In preparing to interview Allison Janney, it is not hard to work yourself into a bit of a tizzy. Almost every role Janney takes on is a woman of extreme authority and conviction, from her career-making turn as press secretary C.J. Cregg on The West Wing, where she kept both the media and the White House staff in line, to repressed housewife Margaret Scully in period drama Masters of Sex, whose desire for self-awareness overrides the strongest sense of decorum. Even in the Chuck Lorre-produced multi-cam sitcom Mom, where she played recovering addict Bonnie, Janney takes no prisoners. For each depiction she won an Emmy Award or two – or, as in the case of The West Wing, four.
This past year has been a banner one for strong-minded Janney characters. Her portrayal of President Grace Penn on The Diplomat – a calculating politician who, last we saw her, lifted a nuclear weapon from a Russian submarine – has earned her another Emmy nomination, which could result in the eighth Emmy of her career.
And that’s not all. There’s also her acclaimed role of bitter widow this year Diane Patterson in Jim Rash’s two-hander Miss You, Love You, where Patterson’s son declines to attend his stepfather’s funeral, sending his assistant played by Andrew Rannels instead. And her turn as 1960s Florida socialite Evelyn Rollins in Palm Royale, too.
While each character shows Janney’s exceptional range as an actress, these are mostly women you would rather observe from a safe distance than sit across the table from. But Allison Janney is not the characters she plays. “I’d rather hear someone else talk than me,” she says at the start of our conversation, cradling her leg as we chat over Zoom. “I get nervous even doing these interviews.”
In light of the command Janney takes of a room in The Diplomat, this comes as a surprise. “I think why I love to act is that I get to be those kinds of women that I’m not,” she says. “I’m shy. I don’t like talking in public. I get self-conscious. It’s bizarre, but when I get to play someone like Grace, I love knowing my lines backwards and forward so I can just step in and go. It’s thrilling for me. I have the conviction and it gives me some place to put it and bring it alive.”
Ever since she was singled out by Paul Newman and Joanne Woodward during her studies at Kenyon College, it has been fairly clear that Janney was meant to act. Not that a delayed professional start didn’t give her doubts. “I don’t think I would have made it if I didn’t have their help and support,” she says. “Because, as you know, I didn’t get anything for so long. I was just in New York scooping ice cream and working odd jobs and thinking maybe this isn’t going to work out.” But, like most things in Janney’s career, things fall into place at just the right time. Her West Wing role of C.J. Cregg, based on Clinton’s similar-in-age press secretary Dee Dee Myers, arrived on the cusp of Janney’s 40th birthday. And then came her presidential role in The Diplomat. “It definitely came at the right time, 100%” she says. “I felt, after my years on West Wing, I know what that world of politics is, and this is a whole other level of that game. I’m ready to take her on.”
We had this history that made it very comfortable to have him be my husband – Grace’s husband. It was enormously fun to watch Brad [Whitford] play this guy who’s completely jealous and feels ineffectual and can’t do anything right. And Grace being incredibly frustrated with him.
Reuniting with West Wing writer Debora Cahn also played a part in Janney’s ready acceptance of the role. “She was one of our favorite writers on The West Wing,” says Janney. “The way she writes dialogue is so delicious. She knows how to trust actors, which means that you have to have actors who know what’s going on underneath and how to play [that].” To that end, one of Janney’s favorite scenes in the third season of The Diplomat is actually one that has no words at all. “She wrote Brad [Whitford] and I a scene that had no dialogue,” says Janney. “We got to show this couple who don’t have to say anything, and you know exactly what’s going on with them. They’re mad at each other. They’re irritated. You watch them go through their nighttime ablutions and then they get in bed and they end up hugging each other, which said so much about their relationship.”
Part of the Penns’ discernable undercurrent, of course, comes from the familiarity between Janney and Whitford, with whom Janney has stayed close since they roamed the corridors of Aaron Sorkin’s White House. “The best thing about it is that we have a built-in marriage already, just because of how many years we spent together,” she says.
“We had this history that made it very comfortable to have him be my husband – Grace’s husband. It was enormously fun to watch Brad play this guy who’s completely jealous and feels ineffectual and can’t do anything right. And Grace being incredibly frustrated with him.”
It’s a dynamic that Janney says carries into the fourth season, in which she and Whitford have been elevated to series regulars. Working alongside Keri Russell as Kate Wyler and Rufus Sewell as Hal Wyler, the two couples go deeper into a game of high-stakes chess. “I certainly hope they survive this new structure in their marriage,” Janney says, dismissing, however, any kind of notion that Grace and Vice President Wyler might be having an extramarital affair. “No, I think it’s just Todd not being able to handle his new position in her life – a demotion, or whatever you want to call it,” says Janney. “He doesn’t have the same role anymore and Hal has more of a role in Grace’s life. He’s acting childish.”
It is hard not to draw parallels between these couples where, depending on the season, formerly powerful-in-their-own-right partners suddenly struggle to be heard. Does Janney think Grace and Todd are Kate and Hal’s Ghost of Christmas Future? “Yeah. I can see why you’d say that,” she says. “You know how sometimes you don’t like someone and you realize it’s because you see something in them that you recognize in yourself? Kate may have been Grace at one point in her life. And they have a real love-hate relationship. Grace really doesn’t want to like Kate – really can’t stand her – but knows how incredibly useful she is to her, so she has to keep her around.”
Throughout production, Janney was traveling back and forth between the sets of The Diplomat and Palm Royale. “I literally was flying twice a week,” she says. “Thank god the characters were so completely different from each other.” Yet presented with the continued opportunity to be part of Kristen Wiig’s playground of A-list actors, there really was no saying no. “Carol Burnett being involved, she’s literally my idol,” says Janney. “The reason I wanted to be an actress is watching her, growing up.”
Having recently wrapped the fourth season of The Diplomat, Janney next heads to Broadway in Other Desert Cities, alongside Ed Harris and Julia Louis Dreyfus, who is making her Broadway debut in the play. Despite two Tony nominations for her previous turns on the Great White Way, Janney is feeling the nerves. “It scares the shit out of me going back to Broadway,” she admits. “That’s live performance. Last time I did it was seven years ago. So yeah, there’s always nerves and you just accept it, bring it in with you and deal with it.”
As we discuss the different things Janney does to literally shake out her nerves, I try to imagine Grace Penn, leader of the free world, doing warbling vocal exercises on a vibrating plate. Once again, Janney reminds me she is not the characters that she portrays. “I would love just once to have no nerves at all and just go out and do it,” she says. “I feel like I’ve earned the right to not have that feeling, but it’s still there. It’s like, ‘Geez, it’s supposed to get easier.’ But you just have to deal with it.”
