Michael and Michael Have Issues

ACT ONE – Scene 1 (Office) – While I was excited to have a fun storyline in this episode, I was also dreading it just a smidge, because like Marla, I majorly hate wearing skirts.  And of course when you almost never wear one, everyone notices when you do, which makes the awkwardness of wearing it even worse, thus leading to less skirt wearing.  See how that works?  I was freaking out that wardrobe might make me wear something short (by which I mean basically any skirt).  The one relief was that they were going to let me wear black tights to cover the blinding wintergreen pallor of my legs.  Then at the last second the camera people said the black tights were not contrasting enough with the skirt and I would have to go BARE LEGGED.  Thank goodness, our delightful wardrobe people had some pantyhose, which I guess they bought in 1980.  The other obstacle in this scene was not cracking up at the unspeakably horrible things Michael and Michael were saying once they realized “Nick” (Leo Allen) and I were flirting.  I knew what was in the script, but what they improvised was truly atrocious.  Hopefully some of the more graphic terribleness will be on DVD one day.

ACT TWO – Restaurant scene – Once again, my lack of acting training posed no problem whatsoever in making this scene work.  In this scene “Marla” is incredibly nervous about kissing “Nick.” In real life, I was incredibly nervous about kissing Leo Allen.  I’ve known Leo for years (he’s a really great stand-up and writer) and he is a truly wonderful, very funny, adorable person.  Everyone I know has a little crush on Leo (admit it, Michael Ian Black.)  But I’ve never kissed anyone on camera before so I was really sweating it out.  I knew it was supposed to be just a little peck, but my stress was the same as if we were doing some kind of porntastic nude Twister stuff.  So basically, there is no acting here.  Me freaking out=Marla freaking out.  Me being incredibly embarrassed and wanting to eat bread=Marla eating bread.  It’s a school of acting called Being an Immature Moron.

ACT THREE – Crying scene – I knew that Marla was going to have to be weeping in this scene and as usual I was worried about being able to do it correctly.  I mean, crying scenes are for seasoned professional actors like Cate Blanchett and Shannen Doherty.  Right as we were starting the scene it was suggested that our makeup artist, the talented Sarah Egan, use some of that magic Hollywood pixiedust on my eyes that makes you cry real tears.  “Okay,” I said.  Cut to: me experiencing an intense burning sensation, being unable to open my eyes and freaking out that I would never be able to see again.  I felt like such a martyr.  I could picture the talk around town:  “Did you hear about Jessi Klein?  She sacrificed her eyesight for an episode of Michael and Michael Have Issues.” “I know, she’s so dedicated, and so beautiful.” But then all of a sudden my eyes felt fine and water was pouring out of them.  All that was left for me to do was some genius emoting, which I think you can see I did.  Success.  It doesn’t hurt when you’re trying to be funny to be sitting next to the incredible Josh Pais (Biederman), an amazing actor who’s been in just about everything.  His performance in the next scene is one of my favorite moments in the episode:  when he’s talking about the metaphor of the office being like a piano and then sings “the piano plays out of TUNE!” That made me lose my shit every damn time.

Act Four/final scene/office – this was a fun scene to shoot because we did a series of takes in which my reaction to meeting the new cute editor got progressively more absurd.  At first it was just a little bit of robot voice, but then I just started babbling and going more and more weird.  Black and Sho, who are the most patient and sweet directors ever, finally just let me know that I perhaps had crossed over from endearingly  awkward to bat-shit nuts, and maybe it was time to cut.  Once again, wait for the DVD.

–the dedicated and beautiful Jessi Klein