Yvette Nicole Brown's role as Shirley on Community pairs what the actress describes are her two best attributes: snark and sweetness. Now that the jocular NBC comedy has been picked up for three additional episodes, we'll be able to watch more of Brown adding spicy, sometimes vitriolic zeal to the series' community college setting. Just ahead of tonight's new episode, Brown talks to Movieline about where the show is heading, the most challenging acting on Earth, and that opening credit sequence with the inadvertent O.J. Simpson parallel.
Community has a great ensemble. What do you think Shirley's place is in the show's core?
I think Shirley's kind of the heart of the show in that she's really sentimental and she just adores everybody in the group, even Chevy's character Pierce who hits on her all the time. She just really has a love for everyone, so I think the love that oozes out of her and her excitement for everyone makes everyone a cohesive unit. Because she's got two sides where she's really, really sweet and then also really, really full of rage -- I think that kind of keeps everyone a little nervous around her. The "unstable-ness" of her is where the funny comes in from Shirley.
I also notice that the characters have shifted since the show's start, that we tend to learn about them in spurts. Where has Shirley's evolution taken her, and what else can we expect to learn about her?.
I think Shirley started off just as the mother hen. She had that underbelly of anger and really didn't know why she was so mad. I think the Halloween episode is when it kind of turned, when we started to see that she acts out in rage when she's hurt. Like when her husband asked for the wedding ring back. You got to see more of her. In the coming episodes, we just taped one actually -- we see Shirley's kids and her dynamic with her babies. It's another layer of hers. I'd love to see who Shirley's ex-husband is and see that dynamic. Once we see how she is with the man that she loved who hurt her, we'll have a very clear idea of who Shirley is. I would love if she could meet a teacher at school, or, I don't care, the janitor at the cafeteria who's kind of sweet on her. I'd love to see her romantically. I'm just in love with this writing, and that as an ensemble, we can all carry an episode.
You've done a lot of commercial acting, and I've even heard you defend commercial acting and claim that commercials are what bought your house. Do you miss it at all?
I honestly never worked in just commercial acting, and I'm grateful my career worked out that way. I was doing commercials, TV and movies at the same time. And I probably did defend commercial work; I think there are some actors who turn up their noses at that, like it's a lesser form of acting. I've been on stage, on TV, in movies and commercials, and to me, there's nothing harder than commercial work. You only have 30 seconds to create a character, have an arc, and sell something. It's every type of thing you're going to need as an actor, and you have to do it quickly. When we get to a commercial set, you are hitting the ground running the second you get there. On TV and film sets we laugh, we talk, you know, there's a lot of downtime. There's none of that on a commercial set. You literally get there, and you're running, chasing the day all day. If you can do your best work and end up with a product that makes people laugh or -- you know, some of them are sentimental -- make them feel something, I think you're a great actor. So I do defend them.
Can you think of an occasion in commercial acting where you've had to change your entire role on a dime?
Thing about commercials, you have to please the director, the client, and the production company producing your commercial. So you may have gotten cast because, you know -- like, I'm a sassy character a lot in commercials -- so I may have been cast for that, but if I get on set and the product people may go, "Oh, no, no! I don't know if I want her that sassy selling Hamburger Helper." And the director might like me sassy. So then there's a caucus. And they'll go, "Well, Yvette, can you say this line, but can you undercut your sass with a little bit of sweet?" It's really small little changes they give you. You have to be able to change on a dime.
Do you wish you could break out of sassier roles more?
I've been blessed where I've played some meek roles. I just think that everyone has a particular brand of funny. My brand happens to be a little bit snarky, but hopefully snarky and lovable. The person I most admire who was able to this was Bea Arthur, because she was able to portray the smartest person in the room, and no one was sassier than her, but you still liked her. If you looked at every role she did from Maude on through to The Golden Girls, she was always the one with the reaction that would drive people crazy. Like, her facial expressions were amazing. She always had this deadpan slow burn that would destroy people. And she did that her entire career and people love that about her. So if I finish my career and people said, "No one did sassy like Yvette Brown," I'd be so overjoyed. To me, it's not a liability, it's an asset. In this industry, you always need to find her niche first and then branch out. You look at someone like Mo'Nique who started doing broad comedy on The Parkers and she's now doing serious dramatic work in Precious, and she's nominated and winning awards. So it's like, you start somewhere, you get your fan base, and then you go, "Hey, you like that? Guess what else I can do." So one day, hopefully I'll branch into other things, but I have no problems with the niche I've dug for myself.
Some hubbub stirred up online recently, with Community fans wondering about the implications of the way your name is presented in opening credits. It appears that a knife is going into a cake that says "Nicole Brown" on it, while your first name "Yvette" floats above. Were you surprised to hear that people drew connections to the slain Nicole Brown and the O.J. Simpson trial?
It was not intentional, and it's still on credits. People really took that the wrong way. People don't know that my real full name is Yvette Nicole Brown, and I've had it my whole life, long before Nicole Brown was murdered. No one respects her name and legacy more than me, because I kind of carry it now, you know? That's not something I would've chosen for myself, but that's the way it worked out. The cake and the knife are the two sides of Shirley; she's sweet and she's rageful. No one ever thought, "Oh, let's do something funny about someone who was murdered." That's horrible! Nobody involved in the show has that type of spirit.
I was really thinking that the people who saw that and made that connection, it said more about them than about any of us. It sickened me to see that, that people thought we would do that. That people thought I would allow that. You know what I mean? It was just disgusting to me. It has nothing to do with Nicole Brown Simpson, and I totally respect her and -- I'm horrified by it. I think the reason it remained is because we knew we hadn't done that for that reason. We knew why it was there. If you look at everybody's credit, there's something about each person. Like Alison [Brie's] character Annie is very funny, so she has smiley faces. It all has something to do with who the person, or character is. It has nothing to do with anything else.
Can you talk about watching Joel McHale progress on the show? He appears to have become very comfortable as the season has gone on.
Joel is just one of my favorite people on the planet. He's a very caring, loving family man. All of his snarkiness and smart-aleckiness hides, or is wrapped around, this amazing heart. So that's the first thing. In regards to his evolution, I've been so impressed with him as an actor. I've seen him in a couple of things way before he did The Soup, but to see his level of skill? When you're in a scene acting with someone, a lot of times, when the camera is on them and not on you, you get to actually watch them as a spectator and enjoy them. And Joel's ability to, what we were talking abouy, change on a dime, but he is the person who has the supercomputer brain. I don't know if you'd paid really close attention to the chunks of dialogue this man has to deliver, but [creator] Dan Harmon is so intelligent, and so witty and interesting, a lot of things are so deep and crazy, they're hard to say. Joel has had more tongue-twister-type monologues stuff than everybody -- he and Gillian [Jacobs] actually have the most. He is able to deliver it in a way that's real cerebral, but you're like "Oh, I get that." But he's able to deliver it because he's such a skilled actor. He says things that are mean-spirited, but because Joel is so likable, you're OK with it. His innate likability is serving the character Jeff in a way the producers probably never thought was possible. He can do everything as far as I concerned.
I only found out recently that he's 38. That was surprising to me.
You know what's so funny? He and I are of the same generation. When we did all the stuff about the show, they'd say I was the middle-aged housewife and he was the hot, young lawyer. And I'm like, "Really? We were kind of in high school at the same time." So if I'm middle-aged, he's middle-aged. If he's hot, I'm hot. Let's be fair. He is a hot 38, and I am a hot thirtysomething as well.
Tell us something about Chevy Chase that I don't know.
Chevy has been with his wife for 30 years, and I don't know if that's brought up a lot. And they're in love, I mean in love. When you ask this man about his wife, there is a softness that comes over him and an almost childlike innocence that I don't think most people get to see. Most people don't ask him, "How's Janey doing?" And if you do that, he turns into a puddle of goo. He's a sweet, sentimental man, and you can't make it 30 years without being that type of person.
Lastly, NBC's Thursday night lineup is, without a doubt, the most solid in primetime -- though it's not the most highly rated. Is that disheartening?
A lot of shows didn't start out huge. Seinfeld was seen by almost no one when it started, The Office too. I think we're going to be a slow burn. There's going to be people who watch season two, and if we're lucky to get a season three, people who are then going to go, "What is this show?" and they'll catch up. I don't know why more people haven't found us, but there are a lot of shows that aren't highly rated that I love. We happen to be on a network that loves to give comedies a chance. Other networks are quick to cancel shows that don't immediately come out of the box with fifty thousand, million viewers. We're on a network that says, "No, we love this show, and we're going to give it a chance to get numbers." I'm grateful we're on NBC and thankful we'll be able to find the audience we're supposed to have.