The Point Radio: Jessica St Clair and Lennon Parham – Brainy Beauty Besties

Beautiful, brilliant besties, Jessica St. Clair and Lennon Parham, are headed to The USA Network for a new series, PLAYING HOUISE (premiering tomorrow on USA). They talk about writing comedy, making the new show stand out and the strength of their longtime friendship. Plus Warner Brothers finally publicly says “There will be a JLA movie!”

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Transcript

The Point Radio It's my bra, bright beauties, big talent and above all that, they're besties. Jessica St. Clair and Lennon Parham are along to talk about the strength of their friendship and how it led them to another new series on USA. Plus this time, it just might be real.

The Justice League movie gets a green light from Warner Brothers. Let's get to The Point. This is The Point. The Point Radio. Get The Point Radio.

They're gorgeous. They're hilarious. They're great. They're gorgeous. They're hilarious.

They're very talented and above all that, they're best friends. Jessica St. Clair and Lennon Parham are now taking the friendship to a new level on a new series for USA called Playing House. I asked the ladies how it all began. Sure, Lennon and I are our real life best friends and we don't just play them on TV.

We met about 12 years ago at the upright Citizens Brigade Theatre, which is an improv comedy theater that Annie Poehler and Matthew Alts and Robert Besser founded in New York. Basically, at that time, there were very few women who were performing and Lennon and I were the only two women in sweater sets who were performing in this underground basement dungeon basically saying horrible, horrible things on stage.

It was comedy. Yeah. When our eyes locked across a crowded room, I said, I have to have her. And then I pursued her, friendship pursued her for a couple of years and then now she's stuck with me for the rest of her life.

And the premise of the new show? It's basically about two childhood best friends, one who has left town and now works as a high powered business executive in Shanghai who comes home for her friend's baby shower and that friend has stayed in the town. And when she comes back, she finds out that her friend's marriage is falling apart during

the baby shower. Actually, we find out that my character's husband is cheating on me with a muscular German woman. And so she decides to, Emma's character decides to move back from Shanghai and help her friend raise the baby.

So to establish these characters as the same type of friends that Lennon and Jessica are, how will the story be told? Will there be flashbacks? You know, there aren't any flashbacks. It all happens in real time.

But because these two have been friends for so long, they have almost their own special language they speak. So hopefully when you watch it, you'll definitely feel the history. Right. And you'll recognize you and your best friend in it.

And we are dealing with stuff from the past. We have like a reunion of my character's drum line in one episode. From her marching band. Yeah, we're on a kind of a kiss that I didn't get in high school. We break into a community center pool when Lennon's character is eight and three-quarters

months pregnant and then we get arrested. So we do a lot of things that we shouldn't be doing at our age. But he and Michael Key from Key and Comedy Central's Key and Peele, he plays my love interest and he's basically my high school boyfriend who proposed to me and I fled town and now we're sort of backing each other's lives.

So it's kind of what happens when you go back to your hometown. You kind of have to face a lot of people that you didn't think you'd see again for better or for worse. A little over a year ago, Jessica and Lennon also had a series they created on NBC. And I asked them what they took from that experience and brought to this one.

Well, one thing we did differently is we decided to write all of our guest stars with the amazing comedians that are our best friends in mind. So you'll recognize every week somebody from the alternative comedy world like Bobby Moynihan from F&L, he did Michael Key from Key and Peele, Zach Woods from The Office and now Silicon Valley plays our brother Jason Mandukas from The League.

All these guys we wrote with their parts in mind so we didn't have to cast anybody. And when these guys came on the set, they just improvised all this funny material so we didn't have to do as much work because they gave us like a 15 alternate ending. So those kind of names involved, is there a lot of improv in playing house? Well, we actually, the way we write is to first improvise so we act out all the scenes in our writer's room,

record it, transcribe it and then take from that to build the first draft of the script. So already on page it's going to feel more like the way people talk over each other. Very set up and punch lines. And then once we get on set, because we've surrounded ourselves with all these phenomenal improvisers, we do quite a bit of improvising over the script.

Right, so the plot never changes but the specifics of the jokes we let our friends kind of play. Put it in their own words or come up with a better alternative ending. And a lot of times in the edit room, our favorite jokes are the ones that were improvised that day. So were they both always funny? You know, Lenny was like the biggest weirdo on the planet Earth when she was a child

because she was an only child. No one told her to hide her true self. I basically said yes, I was funny and it was wonderful. Lenny, every picture of Lenny from her childhood, she had like an ET mask on and roller skates. And I'm like, what were you doing?

I was being myself. Yeah, and I definitely kept my weird self a little bit more subdued. Jessica was making a climb for popularity so she had to lose all of her weird fans. Yeah, but in college I reemerged as the secret freak that I am. She let it all out.

Yeah, and then once I got to New York, that's it. Then I spent all of my time with comedians and so… And as for comedy inspirations… I was obsessed with old school SNL, Gilda Radner, Jane Curtin, and Tracy Allman. You were a cone head for a couple of Halloween.

Well, I mean, I was ET when I was a cone head. ET, you weren't since I was a lean. ET you would just put on. No, I was for Halloween. Right, but have you dressed up like this for no reason?

Why, oh no, there's so many photos of you in that mask. It's upsetting. Standing next to a pumpkin that my dad carved to match his ET phase. For Halloween. And then Jessica's inspirations comedy. Yeah, I was obsessed with Gilda Radner.

There was a tape at the video store of her show she did live at The Met. And I literally watched it so many times it broke and then my dad had to pay for it. Which was like $7.95. Yeah, exactly. I loved Carol Burnett, Lucy and Ethel.

But I would say my favorite show was Laverne and Shirley. And I used to watch them obsessively. And Lennon and I, before we started writing this show, we went and we watched all the old school Laverne and Shirley episodes, which really hold up. I encourage everyone to YouTube it. It's all on YouTube.

And it is hilarious. So who's Laverne and who's Shirley? Oh, I'm Shirley, 1000% and one of the 100% of Laverne, minus the sweater, the appliquéd sweater. You have to Google Betty, please. The scene where they take over the diner. It is outrageous.

That's our inspiration for the show, basically. Every relationship in reality has its ups and downs. So I asked Jessica and Lennon what was the nicest thing or the meanest thing they'd ever done to each other. They chose the nice road. Well, it has to be the nicest.

But when I was almost 10 months pregnant, my husband went out of town and I said to Lennon, listen, I may go into labor tonight. And if you are the one who's on the receiving end of that business, I will be 1000% happy because you're going to know exactly what I need. So can you just keep your phone on? And she not only kept her phone on, she woke herself up every 15 minutes to make sure the phone was still on. I was up every 15 minutes anyway because I had a view for it.

But I was also going to say when Jessica was like nine and a half months pregnant for her birthday, which she had totally forgotten about, I got her a Channing Tatum lookalike, or he was supposed to be a Channing Tatum lookalike. He really was a slight Mexican man. And he was a stripper. And he danced to Genuine Pony.

He gave me a lap dance when I was nine and a half months pregnant. And she almost went into labor, but I've never seen a bigger smile on her face. I don't wish this on my worst enemy. I was covered in sesame oil and the smell of it is still lingering in my hair. And I have a video to prove it and her happiness.

See Jessica St. Clair and Lennon Parham in Playing House, new episodes every Tuesday on USA. And of course you can always see a little more at usanetwork.com. The flight radio. We'll start off the week with the latest in pop culture. Warner Brothers has confirmed there will be a Justice League movie,

spinning out of course of Batman versus Superman and the three actors there playing Superman, Batman and Wonder Woman. Plus the recently announced Cyborg will more than likely move over to this film. That leaves casting for Flash, Green Lantern and Aquaman yet to come. The film right now will have Zack Snyder as director. No script or writer has been named.

And for the moment, the tentative date would be sometime around 2018 to be in theaters. Dark Horse is retooling their signature title. Dark Horse presents to be a little smaller, a little cheaper and monthly as well. But with some big names attached at C2E2, they announced their upcoming projects in the book from Jerry Ordway and Alex to Campy, Jimmy Palmiati, Justin Gray and Andy Kuhn.

And of course a relaunch of Big Guy and Rusty the Boy Robot by Frank Miller and Jeff Darrow, as well as some new Kabuki from David Mack. The current Dark Horse presents ends in May with number 36 and the title to be relaunched in the new format in July. The first issue of the new Dynamite run of Flash Gordon's whole completely out and a second printing is also pretty much gone according to the publisher. Looks like the same will be true for the second issue, which is due in a few weeks.

The print run of about 9000 pretty much has been spoken for and they're planning to announce a second printing of that issue sometime over the next couple of weeks. Fox is developing Nazareth, which is a drama that will follow the early, less known formative years of Jesus. Stunned by David Francione from Gladiator, he's writing the project. And in addition to this, of course, other religious projects are being announced from CBS, WGN America, OWN and CNN, all more than likely inspired by the success of the Bible on the History Channel.

In an effort to put out a fire that continues to rage with fans of How I Met Your Mother, they're now telling us there'll be some extra things on the complete DVD set to be released later this year, including a funeral scene for the mother that, of course, was not included in the finale shown on CBS. It's reported that people involved with the series feel that maybe this will help fans who were so upset about the way things went to reach some sort of closure about the character and feel a little bit better about how the series ended.

Again, that complete DVD set is said to be released later this year. Seth Meyers is headed to the Oscars and this time as a host. Meyers from Late Night will be the host of the 66th annual Emmy Awards, following, of course, David Letterman, Conan O'Brien and Jimmy Fallon, who've done it in the past. The Emmy Awards will air later this year on NBC.

The final season of The Killing will premiere on Netflix on the 1st of August. Of course, AMC dropped the series after three different seasons and Netflix picked it up. The new season will consist of about six episodes and the previous three seasons are all available for binge viewing right now on Netflix. Back in February, the WWE showcased their developmental talent in a special called the NXT Arrival, and it did pretty well. It came up number three in social mentions for prime time programs, even though it was only on the WWE Network, which was kind of new at that time.

Now there'll be a new live two hour NXT takeover showcasing what they call the best and the brightest from their performance center. It'll air on the WWE Network coming up on Thursday, May 29th at 8 p.m. As we count down to free comic book day, there's a few quick things to grab as you head in the comic stores this week. Starting from D.C., there are annuals for both Bad Girl and for Bad Woman. The first one for Bad Woman, second annual for Bad Girl and the third Flash annual as well this week.

Plus, the end of Forever Evil gives us a little something old school forever evil aftermath Batman versus Bane. The title pretty much says it all. IDW has a really cool item, especially if you know somebody who's into Alice in Wonderland. It's a collection of Alice's appearance in comics for the past four or five decades. Done by some incredible people that include Walt Kelly, Alex Toth, Dan DiCarlo, Harvey Kurtzman and many, many more.

There are stories from the 40s and the 50s, stuff with Santa Claus, flying saucers and a lot more. It's another beautiful hardcover from the folks at IDW done by our buddy Craig Gill. So you know it's going to be sweet. New York Times bestselling author Jonathan Marbury also comes to comics and IDW with a new series this week that debuts called The V Wars. Art on there is by Alan Robinson.

And Image has pulled up the bus for a great tour of some of their best titles. There's a whole run of Image first this week, all priced at one dollar, including first issues of Alex and Ada, Black Science, Deadly Class, East of West, Lazarus, Manifest Destiny, Pretty Deadly, Red Queens, Sex Criminals, Velvet and Zero. And again, all for just a buck, whatever your choice is. Also playing catch up from Image, Black Science and number four gets a second printing this week as well. And Starlight number one gets one too from Image.

Over at Marvel, Ms. Marvel number one gets a third printing and a third printing variant too if you can grab that. But the biggest book of the week is obviously Amazing Spider-Man number one, already the best selling book of the past few weeks. And you probably should grab that while you can. That's new this week from Marvel. Again, free comic book day just a week away.

Good time to talk to your retailer to find out what their plans are. And check out a list of course on the line to find out exactly the titles you want to be looking for. You can do that a couple of different places as you search for your favorite comic stores. Among those places, of course, ComicMix.com, the website findacomicshop.com. Or you can check in with the Comic Book Locator Service at 1-888-COMICBOOK.

Good point. So at that time again, a lot of your favorite shows are headed for big season finales. And we look at a few of them to let you know what's going on. In the days to come, we'll examine how this season of Bates Motel and the Blacklist are coming to an end as we talk to the stars of those series. Follow all that and more and get the point radio.com.

Of course, you can listen free 24-7. And this podcast as well is also free on great websites like ComicMix.com and MichaelDavisWorld.com. You can get us in the iTunes podcast directory or listen to the point 24-7 with an app called iNet Radio. Get it in the app store for Apple or Android or at iNetRadio.com. On social media, we are The Point Radio.

We'll talk to you in a few days. Thank you.