Alison Brie: My Life in 10 Roles

The Mad Men set was meticulous. Notoriously, right? [Showrunner] Matt Weiner is a very specific person. He liked things to be exact, and the writing was so nuanced and had so much subtext, you really wanted to get it right. There was something satisfying about that, too, of knowing, “Wow, we’re not going to stop until this is exactly the way that it was envisioned by the creator.” So that was really fun, and could also be very intimidating. I mean, that was my first big job in TV.Trudy was really the Lady Macbeth of the Campbell household. It’s something that was great about Mad Men as a show: All of the characters had depth and nuance. Whether they had a one-episode arc or someone like me who was a recurring guest star on the show for [all seven] seasons. They didn’t have to write juicy stuff for me, but it’s what made the whole world really well-defined and compelling. Every person who walked by and said two lines, you could tell there was an interior life there and a backstory at work. And Trudy had an amazing arc. She was always right, this master manipulator pulling the strings behind the scenes, working within the parameters of what women were allowed to do at the time, or what was expected from a traditional housewife in that era. She found a way to exert power within her realm of the household.The costumes were a big part of what made that show magical. Our costume designer, Janie Bryant, was such a genius. Everything was period appropriate. It was a whole thing. I honestly think the costume and the hair and makeup was what helped me get into character the most. I love Jane’s attention to character colorways. We would always talk about the “Campbell Blue” and how the Campbells were real jewel-toned characters.I also think that Vincent Kartheiser [who played Pete Campbell] and I have very similar coloring. Pale skin, dark hair, blue eyes. Honestly, it’s part of what made me think I would get the role. I was like, “We kind of look like brother and sister,” and I feel like couples from the Fifties and Sixties often did look like they were related. So I was like, “Maybe I have a shot here.” [Laughs.]People love Trudy. A lot of people are doing a Mad Men re-watch lately, and the show just meant a lot to a lot of people. It astonishes me. For a role that to me felt like a minor part of the show, she had a really big impact on viewers.

Community remains the number one thing that fans approach me to talk about, and I love it. It’s so cool to see how that show has endured, especially because we were always on the bubble. We were always a struggling show, but it has remained this cult favorite amongst our passionate fan base, and that is really special.I auditioned for Annie. I know that I was the last person cast in the main cast for the pilot, and they had had several rounds of casting. I came in, did a quick audition on tape, and then got a call saying, “They want you to come back in for the producers and we’re going to put you on tape again.” I didn’t have to go and do the traditional network test and studio test, which was kind of great. I think they were really under a time crunch, so I got to come back in and go on tape with the Russo brothers and Dan Harmon. I was actually shooting this web series at the time called My Alibi, where I was playing this bookish, nerdy Type A character. So I just wore my costume from that to the audition. I was like, “Oh, I know how to play this character.” And it all went great. I got the call a few days later that I got the part.It was scary, because I almost jeopardized my role on Mad Men all together. We hadn’t asked permission because I wasn’t under contract with them. But ultimately, when Community was picked up to series, the producers were such big fans of Mad Men that they were like, “Oh, we’ll work out the schedule so you can do those episodes. We don’t want to lose Trudy from Mad Men.” So I got really lucky.The Community cast, we spent so many collective hours together. I love those guys. They’re like family to me. I used to say to them, “You guys wouldn’t recognize me on the set of Mad Men.” Because on the Community set, we were just losing our minds. We were kids on a playground, making jokes about farts and doing voices. Crying laughing, right up until they called action. The joking that we did with each other really bled into the scenes, and I’m sure it’s part of why fans really connected with the show. A lot of our real-life connections were coming through into the character’s relationships.I know people were having fun on Mad Men, but because I was a guest star there, I always approached the whole job with such reverence — and probably also a little bit of fear. “Please bring me back.” So every time I was on Mad Men, I was quiet as a mouse and studious. I really wanted to nail every line. The Mad Men set was about precision, and the Community set was about effervescence.We’re all game to do [the long-awaited Community movie]. The cast all wants to do it. I hope we get a chance to do it. It does feel like there are so many moving parts, so many things out of our control. So, I’m just over here crossing my fingers that it all works out.

I am a Scream superfan. Recently, I realized it’s probably my favorite horror movie of all time. When Scream came out, I was in high school. I think I was a freshman. It’s kind of the movie that made me and my friends feel like we could make movies. It inspired us. We shot a spoof called Yell. I mean, my friends and I saw it so many times we could quote it. We just were obsessed with it. I think the way the movie has a sense of humor and a meta quality to it, it just really captured the perspective of a generation. And I’m a die-hard fan of the franchise. Scream 2 shot scenes in my hometown of South Pasadena. The Rialto Theater was all decked out for the Stab movie premiere. It was like the most exciting week of our lives. I am a Scream 3 apologist. Many people find it to be the worst movie of the franchise. I love the campiness of it. I love Parker Posey.So when the opportunity came to audition for Scream 4, I was ecstatic. [I] especially felt so tuned in, because the character I play, Rebecca Walters, was like a spin-off of the Gale Weathers character. That was their updated version of the really driven fame-seeking character. I got to have a great scene with Courteney Cox, basically a meta scene, just being like, “Oh, my God, I want to be just like you.” And of course, I had scenes with Neve [Campbell], because I play her book publicist. I really only have a scene with David Arquette after I’m already dead, but we did meet as I played my own dead body, and he was lovely as well. I was like a kid in a candy store, like a superfan winning a contest to get to be on set. And Wes Craven was unbelievable as a director. I was still so young when I shot that, and I remember him really giving me permission to have fun in my death scene. We kind of rehearsed it and he was like, “Let loose a little.” To me, it was so important. I was so nervous. I really wanted to nail my death scene with Ghostface. I will never forget Wes Craven’s kindness and gentleness. People are like, “Don’t meet your heroes.” But it was a dream being on that set. My teenage self was so proud.

Mad Men and Community wrapped in the same year. I finished those shows at the same time, and it really felt like the end of an era, and a moment for me to take a breath and decide what I wanted the next stage of my career to look like. I read a lot of pilots, and I took my time. I took about a year of passing on projects or not auditioning for things, and then I read the pilot for GLOW [Gorgeous Ladies of Wrestling]. It’s the best television script I’ve ever read. I just was so enamored with the whole thing. The character of Ruth, this underdog, this actress trying to prove herself. I really connected with that side of the character. The world of wrestling was so foreign, so exciting to me. I loved the idea of getting to work within a different period, the Eighties. Such a fun time, in terms of hair and makeup and a colorful palette.So immediately, I went and re-watched some episodes of the original GLOW, and those shows are bananas. Some of the wildest things you’ll ever see. The whole world of it felt exciting. And I really had to fight for that part. They didn’t want to even see me for the role. Not to sound full of myself in any way, but coming off of Mad Men and Community, there were, say, other offers on the table. My agents were like, “There’s this bird in the hand over here. Let’s ignore that one in the bush.” I was like, “No, I want to pursue GLOW.” They finally let me come in for a pre-read with casting. The producers weren’t even there. That went well, and then I auditioned three more times. Twice were chemistry reads with Betty Gilpin. It felt like meeting a soulmate. I’ve just never felt more invested in anything, pursuing this job more hotly than I pursued anything in my life.I know that I was not what the showrunners [Liz Flahive and Carly Mensch] were picturing as Ruth. Coming off of Community and Mad Men, I thought, “What a showcase for these two different things I can do.” But I think to the general public, a lot of people saw two Type A characters who were meticulous, who were very put-together. GLOW was this opportunity to show range in a different type of way. To me, it felt like graduating into almost a more adult role. And of course, more risqué. It was my first time doing any nudity on camera. I was doing full-frontal nude scenes, and that was extremely satisfying.[Responding to a GLOW fan’s description of her on Reddit: “Alison Brie has the pallor of an infirm Victorian child”]. That’s just my natural skin tone, folks! [Laughs.] I wore no makeup on the show, only in my eyebrows, except of course when we were wrestlers. Zoya the Destroya, all the makeup. Playing Ruth gave me a lot of confidence. Entering the business, there’s pressure to be a pretty girl all the time. It can be a vulnerable thing to be on camera with no makeup on, and that was so freeing.GLOW really connected me to my body as well. Because we were doing these wrestling moves, and I got to look at my body in a different way, not through the lens of, like, “You are an actress in Hollywood.” Our mantra, all the women on the show, we would say to each other, “You’re a wrestler. I’m a wrestler.” Ninety percent of the stunts we did ourselves, and then we also had incredible stunt doubles. I was not at all athletic prior to doing this show. I train with a personal trainer, but I wasn’t that invested in it. GLOW was a turning point in that respect. I guess if I had an ethos as an actor, it’s “Run towards the things you are afraid of.” It was the most empowering thing.[On the romance between Ruth and Sam, played by Marc Maron:] I won’t give any specifics, but I will say that Liz and Carly had talked me through the plan for the fourth season, and that was definitely going to be explored a little bit more. [On the possibility of a GLOW film:] They’re just fan theories, as far as I know. Nothing is really in the works.

Oh, my gosh. I remember meeting with [writer and director] Leslye Headland to talk about the script. We are both such loud, talkative, excitable women, that by the end of the conversation, we were standing on the couches, just screaming at each other. I adore Leslye. I had such a fun time working on that movie. That script was very personal to her, and she shared a lot with me about the parts of herself that were in that character of Lainey. So a lot of the time when she was directing me, she would come up to me and grab my hands and stare into my eyes and tear up. She would start to cry, and then I would just read her crying eyes and understand what she wanted in the scene. It was like this symbiotic relationship.The whole movie was edgy in a way that the work I was doing on Mad Men and Community didn’t feel, in terms of talking about sex in a really candid way. That was the exciting part for me, I think. Saying, “Look, I’m not Annie on Community, even though everyone thinks I am. I talk about sex! I’m comfortable! I’m cool!” And Jason Sudeikis is so funny. I felt like he and I had a really easy rapport with one another.That’s one of those movies that was kind of a sleeper. To this day, people tell me it’s one of their favorite rom-coms. But in the moment, it kind of flew under the radar. [It’s aged well] probably because it was written and directed by a woman. All of those conversations — specifically around sex and emotional co-dependency — were coming from a really raw and honest place, and female perspective. So it doesn’t surprise me that it’s aged well.

Promising Young Woman was such an outrageous script. It was really bold, and I just wanted to be a part of it, in any way. The idea was just such a backdoor entrance into a discussion about a really heavy topic of sexual assault. Emerald Fennell somehow made a discussion around sexual assault exciting and almost sexy and gratifying. It’s a revenge story, so I think it just was a really inventive way to have a dialogue around that subject matter.Madison is a villain. I actually think I was like, “Oh, this is a really important role to show that there is a female side to victim-blaming, and there is sometimes a female component to not believing women.” And because I always want to be able to empathize with whatever character I’m playing, I think she represented a different type of victimhood, which is full denial. I certainly think as terrible as Madison’s actions and words are in the first scene when we meet her, I think a lot of that is coming from her own trauma. Which, again, it’s such a layered way to look at a type of person. And she gets some redemption in the end. Madison as a character, in the span of two scenes, has a small redemption arc, which is kind of astonishing from a writing perspective.That’s why the script is cool. Obviously it’s Carey [Mulligan’s] movie and you’re with that character the whole time, and every other character basically has one scene. But the scenes are powerhouse scenes. The scene in the restaurant, it was the first day of filming for the whole movie. So there’s a certain amount of pressure. I mean, I only shot two days, but I felt like I was really setting the tone for this whole film. Emerald [Fennell] had told me to re-watch Heat and with an eye towards the big scene between Robert De Niro and Al Pacino at the diner. By the way, I love the movie Heat, and I pretty much watch it every couple years, regardless. So I was like, “This is homework that I’m excited to dive into.” But it was a great reference. Because these women really are having this tete-a-tete where neither one wants to reveal their hand. They’re both playing a game in that first scene, and it’s a fine line. It was really an interesting challenge acting-wise, in terms of playing all the nuances of that scene. And then on top of that, playing drunk. It’s hard. I think it’s one of the most difficult things to do. Because you don’t want to overdo it. Hair and makeup goes a long way. We added a great red wine stain to my lips, and even just having something like that as the physical manifestation made me feel like, “Oh, OK. I can be a little back-footed with the drunkenness, because I know that it’s already on display.”

Horse Girl is the first movie that I wrote. I co-wrote it with Jeff Baena, my good friend. I mean, talk about a new chapter. There were multiple inspirations. Personal, and also on a global level. Had I not worked on GLOW, I would not have had the confidence to pursue writing my own project. If I had not seen Dave writing The Rental, that was the second step with going, “Dave’s writing, he’s having a lot of fun. If he could do it, maybe I could do it.” And I had been in Jeff’s films. I had a small role in Joshy, and Dave and I had been in The Little Hours, and he was a good friend. We would hike all the time and talk about ideas. Jeff was such a strange guy, and he had really weird taste. Outside of Dave, he was the only person I felt comfortable sharing this idea with. I was still kind of self-conscious about thinking that I would have even the audacity to think I could write something. And he was so into the idea. It was a very personal story about dealing with my familial history with mental illness. My grandmother lived with paranoid schizophrenia. [That’s] what it was called at the time. Maybe now she would have been diagnosed as bipolar. But [it was] a representative analysis of my personal fears of having mental illness in your bloodline and exploring that.It changed my life. It just opened these new doors to really getting … [Editor’s note: At this point in the interview, Brie begins to cry; Baena died in January at the age of 47]. Oh, sorry. Just out of nowhere. Sometimes this stuff is easy to talk about, because I’m so grateful to Jeff for exposing me to new creative outlets, and not just giving me the confidence, but really shepherding me along. The writing process for Horse Girl was so fluid, and I felt so supported. It was such a magical experience, because the story was very personal, and because there were no expectations. We wrote it ourselves hanging out in Jeff’s living room. Writing the script, the final draft was like a 30-page outline. So every scene, the dialogue was improvised, and that was just a really fun part of the process. And then the Duplass brothers came on as producers, and they had to deal with Netflix. So we had a home for this strange tiny movie very early on, and Jeff really was a person who so purely pursued the creative. That was the guiding light to all of it. It was never about, “Is this movie going to get a big audience? Is this going to sell?” He was a true artist. For that to be my first writing experience, it was so pure and beautiful, and I’ll always be grateful to have had him in my life.

The Rental was Dave’s directorial debut, and my involvement with that was interesting. Originally, when Dave was writing the script with Joe Swanberg, he was going to act in the film and play the younger brother, the role that Jeremy Allen White played. We were actually never talking about me being in the movie, because we thought that would be distracting, if I was playing the wife of his character’s brother. But as Dave’s wife and creative partner, I was reading several drafts of the script. I was so inspired by him, watching him write it. Like Together, it’s a relationship story within a horror movie, so that was really exciting. It was important to Dave that each of the characters really be fleshed out and that the audience really be invested in those relationships. And then once he decided to direct it and they had fully cast all the other roles, he finally was like, “Maybe you should play Michelle.” And I was like, “It would be an honor!” At home, we definitely talk to each other a bunch about writing projects. We read each other’s work and give notes and help troubleshoot things. I don’t know if I would be totally correct, but I’m sure that there are parts of Michelle as a character that were based on me anyway, whether it was subconscious or not. I think I’ve spent the rest of my career trying to work my way back to that really free-flowing place on The Rental, because it was Dave’s directorial debut. There was a way for me to kind of ignore the usual tropes of an actor, in terms of self-consciousness or getting in my head. I was just like, “Dave is the priority. I don’t want to take any energy away from what he’s doing as a director.” I wasn’t overthinking things. I could just relax into it.

This was the first thing Dave and I wrote together, and we were just so in sync throughout the whole process. We had both written movies separately with other writing partners, and we were talking about how much we love rom-coms. What if there was an updated version of one that felt like real people today, and how they would react to some of those classic rom-com scenarios?It was the pandemic, so we were actually in lockdown, and we just used that time to write Somebody I Used to Know. It’s such a fun script. Ally is a character who is sort of personal, but also not like me at all. I’ve certainly never been in this exact situation — the movie is not autobiographical. But we weaved in a lot of personal stuff. The fact that Ally was a nudist, we were kind of channeling my own trajectory of having been really outgoing in college. I liked to streak around campus at CalArts, just for fun. Even when we were doing press for Somebody I Used to Know, I was streaking around our hotel. I am a very comfortable naked person, often to my husband’s chagrin. But yeah, that’s certainly part of myself that we wove into that character.We wrote that role for [Community co-star] Danny [Pudi]. Danny and I are such close friends, and we just felt like, “Let’s put that relationship on screen.” That movie is so personal to us. Even just small side characters or one-off jokes, a lot of that stuff comes from stories that our friends have told us or things that have happened to us, like our cat shitting and puking on a flight with me.Our main goal was to make all three main characters really well-rounded. Because in life there often aren’t such clear-cut villains, especially in love triangles and in romance. It’s like, these situations are messy, and people are messy. Even good people have the capacity to make bad decisions. We wanted to explore the complications of modern relationships in a way that felt true to life. And I just love working with Dave as a director. I like watching him direct. He’s so confident, and also collaborative. He wants every person to shine. It’s hot. I fall more in love with Dave every time he is directing me in something.