‘The Worst’ has turned out to be the best for Cash
Actress Aya Cash, one of the standout stars of the edgy sitcom “You’re the Worst,” recently dug up a grade-school yearbook and was pleased to see these words inscribed in her 10year-old handwriting:
“I want to be an actress or a singer.”
So that would be mission accomplished.
“What’s funny is about 90 percent of the people in yearbooks say that,” Cash insists. “It’s a very common thing to think when you’re 10. But I remember reading that and thinking: ‘Holy crap, I’m doing the thing that, at 10 years old, I wanted to do.’ Not to get too cheesy, but how cool is that?”
Cash, who was born and raised in San Francisco, can be seen in next week’s Season 3 opener of “You’re the Worst” (10 p.m. Wednesday, FXX). She plays Gretchen Cutler, one half of a selfabsorbed and emotionally stunted Los Angeles couple rounded out by her boyfriend, narcissistic novelist Jimmy Shive-Overly (Chris Geere). As Cash has described them, “They both may be a-holes, but they’re right for each other.”
The daughter of poet and novelist Kim Addonizio and Buddhist teacher Eugene Cash, she lived all over San Francisco while growing up, including stops in the Castro, the Mission, North Richmond. Beach, Her Sunsethigh school and years were spent at San Francisco School of the Arts because, she jokes, “My parents wanted me to do some-- thing artistic, and it was the only public school where my mom thought I wouldn’t get beat up.” (Mom now lives in Oakland). Her love of acting was bolstered when she began participating in Shakespeare competitions as a teen. She was even flown to New York a couple of times to display her skills on a national level.
“I thought: ‘Oh, how awesome. Acting is all about Shakespeare and traveling and getting out,’ ” she recalls during a conversation at the recent TV critics press tour. “So I figured I’d do regional theater on a bus for the rest of my life.”
Instead, her résumé is dotted with a number of film and TV roles, none bigger than her breakout work on “You’re the Worst.”
In Season 2 of the show, it was revealed that her character suffers from clinical depression. Cash, who now lives in New York and shoots the show in L.A., won critical raves for her searing performance. She also earned a great deal of gratitude from some viewers.
“The response was incredible and so rewarding and incredibly moving,” she says. “It’s been really lovely to have people come up and say, ‘Hey, you helped me get through something.’ Or ‘I really appreciated how you helped me to understand my boyfriend or girlfriend who’s struggling with depression.’”