Megan Mullally may face the daunting task of replacing Jane Lynch on Starz's caterer comedy Party Down this April, but the job is already a cathartic venture for the 51-year-old actress. Now, for instance, she gets to use swear words -- frequently. The Emmy-winning Will and Grace star talked to Movieline about how cable television is good for comedy, why she loves to swear on-screen, and the reason that network comedy is becoming "archaic."
Starz's trailer for season two of the show features Mullally as Lydia Dunfree, an L.A. transplant from Middle America who sports an auburn wig and, at one point, utters the line, "That is a question for a psychologist -- or as Adam would say, a Jew faggot." Vulgarity arrives in many forms on Party Down, but for Mullally, it accommodates her personal life.
"It's so nice, because I'm filthy," she said. "And it's just so nice to have the freedom. I feel like that's the thing with comedy. You have to keep the pushing the envelope."
At the recent Television Critics Association panel in Pasadena, Mullally explained that cable TV is not just a fun new vista, but the main source of decent comic material in a programming world where network TV continues to calcify.
"So now with cable and the internet, a lot of network stuff -- besides Parks and Recreation, not just because I'm biased -- a lot of network comedies are beginning to seem a little archaic. I remember last year, or the year before, where they did that hour -- NBC did that hour drama where the bleeped out all the -- they'd say, "Fucking motherf*ckers!" and they'd "Bleep, bleep, bleep, bleep it." Southland! And see, now it's on TNT. [NBC] tried to do it as a cable show and just bleep it all out."
Mullally said that profanity often marks the gateway to a type of material that network comedies rarely explore.
"Not that you have to say the 'F' word or something, but I think it's not so much the words themselves as much as the content, and just where you can go," she said, adding, "Especially in terms of comedy."