.' I had a bad migraine. It's something that plagues me sometimes and I had my sunglasses on at night. I couldn't pose for any pictures because of the flash. The flashes bother me. A woman yelled out, 'We came. This is her 60th birthday.' She started getting madder and madder. She goes, 'You know there's a lot of people who don't even know who you are.'"

She smiles that broad, face-filling grin again as she recalls the encounter. "I stopped and I looked at her and said, 'Oh ma'am, there are so many people who don't know who I am and you know what? I'm absolutely fine with that.'"