by Jane Lynch
I was all in now, committed to her and my new family, excited to meet and embrace her older daughter, thrilled to officially become Haden’s parent. But I balked at the word “marriage.” Domestic partnership in California is almost as strong as marriage, so why not just go that route? But Lara wanted to get “married” and nothing less; we had a child, and her older daughter would most likely be a part of our life, too. Lara wanted commitment, and she saw that as being contained in the word “marriage.”
I looked at my resistance to the word and discovered a latent childhood belief that “marriage” was for straight people, and that gays were not entitled to it. Maybe it was because she is younger than I am, or maybe it was her education, but Lara felt that marriage was a perfectly natural word to use. I loved her sense of entitlement, and I used her conviction to help me vanquish my old belief, and I came to agree that there was no reason we shouldn’t be married.
My next level of resistance was my fear of telling my mother. She had completely embraced both my sexual orientation and me, but I hadn’t been in many relationships, let alone one that would lead to marriage, so this would be brand-new territory for my mom. I was pretty sure that she had no idea gay couples could get married in some states, and indeed, when I called her to tell her Lara and I were getting married, she paused for a moment and then asked in pure bewilderment, “How?”
But Mom survived the news, so I was able to move on to the great fun of making marriage plans with the woman I loved. First off, we had to pick a state where gay marriage was legal. Massachusetts won because Lara had gone to Smith College and she loved Northampton. We also decided it would be a very small wedding, with four friends each, and that we would save the family celebrations for parties we would have in each of our hometowns. Our families were already planning on meeting up in New York while I was doing the play, so we quickly scheduled an engagement brunch at a restaurant in the Village.
Her educated and fabulously Southern family mixed beautifully with my funny and sweet Chicago-bred Irish Catholic family. Everyone was just tickled that Lara and I had found each other, and even more tickled that we were getting married. Lara’s dad was an odd breed of Southern liberal, committed to justice for all and firmly in support of gay marriage. Her mom loved nothing more than a good wedding party. My extended family has always been very kid-focused, and they were delighted that I would be having the chance to be a parent. Haden was just a bit younger than my brother Bob’s son Erik, who was thrilled to have a new cousin his age. Julie’s four kids were now terrific and witty young adults who claimed Haden as their own. Lara’s brother was there as well, with his three-year-old son, Alabama, and his pregnant wife, Pam. Pam’s sister Elizabeth brought her newborn daughter, Ophelia, who was passed around and made everyone smile with her cooing. The brunch was filled with a sense of joyous beginnings and the warmth of family.
Lucky for us, Lara’s sister-in-law is also an amazing jeweler. During our stay in New York, we went to the shop she shares with Elizabeth in Soho, called Doyle and Doyle. She helped us select the elegant platinum bands we gave each other when we proposed to each other properly. Lara gave me mine when we were in Alabama, walking by the tree-lined lake of Indian Springs School, her high school campus. I gave her hers when we traveled to Chicago. I took her to Table 52, my favorite romantic restaurant, and proposed. I was so pleased that I already knew the answer. We were getting married.
On May 31, exactly one year to the day after we had met, we got married.
Lara’s four friends and my four friends, and a few of their guests, gathered on the patio of a beautiful old courthouse building turned restaurant called the Blue Heron, in Sunderland, Massachusetts. The restaurant was closed for the day to have our simple, but beautiful, wedding. To preserve the intimacy of the event, most of our guests did double duty. Laura Coyle sang, and began the ceremony with a gorgeous rendition of the k.d. lang song “Beautifully Combined.” Jeannie performed the ceremony, having been ordained online by the Universal Life Church (just click on Ordain Me Now!). She officiated the ceremony with reverence, joy, and good humor, mixing in bits of different traditions that signified the commitment we were making. Jeannie’s husband, David, a drummer, put together a four-piece ensemble of wonderful jazz musicians who played through the night. Guy, the director I’d grown to love on Lovespring International, was our official wedding photographer. Lara’s best friend, Trish, read a poem. Lara’s oldest friends, Lisa and Heather, were in attendance, too, and supplied the tears of joy. Her brother, Joe, and his wife, Pam, brought their son and new baby girl. I said my vows to Lara, and Lara said her vows to me. Then, I said my vows to Haden, promising to cherish her as my daughter for the rest of our lives. By the power vested in Jeannie, we were now a family. Right on cue, Laura began to sing her surprise gift to us, a very meaningful, clown-free, and lispless but still joyful version of “At Last.” Then we all sat down together to a delicious meal at a huge long table and danced into the night.
The wedding party.
Photo courtesy of Guy Shalem
My family: Lara, Haden, and Jane.
Photo courtesy of Guy Shalem
Chapter 13
Feast
Do you know that feeling, when you finally arrive somewhere after a long trip, of being able to relax and breathe? Like you are free to focus on where you are rather than on how to get where you want to be? This is how I feel much of the time these days. Now, I am not presuming to say that I am done growing as a person, just that the things I have been pursuing for so long are now mine. And amazingly enough, they all fell into place at pretty much the same time.
This doesn’t mean that I’m not still constantly surprised by the delicious treats life sends my way. Indeed, these happy accidents seem to be coming at a faster clip than ever now. This is especially true of the parade of good fortune I have had while working on Glee.
When I returned to work in LA after my off-Broadway stint, an engaged lady, after those first twelve episodes aired, the show had exploded in popularity, and everyone was soaking it in. There was no time for me to bask, though, because I learned almost immediately that I was due for my first musical number of the show, and that it would be nothing less than a remake of the video for Madonna’s hit song “Vogue.”
This was big. Madonna had provided the soundtrack for the 1990s, and we were going to devote an entire episode to her music. This song in particular had been an overwhelming hit in the clubs, renewing and expanding a dance craze called “Voguing.” I mostly kept to my bar stool in those days, but I remember the kids on the dance floor framing their faces with their hands as they contorted themselves into various model-like poses. The original video, directed by David Fincher, is a strikingly gorgeous tribute to the Golden Age of Hollywood. We were going to reshoot the video, basically frame by frame, with Sue Sylvester as Madonna.
The premise would be that Kurt, the gay fashionista played by Chris Colfer, and Mercedes, the diva played by Amber Riley, decide that Sue needs a makeover, so they kindly offer their skills to help Sue explore a variety of possible looks. In a moment of compromised confidence, Sue accepts, resulting in the “Vogue” video remake. (She ultimately comes to her senses, after poking a student’s eye out with one of her Gaultier-inspired black conical boobs, and returns to wearing nothing but tracksuits.)
Just before the Christmas break, I had my first rehearsal with our awesome and completely overworked choreographer Zach Woodlee and his kick-ass assistant Brooke Lipton. Although we wouldn’t be shooting the video until late January, they wanted to help me get a leg up (if you will) on the dancing. This was wise of them. Let’s just say that I am not known for my abilities as a dancer; I only dance when forced to, and left to my own devices I do the same basic move repeatedly, one that looks entirely appropriate at a hoedown. Learning Madonna’s fancy moves was going to be challenging, to say the least. One particularly formidable sequence—a sort of running-in-place pantomime with very precise, almost militar
y arm gestures—loomed with the potential to be my own personal Waterloo. I did not take naturally to this dance, and the first rehearsal left me in a bit of a panic.
When we broke for the holidays, I went to Sarasota to be with the girls, and from there we embarked on a “family tour.” First we flew to Alabama to be with Lara’s family, then to Chicago to be with mine. Then we headed to LA to hang out a bit before Lara and Haden flew back to Sarasota.
I taught Haden the dance sequence one day during her school lunch break before we left for Alabama. Of course, the kid picked it up instantly, and after that was basically teaching me. We practiced together the entire Christmas tour, dancing in airports, on the plane (with just our feet, mind you), in my mom’s TV room, and anywhere else we happened to pause and catch each other’s eyes. And yes, we also performed the dance for the guests at our wedding (but that was long after we shot the video).
Even with all of this practicing under the excellent tutelage of Haden, I was still very iffy with the moves when I returned to Glee first thing in the New Year. Luckily, because this video was Ryan’s baby and he was absolutely obsessed with making it perfect, the shoot had been pushed to the middle of February. It had been in preproduction for months, much longer than any other Glee musical number before (and probably since).
I could do the basic motions with my arms and legs, but there was absolutely no rhythm involved and it certainly didn’t look anything like dancing. In my last rehearsal with Zach and Brooke a few days before we were to shoot the video, it seemed, embarrassingly, like I hadn’t practiced at all. They taught the steps to Chris and Amber just in case Ryan wanted to add their characters to that sequence (he didn’t), and to my chagrin, they picked it up right then and there, no problem. I was in a panic and feared embarrassing myself in front of everyone, and disappointing Ryan, as I struggled through the moves. Finally, the day before the shoot, miracle of miracles, somehow the dance seemed to make it out of my head and into my body. By god, I was dancing!
Our costume designer Lou Eyrich worked with Ali Rahimi, the fabulous designer who had gained my affection by making me look good a few weeks earlier for the Golden Globes, to reproduce Madonna’s wardrobe for me. We even found some of the prop pieces, columns and such, from the original video to use in our remake. Chris Baffa, our director of photography, meticulously replicated the lighting for the black-and-white shoot. Ryan had two monitors set up for himself side by side: one played the original “Vogue” video while the other showed him what we were shooting. I was also able to watch a sequence of the original before we shot our version of it. Stacey K. Black meticulously styled each wig, and Kelley Mitchell replicated the classical Hollywood movie makeup. All decked out in my Madonna “Vogue”-wear, with Chris, Amber, and four stunning male dancers in white tuxedos and slicked-back hair, we set about to re-create the “Vogue” video à la Glee.
The challenging dance sequence was near the top of the shot list, and I was grateful for that; I wanted to get it over with so I didn’t have to angst about it. But in the final rehearsal right before shooting, I fell behind immediately. (The beat was going so fast! I didn’t remember it being so fast!) I asked Brooke to count it out for me as we shot—one and two and three and four and—and because I had to be able to hear it over the playback, she had to pretty much scream it. The amazingly gorgeous and lithe black man I was dancing with (who of course had learned the steps only the day before) was all fluid arms and legs. But somehow, instead of being intimidated by his acuity, I allowed him to inspire me.
Me as Sue Sylvester as Madonna.
Photo courtesy of FOX
Fancying myself to be as good a dancer as he for that one brief shining moment, I rose to the occasion, and that first take rocked. It all fell apart for me on the second attempt, but that was okay; I only needed to do it right once. I’m so proud of that damn sequence.
The rest of the shoot was a breeze. Ryan added some vintage Sue moments along the way that deviated from Madonna’s video. He had Sue slap away the makeup artist in one shot and replaced “Bette Davis, we love you” with “Will Schuester, I hate you.” But the rest of the video was true to the original and, in my humble opinion, was flawless.
At the end of the long but wonderfully satisfying day, Ryan called out to me, “Jane, thank you for making my gay dream come true.”
Many dreams, gay and otherwise, had come true just before Christmas when Glee was nominated for several Golden Globe Awards. I was nominated for best supporting actress. I always thought I’d be on cloud nine if I got an acting award nomination, but instead, I was somewhat unnerved by it. I almost purposefully slept through the announcement, which is broadcast at 5 A.M. Pacific Time, as I didn’t want to want it too much. I woke up a couple hours later to seven messages, three of them from my agent Gabrielle.
Gabrielle is almost always calm. She delivers the news “you got the job” or “you didn’t get the job” in exactly the same tone of voice. To be my agent she has the perfect mix of temperament; she is tenacious, loyal, and so completely averse to drama that at times I’ve thought she didn’t care. But I know she does, as she studies the industry like no one I know, watching hours and hours of television and going to countless movie screenings to keep ahead. Gabrielle takes care of everything for me that a manager and publicist would and goes out of her way to accompany me to key events. The voice on my machine was like nothing I had heard from her before; it was urgent and giggly. By her third message she was just screaming “wake up, wake up, why are you sleeping” into the phone. When I called her back that morning, I felt her excitement so fully that I wanted to have it as well.
Nevertheless, I found myself struggling a bit with those age-old feelings of unworthiness. When I tried to muster a feeling of “deserving” the nomination, I could still feel the effect of my mother’s aversion to show-offs and braggarts. At forty-nine years old! Man, that stuff hangs on.
The morning of the nominations, we were all called to the set for a press event. When asked about my reaction to the nomination, I said all the right things, acting as if I was joyous and grateful. I didn’t let on that I feared looking conceited, or that being nominated would invite closer scrutiny that would lead to someone “finding out” that I really wasn’t all that talented. Eventually I was able to soothe myself; I was very proud of my work on Glee, and there was no reason for me to feel so self-conscious. So after the initial wash of feeling, I found my balance and arrived at a place of equanimity. Others seemed more excited than I was about it, but I felt good about my nomination. My central fear was that I would never find a dress to fit me.
Gabrielle arranged to have me meet with Ali Rahimi to talk about possibly making me a gown for the event. Wardrobe fittings have always been very stressful for me; I am not a “standard size that fits a standard dress” (from Funny Girl). I have a thirty-five-inch inseam, a small waist, and a wide-ish ass. Finding clothes to fit me can be a nightmare, and the generally frustrating process can really bring me down. Before arriving, I knew Ali was offering to make me a custom-fit dress, which should have allayed my concern. But I’d had clothes custom-made before, dropping thousands of dollars over the years, and have never been satisfied. So it was with dread, in anticipation of another shameful wardrobe failure, that I walked into Ali’s salon on La Brea Avenue in Hollywood. My eye went right to a gorgeous olive green taffeta gown on a dress form in the corner of the room.
“You want to try that one on?” Ali asked me, in his elegant Iranian-via-London accent, as he saw me eyeing the beautiful dress. It looked tiny on the mannequin. “It would never fit me, you see, I’m really hard to fit . . .”
“I actually made it this weekend for you. I’m pretty sure it will be just beautiful on you.” His voice was so reassuring I felt myself soften a little.
I sighed deeply as I took the dress into the fitting room. I slapped on some Spanx, put on the dress, and it zipped up effortlessly. I walked out stunned and delighted as I modeled it for Gabrielle i
n the sitting room. It looked gorgeous and it fit me beautifully. The hard part was over. I had a dress. Now I could relax and look forward to the event.
In January of 2010, at the Beverly Hills Hotel, while sitting with Lara at the Glee table in my olive green Ali Rahimi original gown, I heard Chloë Sevigny’s name called and not mine. And I was fine. I was actually a bit grateful not to have to wind my way around the tables to get to the stage and accept in front of a live audience. I received several you were robbed texts and appreciated the support. I didn’t need it, though, as I really was just pleased to be there in a gorgeous dress with Lara (who looked stunning in a deep red silk gown).
Lara and Jane at the Golden Globes, 2010.
Glee took the Golden Globe that night for best comedy or musical, and I was happy as a clam to rush the stage with my cast mates. As Ryan accepted the award for us all, I stood in the back, just one of the group. Just the way I liked it.
When I was nominated for a supporting actress Emmy the following August, I was able to accept the nomination without having it rock my sense of self. I was even excited, and looked forward to going to the show. Then I was invited to be in the opening number, and I was over-the-moon thrilled. Jimmy Fallon was hosting, and the show was to open with a Glee-inspired song-and-dance number. The assembled actors were such a great and talented bunch of people that I was tickled to be included. I adore Jimmy and have found him to be one of the most gracious and lovely people in show business. Of course, the number also featured several of the Glee kids, including Lea, Cory, Amber, and Chris. The group was also blessed with Tina Fey (one of my comedic idols and my favorite actress on TV) and Jon Hamm (not only drop-dead handsome but a real goof). We pre-shot a premise piece about getting a group together to win a singing contest to raise enough money for the Glee kids to go to the show. Then on the night of the Emmys, we would perform Bruce Springsteen’s “Born to Run” on stage live, with Jimmy as Bruce. The fun of filming and practicing for the show completely distracted me from any anticipatory anxiety.