My worst moment: Gillian Jacobs and stairs are not a good combo
“Community” was the TV show that made Gillian Jacobs famous and a number of projects followed, including the Netflix series “Love.” Next she stars in the forthcoming adaptation of R.L. Stine’s “Fear Street” book series. But first, you can see her in the indie comedy “I Used to Go Here” (at the Music Box and also rentable via streaming) from Chicago writer-director Kris Rey.
“I think the movie ties into the theme of this column, because this character is sort of going through her worst moment,” said Jacobs. She plays a 30-something debut novelist whose book has just tanked on a heels of some personal disappointments. “She’s really at a crossroads in her life and she gets this invitation to go back to her alma mater to give a talk. And when she’s there, everyone is treating her like she’s a big deal and it’s very affirming and nice and good for the ego. But it’s also a moment where she has a choice to make: Is she going to face some things in her life, or is she going to regress and go back to the safety of this college experience where she feels like a very big shot?”
When asked to share a worst moment from her own career, Jacobs replied: “I actually thought of two instances which are kind of mirror images of each other. One is about me falling up a flight of stairs and one is about me falling down a flight of stairs, and they happened almost exactly 10 years apart.”
My worst moment ...
“The first one occurred at the Berlin International Film Festival. This was around 2008. I was in this movie called ‘Gardens of the Night’ and it was premiering in competition at the festival, which was a huge deal for me. I had never been in a movie that had been released in theaters, let alone one that got into such a prestigious film festival and I was one of the stars.
“So we went to Berlin and we had the red carpet premiere and gala screening. This was before I had a stylist, so I dressed myself and convinced my family to buy me this beautiful Marc Jacobs dress that was, like, more than my rent (laughs), so somehow I talked my family into that. So I’m feeling good about myself. And at the end of the screening, the director invites the cast up onto the stage.
“And as I’m walking up the stairs of this huge theater, I trip and fall down on my hands and knees. And at the same time my shoe falls off down the stairs, and it just keeps falling, to the point where I had to ask one of the other actors to hand it to me.
“So that was a real puncture to the ego and it immediately grounded me back to who I am as a person and I was just thinking: This is typical of me. Of course I couldn’t pull off this persona of the sophisticated young ingénue with her movie premiering at a festival.
“The thing that worked to my advantage was that nobody knew who I was (laughs) so it wasn’t like when Jennifer Lawrence fell up the stairs at the Oscars, you know? So even though it happened in public, it wasn’t a news story because I wasn’t a well-known actor. But it was humiliating for me.
“Thankfully I didn’t hurt myself. But my other story, the bookend to this, I did hurt myself (laughs).
“It was 10 years later and I was doing play at the Public Theater in New York called ‘Kings.’ It was January and terrible weather, so everyone was tracking in snow and it melted into to water on the staircase. It was the first week of rehearsal and that’s when you’re still getting to know everyone, the director and the writer and the cast, so we decided to all go get lunch together.
“And I was walking down the stairs of this rehearsal studio and I completely wiped out and fell down this flight of stairs and landed somehow with my left arm behind my head. You know those moments when you fall and you’re like, this hurts but I’m not really hurt? This wasn’t that. This was was like: No, I did something here.
“So that was my introduction to everyone: Falling down a flight of stairs. They were all navigating this staircase quite easily by the way. I tried to brush it off and went to lunch with everyone. My side was hurting, my shoulder was hurting, my everything was hurting. It was just so embarrassing but I was like, ‘I’m fine, I’m fine.’
“But of course afterwards I had these big bruises and stiffness in my arm and my shoulder was sore. I kept thinking it would go away.
“And finally after a few days, the stage manager pulled me aside and was like, ‘You need to go to a doctor.’ She could tell by my physicality that something was wrong. So I had to go to an osteopath and they were like, ‘Oh, this is very rare in premenopausal women.’ And I was like, ‘This is not a distinction I would like!’ So I had to go to physical therapy to try to get some mobility back in my shoulder. And I had to fill out this whole accident report (for the theater) saying I fell down this flight of stairs and it asks why it happened and I didn’t want to put ‘clumsiness’ so I think I wrote ‘water on stairs’?
"Every time I feel like I'm trying to make a good impression and act cool, something like this happens and I trip and fall."
Did the injury affect her performance?
“Maybe it gave me a place to focus my nerves, because I hadn’t done a play in 10 years and had gotten to a certain point in rehearsal — and I think most actors will tell you this — where you’re thinking, why did I agree to do this? There’s the terror of having to perform in front of a live audience. And I wasn’t even sure if I could memorize an entire play anymore because I was so used to memorizing things in little chunks for film and TV. So maybe having this external thing gave me a place to put my worry.
"Thankfully it wasn't a physical role. It was a lot of walking and talking. Actually, the part where it impeded me the most was, you have a very limited amount of time to change from one costume to the next and that's where I felt it, trying to get costumes on and off quickly.
“Oh, you’re reminding me of another one! I also set my hair on fire when I was in Berlin, the night before the premiere (of ‘Gardens of the Night').
"Everyone involved with the film went out to dinner and the restaurant had these candles but they were very tall candlesticks, as opposed to little votive candles that you usually have at a restaurant. And as I sat down, my hair swung in front of my face across the candle and one side of my hair went up in flames.
"So the people there at the dinner had to put my hair out. I think they maybe hit my head with a napkin. It went out pretty quickly. But that was another thing of like: Oh great, I'm about to do my first round of international press and I've just set one half of my head on fire."
The pressure for actors to always seem put together in public has to be immense.
“I have pretty much excused myself from the expectation of dazzling people, that’s not one that I think about too often (laughs). But there’s this expectation, certainly when you’re auditioning as well, that you’re able to do your hair and makeup in a way that’s expert and you look terrific. I don’t really wear makeup in my day-to-day life so I’m not really experienced at putting it on, and I don’t really do my hair, so I always feel like I don’t know what I’m doing.
“So often (at premieres and other events) it is a performance because you’re wearing an outfit that is uncomfortable and I am not very good at walking in high heels, as evidenced by my falling up those stairs. Your feet normally are killing you the entire night. There’s usually a quiet rumbling, actor to actor, at a party of, ‘My feet are killing me,’ but you have to smile like everything is fine.”
The takeaway ...
“Well, I now hold on to railings going up and down stairs. I’m much more cautious with stairs.
“I feel like any time that I think I’m cool and sophisticated, life reminds me that I’m not. It’s happened at different points in my life and my career and I’m not fooling anyone (laughs).
“The thing I’ve also tried to learn is the ability to laugh at myself, so when something like that happens — I don’t remember crying all night in Berlin, I think I just rolled with it like: Well, that’s just another thing that happened (laughs).
"And you know what, sometimes these things also make great stories to tell people like you."
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