MEGAN MULLALLY PARTIES DOWN

You may know Megan Mullally from her many television comedy appearances whether as Karen Walker on the long running series “Will & Grace” (for which she received two Emmy Awards and four S.A.G. Awards) or her work on “30 Rock,” “The New Adventures of Old Christine,” or as Tammy on “Parks and Recreation” (in which she plays the ex-wife to her real life husband, Nick Offerman).

What you may not know about Megan Mullally is that some of her best work to date hits the Starz Network April 23rd in the second season of one of the funniest comedies that you probably have never seen, “Party Down.” In it, she plays the eternally peppy and bright-eyed Lydia Dunfree, the newbie outsider amongst an established team of dismayed Hollywood cater waiters. Lydia dreams of being a housewife while promoting the undiscovered talent of her thirteen-year-old daughter, Escapade.

In addition, Mullally fans can rejoice in her hilarious work as The Chief on “Children’s Hospital” (the wb.com), a web series that chronicles the ultra-horny, inept doctors in a “Grey’s Anatomy”-esque hospital. Everyone in “Children’s Hospital” lusts after The Chief, one of the least sexy characters you’ll ever see. In other words, a must-see, especially when it comes to Cartoon Network’s Adult Swim this summer.

If that weren’t enough, Megan’s got a musical side that keeps her busy as the lead singer of the “thinking man’s cover band,” The Supreme Music Program which, this year alone, will perform on stages from London to Orange County.

Though raised in both California and Oklahoma, these days Mullally calls L.A. home, and she’s busier — and happier — than ever as she recently shared it all with Venice…

Venice: In preparing for this interview, Starz sent the whole upcoming season of “Party Down.” I watched every episode, and it’s truly one of the funniest sitcoms I’ve seen.

Megan Mullally:

Thanks! I haven’t even seen it yet, but I’ve never laughed that hard on a set. I had a blast on “Will & Grace” but this was as fun, and at times, maybe even a teeny bit more fun.

These cater waiter characters are all so, in their own ways, useless at catering, yet their rapport is so amusing and endearing. I’m just wishing more people watched Starz.

I know! Right now we’re trying to figure out how to get Starz for my mom in Oklahoma City. And what do you think about my $99 wig from Hollywood Boulevard?

Is that where you got Lydia’s hair?

I am so obsessed with cheap wig shops on Hollywood Boulevard.

Me too! I have an inner drag queen maybe.

[laughs] I love that! Let’s hit the wig shops when I’m back in L.A. I’ve worn these cheap, fantastic wigs for the last four things I’ve done. For the upcoming Adult Swim version of “Children’s Hospital” not only do I wear Hollywood Boulevard wigs for The Chief, but it’s a man’s hairpiece. And she’s on a walker this season, not crutches.

And yet all the other characters on “Children’s Hospital” find her sexually alluring.

I know. Everybody wants to (expletive) her. [laughs]

“Children’s Hospital” needed to get made.

Yes, it was crying out to be made. We shot twelve eleven minute episodes which was very unorthodox. The whole landscape of television is changing right now, and we don’t really know where it’s ending up. There’s this very pioneering spirit that’s happening, and “Party Down” and “Children’s Hospital” are examples of that. There’s this really exciting sense of being in on the ground floor of something new and putting together a really first class show for less money and on cable, and online.

You’re right about the changes with television since the days when “Will & Grace” was new. And with “Children’s Hospital” and “Party Down,” you’re part of that change.

It really is exciting. In Los Angeles right now there’s this great community of comedy people, and it really is a community, unlike other areas of the business. There’s this whole far-reaching group, some are from the Upright Citizen Brigade world, some are from “Saturday Night Live” or Groundlings. And then there’s this whole Rob Corddry, David Wain contingent. All these different branches of people from comedy. With this L.A. comedy community, everybody supports each other. Everybody gives each other jobs. Everybody wants everybody else to succeed. There’s nothing elitist about it. The only qualifications to be a member of this group are you have to be funny, you have to be good at your job, and you have to be nice.

I love that. It makes the industry sound more like summer camp.

It really is like summer camp. I lived in Chicago in the early ’80s, and I did a lot of theater there. There really was a community of theater actors and everybody would hang out at the same bar after the show, and everybody knew everybody and we’d all be in each other’s plays, and that was wonderful, but it’s not even to the extreme that we have in Los Angeles right now. There’s a creative generosity of spirit.

You’ve become well known in the world of television comedy. Did you think of yourself as a comedy person when you were starting out?

No, I thought I might have been relatively amusing, but I didn’t think of myself as anything to write home about. [laughs] I had to be humorous in plays and musicals, but not knock down, drag out, funny. I was never formally trained in improv. “Party Down” and “Children’s Hospital” are definitely scripted, but they have a feeling of improvisation, and there are moments of improvisation although they may not make it into the final versions. The writing on “Party Down” is very strong. John Enbom and Rob Thomas and Dan Etheridge are the three guys that run the show. John writes the majority of the scripts. We shot for ten weeks, ten episodes straight through. I love the writing. I mean the love story between the Adam Scott character and the Lizzy Caplan character is so fresh and believable. Don’t they feel like people that you know?

Absolutely. Speaking of characters on “Party Down,” does Lydia Dunfree feel like anyone you know?

[laughs, followed by a pause, then] I don’t know.

Maybe you came across women like her in Oklahoma shopping malls?

[laughs] Yeah, totally. She just thinks everything’s going to be great. The last thing these other characters want is to be trapped in the proverbial elevator with Lydia, and she’s working on being everyone’s new best friend, but she has NO idea that she might not be their cup of tea. She’s like a cheerleader. I’m kind of like that, but I didn’t base her on anyone in particular. I do have Lydia’s optimism and idealism.

You’re an optimist?

Oh yeah. I always think the best of people.

So, after doing “Party Down,” when you’re at an event now, and the cater waiter asks if you’d like a glass of champagne, do you think new thoughts?

That’s so funny. Well, the next time I’m at an event where there are uniformed caterers, I’ll definitely look at them with new eyes.

In “Party Down” when Lydia goes to Steve Guttenberg’s house, she remembers him from “Three Men And A Baby” but thinks he’s Ted Danson, and calls him “Ted” throughout the episode. Do you think if Lydia saw you, she’d recognize you from “Will & Grace,” but think you were Debra Messing?

[laughs] Yeah, I’m sure she would. And sometimes I get Patty Heaton or Tina Fey. Patty Heaton is funnier actually because she and I were both on sitcoms in the same era.

I read that you’re developing “Karen: The Musical” based on your “Will & Grace” character.

Yes! Fox Theatrical is producing it. Casey (“The Drowsy Chaperone”) Nicholaw is directing it. Jeff Blumenkrantz is writing the score. Bruce Vilanch is going to be involved, and we’re looking for one more person to write the book – so we’re almost there. The idea is kind of a throwdown between Karen Walker and Beverley Leslie. It’s a touring show so we’d start in Los Angeles first and then take it wherever “Will & Grace” is popular.

Which is just about everywhere.

“Will & Grace” is really popular in the U.K., Australia, all over Europe. I think it would be a lot of fun to take this around the U.S. as well as those places. Nobody ever wants to keep their sitcom character going. You’re supposed to madly distance yourself from them in your life, but I think it’s funny to keep doing it. And the idea that it’s a musical is just so ridiculous that I just have to do it.

Karen would probably hate Lydia Dunfree, wouldn’t she?

Oh God, yes! And I don’t think Karen would think too much of The Chief in “Children’s Hospital” either.

Did Karen Walker ever rub off on you in any way?

Fortunately I’m not a pill-popping, gun-toting, alcoholic. [laughs] Maybe if I had to cite one thing, and it might not be just because of the character, but possibly because the process of being lucky enough to be on “Will & Grace,” a hit show for eight years, is that I grew a lot in terms of self confidence. And I learned so much about comedy.

Karen’s vocal register changed from the early episodes where she spoke in a lower register to later ones where she speaks in that high-pitch. Was that your decision?

Yeah, but it wasn’t really a conscious decision. I had always taken a lot of big chances in auditions. Sometimes I got the job and sometimes they’d just be terrified. I didn’t do the voice in the beginning with Karen because I really wasn’t sure what the character was going to be. My voice changed with the writing. Karen wasn’t as quirky writing wise at the beginning as she became later. I think it’s funny that Karen is a woman who is so judgmental of everybody else would have something so amazingly annoying about her. Just her speaking voice makes you want to throw yourself out the window. [laughs] After the first six to ten episodes, it occurred to me that the nature of the show was very farcical, and to add energy to the show and the performance, and since my regular speaking voice is sort of laconic, I just instinctively wanted to add something quirky so I just brought the higher voice in.

At the very bottom of your list of credits on IMDB it says you played a call girl in “Risky Business.” Is that true?

Uh, yeah. It’s so funny because I was like 23, and they came to Chicago to read people for the film because Chicago was really hot right then. Me and this actor named Kevin Anderson got screen-tested for the leads in Risky Business — the Rebecca DeMornay and Tom Cruise roles. They flew us to Los Angeles for two weeks. It was a big deal. They put us in a hotel, bought us clothes. Kevin Anderson ultimately was given a small role. And I was given a role of ‘call girl.’ I had two lines with Tom Cruise which got cut, and ever since then, to this day, whenever I run into any of the producers from the movie, they are so nice to me. They’ve had reunion parties. And Tom Cruise, I ran into him once over the years, and he recognized me and was like “Oh my God!” You know, the media gives him a bad rap, but I think he’s a really nice guy who remembers people’s names. It’s funny how the press latches onto certain people and —

—tears people down?

Yeah. Like when I was working with Madonna on “Will & Grace,” she couldn’t have been any nicer or more professional. She worked so hard. Really a perfectionist. She’s really all about her family and her spiritual vibe.

Madonna came across differently than you were expecting?

I didn’t know what to expect. I was keeping an open mind. Pretty much every scene that she was in was just me and Madonna. She actually had me over to dinner before we ever started shooting to get to know me a little bit. It was so refreshing. A really nice person.

Have you done stand up?

No, I never have. I feel comfortable enough to improvise within the scripted parameters, but to go out there and do stand up, that takes a special skill. I’m really good friends with Kathy Griffin. We met back in the mid- 1980s, and in the last year or two we’ve become really best girlfriends. We run around her big house and go online to find the right trashcans for her bathroom. That kind of thing. I admire her stand-up because she just brings it. I drove down with her to her Orange County Performing Arts Center gig last year — just the two of us. She drove, and I had her little list of topics in the car ride — and it was just these rough bulletpoints. And she was so calm about this show in a 5,000 seat theater. She’s not nervous or anything. She just goes onstage with a bottle of water – and the comedy just flows and the crowd freaks out.

And I have a crush on Maggie, Kathy Griffin’s mom.

Oh, total! She’s so beautiful. My mom’s 88 and Maggie is, I think, 89 or 87 – just a year apart.

You were great as Tammy on “Parks and Recreation.” She’s such a train wreck. I love her.

[Big laugh] Tammy’s going to be coming back to “Parks and Recreation,” and she’ll be reunited with Ron.

Is there a series that you’d like to guest on that you haven’t yet?

I am obsessed with “In Treatment” on HBO. I would love to do something on that. It’s the closest thing to theater that I’ve seen on television in a long time. The writing is so great. And there are sides to me that I haven’t been able to show that aren’t necessarily just non-stop comedy. The other show I’d love to guest on is “Breaking Bad.”

My favorite show!

Me too! I love it so much.

And you’re also the lead singer in a group, The Supreme Music Program?

We’ve been together about eleven years. We just played eight shows in London in January. That was the first time that I performed anything outside of the states since “Will & Grace.” And we’re playing at the Orange County Performing Arts Center in October — not the huge stage that Kathy Griffin does, but the smaller one

Who are some of your favorite singers?

I’m not very good with being in touch with the Top 40 today.

That doesn’t matter. Just name some of the music you’re listening to.

I love Nina Simone. She did a lot of incredibly eclectic cover songs. Also Tom Waits, Radiohead, The White Stripes though I heard they’re not together anymore. Jack White’s in a new band, and she – well, I don’t know what she’s doing. The Weepies, The Decemberists, Patti Griffin, Arcade Fire, Iron and Wine, Jenny Lewis. I don’t really know any Lady Gaga songs, but I think what she’s doing visually is so cool and fearless and creative. It’s like performance art. Yoko Ono was one of my early role models. She was this great force in the modern art scene, and so avant garde, and Lady Gaga is doing that now in her own way, yet Gaga is way more popular. Yoko was never really mainstream or understood.

You won two Emmys for “Will & Grace.” Have you ever done anything interesting or unusual with your Emmy Award statues like use them as a bottle opener or a doorstop?

[laughs] No. I mean I’m thrilled that I won the Emmys and other awards, and I think it’s really awesome, but Nick and I, we don’t have any career memorabilia on display in our house. Any awards or things we’ve won are kept in a very respectful place, but not on display. Most people I know who have won Emmys have them out in their house, but that’s not really me. I just would rather stay in the moment than always be looking at an award that makes me think of another time. I’d rather look ahead. ▼

“Party Down” begins on April 23rd on Starz. “Children’s Hospital” Season One webisodes can be seen on www.thewb com - Season Two will air on Cartoon Network’s “Adult Swim” block this summer. The Supreme Music Program has three CDs all available on Amazon, ITunes, and CD Baby. All eight seasons of “Will & Grace” are available on DVD through Lionsgate Home Entertainment.