Jane Lynch

She spent 15 years in Chicago honing her comedy and improv skills with Steppenwolf Theatre and Second City, and started getting work in supporting roles and commercials. She played a doctor in The Fugitive, had bit parts in Party of Five, Married with Children and Dawson’s Creek. In 2000, she got her first big break playing a lesbian alpha-dog trainer in Christopher Guest’s ensemble improv mockumentary Best in Show. She kept racking up work, especially comedy work: Weeds, Family Guy, Arrested Development. Another break came in the role of Smart Tech manager Paula in 2005’s The 40-Year-Old Virgin. In 2009 came Glee, and Sue Sylvester, and an Emmy, a Golden Globe and a memoir.

Now Jane Lynch comes fresh off a third Emmy win for hosting the playful hit NBC celebrity gameshow Hollywood Game Night. She’s got a concurrent role starring in CBS’s Angel from Hell, which casts her as a kooky guardian angel to a beleaguered young woman doctor – like a “realer” version of CBS’s former hit drama Touched by an Angel. She comes to Carmel this Saturday with a cabaret show called See Jane Sing!, backed up with a five-piece band and her good friends Kate Flannery (Meredith from The Office) and Tim Davis (music arranger on Glee), and inspired by her recent turn as Miss Hannigan in Annieon Broadway.

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Weekly: Where are you now?

Jane Lynch: Driving down Fairfax Avenue, on my way to hell – Angel from Hell. It airs Nov. 8 on CBS. Today we’re shooting the first episode.

What’s this year been like?

Unlike any other in my life. With the cabaret show, Tim and Kate and I have been traveling the country, doing this show we love so much. We keep adding material.

Will you do Nicki Minaj’s “Anaconda”?

Yes. We’ll do that until we’re in retirement homes.

You’re deaf in one ear. How has that affected your performance?

I was born this way, or it was the result of a high fever. I don’t know it any other way. The good ear is, my doctor said, almost bionic. I hear harmonies easily.

You’re a master of facial expressions. Do you practice in the mirror?

If I thought about it too much, I wouldn’t be able to do it. But sometimes I look in the mirror and check myself out doing something and make myself laugh.

How is making a Christopher Guest movie different from other movies?

He supports you so well. He gives you some narrow sketch, one or two hilarious tidbits, then you go off and do your character work. The script has no dialogue. You’re improvising. The way to be free, to throw everything out, is to prepare within an inch of your life. We’re about to start a movie now about team mascots.

You’ve appeared in many TV shows. Have there been any really special ones that deserved more attention?

Lovespring International, in 2005, on Lifetime – a wacky comedy that did not belong on that channel about an old-time dating agency, like It’s Just Lunch. It was about [a company] circling the drain because of online dating, and a ridiculous group of dating counselors, people who have no business fixing up other people.

Were you always out as a lesbian in your performing career?

I was never in the closet. It wasn’t like, “Hello, I’m Jane, I’m gay.” I’ve been in theater most of my life, I started working in TV 15 years ago: They’re teeming with gay people.

Screenwriter and playwright Dustin Lance Black studied and worked in theater at a community college in Salinas, at The Western Stage. What was it like to act in his play 8?

I’m grateful for him writing that dramatization of that ridiculous trial. How woefully unprepared and weak the other side was – it turned out to be a comedy. It was wonderful to do with George Clooney, Brad Pitt, Martin Sheen, John C. Reilly.

What’s the short version of your commencement speech at Smith College?

The theme was “Yes, and… ” It’s online. It’s the first rule of improv: Put fear, risk, failure to the side. You always have to say yes. That’s a great way to live.