Energetic, loud and a force of nature
The Unbreakable Kimmy Schmidt has nothing on the Unstoppable Ellie Kemper, the actress who has driven that offbeat Netflix comedy to success.
In an attempt to isolate the source of her preternatural perkiness, I ask her what she was like as a child.
“I was very loud,” she says, very loudly. “That’s what everyone tells me. On one occasion, I was either laughing or crying in the backyard — I forget which — and my grandma asked, ‘Is a cat dying?’ Yeah. That’s what I guess I sounded like.”
If you think the can-do redhead at the centre of Kimmy Schmidt is a force of nature, try talking to the woman who created her.
Gearing up for a second season of her hit series, pausing after a month as a guest host on The Today Show and prepping for her “Unbreakable All-Star Comedy Show” at Montreal’s Just for Laughs Festival this week would be enough to wear out most performers.
But even early on a sleepy summer morning, Kemper is loaded for bear and running at warp speed, batting questions out of the park like she was the Babe Ruth of interviewees.
The Unbreakable Kimmy Schmidt is about a group of girls (Kemper included) who had been imprisoned by a cult leader in an underground vault for 15 years before being rescued by the FBI. Kemper has dazzled everyone with her performance.
“We were not, repeat not, a showbiz family,” insists Kemper, defying attempts to come to the source of her comedic DNA.
In fact, she was born in Kansas City, Mo., in 1980 to a well-off banking family, who moved to St. Louis when Ellie was 5.
“My younger sister eventually went into entertainment, but my parents definitely had nothing to do with it and my two brothers — both of whom are funnier than I am — also had nothing to do with the world of entertainment.”
But Kemper knew she wanted into that crazy universe and, in her own firmly determined way, she had already determined what form it would take.
“I wanted to be Fraulein Maria. In The Sound of Music. I wanted to be a nun who could sing. Desperately. That obviously did not come true, but I’m still hoping.”
(If the Stratford Festival is looking for a late season replacement in their current hit production of The Sound of Music, I can put it in touch with Kemper.)
“To be honest, I never really got a lot of guidance, positive or negative, about what kind of career choices to make. If and when I have kids, I think I’ll sit down with them and ask, ‘What is that you want to do with your life?’ You need some sort of help when you’re a teenager. For sure.”
Kemper acted in high school productions of Anything Goes and Cabaret and even had a very young Jon Hamm as one of her acting teachers. (So that’s why he appeared as the cult leader in Kimmy Schmidt), but she went off to Princeton University still unconvinced that was the path she was meant to take.
“In my freshman year, I played field hockey. Well, I was on the team. I mean, I warmed the bench. I never played. Never. But my best friend, Eileen, was Canadian and she was on the team, too.”
Things looked up a lot in her second year when she auditioned for Princeton’s improvisational theatre group, Quipfire. (“Haven’t you noticed that all university improv groups have clever names like that?” she observes.)
That audition turned out to be what she calls “my light-bulb moment. I suddenly said to myself, ‘This is something I can do!’ ”
She also kept her hand in more conventional theatre, even appearing in a campus production of Tom Stoppard’s murder-mystery spoof about theatre critics, The Real Inspector Hound.
Still, she kept insisting it wasn’t her life, finishing a degree in English and even doing some postgraduate work at Oxford before dropping all pretence.
“I decided to become a professional performer and my very first job was in a veterinarian’s training video. I was the unsympathetic assistant, who kept growling things like, ‘You can’t bring your dog in now, it’s after hours!’ ”
The rest of her journey was the usual blend of appearances in sketches on shows such as The Colbert Report and even commer- cials for the likes of K-Mart and Dunkin’ Donuts.
But in 2009, she got cast as Erin, the replacement secretary on the U.S. version of The Office, “and that was my big break. I was so innocent and guileless that I would say things on the lunch line to the writers and wonder if they would wind up in the show.”
She made such a strong impression that the powers that be at NBC asked Tina Fey and Robert Carlock (the writing muscle behind the hit series 30 Rock) if they would come up with a vehicle for Kemper.
“So I went out for drinks with Robert and Tina as a kind of general ‘get to know you’ kind of thing and then a few months later we met again and they said, ‘We have an idea for a show for you.’ ”
They outlined the plot of Unbreak- able Kimmy Schmidt to Kemper and, in her own words, “when they first pitched it to me, I thought they were joking.”
“I mean, I thought they’re not actually going to make a comedy about a woman who was kept underground for 15 years and then rescued by the FBI. They’re testing me to see how I’ll react to such a crazy idea.”
But they weren’t kidding and Kemper finally decided that “they’re geniuses, so I’ll do whatever they want me to.”
Despite the absurdity of the premise, Kemper insists that “I learned a lot playing Kimmy. There’s so much resilience and tenacity in the woman. She can say silly things and seem to be a dummy or a goof, but at the end of the day she has endured something that you and I can’t even begin to imagine living through.” When asked about Kimmy’s mantra, “You can stand anything for 10 seconds,” Kemper practically breaks into applause.
“That line is so profound. I find myself thinking of it all the time. Especially in my line of work. Careerwise, we all signed up for it. There’s a lot of rejection in acting and writing. But rejection doesn’t have to spell elimination. It’s just up to you how you deal with it.”
Besides her Just for Laughs gig, she’s also anticipating the second season of Kimmy Schmidt, which starts shooting next month.
“I think we’re going to meet Kimmy’s mom this year. That’s all I know and all I need to know for now. I want this show to run as long as possible. Really.”
And then she laughs again. Loudly. Her grandmother was right. It does sound like a cat dying.