Janet Varney, Emmy-Nominated actor, comedian, writer, producer, and podcaster. She has appeared in dozens of TV shows, including You’re the Worst, Take My Wife, Burning Love, Stan Against Evil, and Fortune Rookie, and the voice of Korra in The Legend of Korra. She is also the co-founder, creative director, and producer of SF Sketchfest: the San Francisco Comedy Festival (now in its 19th year!), and hosts The JV Club podcast.
The original post for this episode can be found here.
Sarah Enni Welcome to First Draft with me, Sarah Enni. This week I'm talking to Janet Varney, Emmy nominated actor, comedian, writer, and producer, who has appeared in dozens of TV shows including as the voice of Korra in The Legend of Korra. Janet is also the co-founder, creative director, and producer of SF Sketchfest: the San Francisco Comedy Festival now in its 19th year. She also is the host of The JV Club podcast. I loved what Janet had to say about being scared of what we're not good at, staying open as creative professionals, and the power in distracting yourself out of heartbreak. So please sit back, relax, and enjoy the conversation.
Sarah Enni All right. Hi Janet, how are you?
Janet Varney Oh hi Sarah! I'm well.
Sarah Enni It's good to see you.
Janet Varney It's wonderful to see you.
Sarah Enni We swapped houses for this one.
Janet Varney We did. We did. It was good.
Sarah Enni It's great. I'm so happy to have you here. And I'm gonna jump right into it.
Janet Varney Please.
Sarah Enni So not unlike your podcast, I go back to young lives of my interviewees. I'd love to know where you were born and raised.
Janet Varney Well, I'm a robot, so I was created about five years ago in the lab. I have wonderful memories implanted of being raised in Tucson, Arizona. Where I was the only child of a French professor, then just a high school teacher. And my dad, who was an English teacher.
Sarah Enni Cool. Okay, so you had an academic home.
Janet Varney And my dad was a professor too.
Sarah Enni So I want to know how reading and writing was a part of growing up for you, but there's performance for you as well. I'd love to know how all those things were at play in your young life.
Janet Varney Sure. I loved reading. Love, love, loved going to the library and getting books. And I just have such fond memories of being in Prescott, Arizona with my grandfather who would take me to the library, and just the smell. I mean, so many of us have that experience, and I can't believe I've become the person who's nostalgic for these things that aren't as experienced now, but that smell of paper and ink. Going to the library and being so excited.
Sarah Enni It's so real. I love the crinkle of the plastic covers.
Janet Varney Oh my god, the plastic covers. And I would just get the maximum every time like, "What is the maximum?" What are the thickest books that I could still read? You know? Just devouring books and loving vacations for that reason.
Sarah Enni Oh my god yeah.
Janet Varney Right? And it was so great. And really feeling like those worlds informed my imagination as a kid. I was an only child so I was alone a lot. And so when you have all that churning around, you get inspired easily, I think.
Sarah Enni Yeah. How was it expressing itself? Were you doing writing yourself?
Janet Varney Yeah, I mean [chuckles], my mom used to record tapes of me when I was in the bath, because it was when I was in the bath that I would tell these very complicated stories about things. And then when I was twelve, I was a total jerk, and I recorded over them. I mean, I don't remember doing that, but apparently I was like, "I don't care about kid me." Like, "I'm gonna record this song off the radio." It sucks!
Sarah Enni Tragic! Oh, that's so sad.
Janet Varney But yeah, I would definitely write stories and then I would definitely also just go outside and put on costumes and then just go find whatever quiet alley, I'm sure it wasn't very safe, where I would enact being Anne of Green Gables or whatever.
Sarah Enni By yourself or were you roping other kids into it?
Janet Varney I had a couple. I was a very one-on-one friend kid.
Sarah Enni Because you did go on to, I did a little bit of research, you did go on to go to college and study drama. When did you start taking that more seriously? What made you feel like that was a calling?
Janet Varney Well my parents, probably a little more than my mom, but my dad I think was like, "We should look at the magnet schools and see which one specializes in fine and performing arts." I'm assuming because I was a ham. I mean, when you're that little, like when you're four, it's not like I had an agent. There was no sense of like, "Oh, this is a real thing." I think just probably me being a hysterical child who made a big deal about things. He was like, "She has a flare for the dramatic."
Janet Varney And so they put me into this school that specialized in that. So I did do school plays right from first grade on, which I really did love to do. And I definitely have this Norman Rockwell like pouch for each year of your school years, I think it was called Those Wonderful School Days or something, that one of my parents got for me. And so there's little report cards and stuff tucked in there. And then you're supposed to fill the page out for every grade you're in. And so for most of the time I was doing that. It said like, "When I grow up I want to be..."
Janet Varney And I idolize my dad. So I was like, "I want to be a bike rider." Like that's a profession?
Sarah Enni Amazing.
Janet Varney And a teacher. And then an actress. And then it just sort of whittled down and became actress, which I'm very embarrassed by now because I don't know that, I mean maybe this is true, and you tell me what you think Sarah, but when you're that young do you really know? Do you really have a picture of what that is? Because I don't remember having a picture of that. It's not like I was like, "And then I visualize... I secreted on getting an Oscar." I didn't know what that meant. I think it was more just something I had a natural proclivity towards and an inclination to do and then I was decent at it. And then everyone else, when you're little, tells you that you're good at it.
Janet Varney And then you're like, "Yeah. Mm-hm. That's me."
Sarah Enni Right. Isn't it also funny...It feels to me like when you're young, and young up to high school or so, when you really start to get a grasp of how things work, there's like five or six jobs that are ever...
Janet Varney Ballerina. Astronaut.
Sarah Enni And they include actress.
Janet Varney Rock star.
Sarah Enni Which is insane. The odds of actually being able to professionally be an actress are so low. The fact that that's put on an even plane with lawyer, teacher, actor. That's just...odd.
Janet Varney I guess it's just cause you're watching TV. I mean you're just introduced to it so quickly and we, as a culture, are very focused on the esteem of that, you know?
Sarah Enni We valorize it. But then what's interesting is that even our concept of what doctors or lawyers do, mostly is like when they're on TV.
Janet Varney Yeah, totally. Totally. Yeah. You're probably not thinking about wanting to be a doctor when you're a kid at the doctor getting a shot or something. There's this sort of armchair psychology where it's like, "Well if your mom said this to you, you probably blah, blah, blah." But then there are other things like that. Even the positive things, that we don't want to derail positive memories, or people believing in you. But at the same time there are those things that I think when you're told repetitively like, "Oh, this is your dream! I heard you say that once. You must really want this." Or, "You really are gonna be great at this." You know? I think, and I've talked about this on my podcast before, but I think I got scared of anything I wasn't good at right away.
Sarah Enni Really. That's so interesting.
Janet Varney Which was plenty! There was tons of stuff I wasn't good at right away.
Sarah Enni Which is most of life right? Yeah!
Janet Varney When you say like, "Oh, I was just kind of good at it." You think about it and it's like, "There's so many things I might have been really interested in, if I had been encouraged differently." And that's not my parents' fault. It's nobody's fault. Well maybe... teachers. But I don't know. But you know what I mean? What if someone had said, "You are so good at science. You really have..."
Sarah Enni Like an aptitude, or...
Janet Varney You know, "Your imagination here with your problem solving." And dah, dah, dah. I don't know. I was clearly a sucker for encouragement, so I wonder what would have happened.
Sarah Enni We are really encouraged to shuffle towards the things that just naturally come up, and the stories that we then tell about ourselves. And that other people within your family, it builds an identity that then it can almost feel dangerous to be like, "I might want to try something different." When it even occurs to you.
Janet Varney Yeah, absolutely.
Sarah Enni So it's crazy, but obviously the actress thing worked out, so that seems to be fine.
Janet Varney So I'm the wrong person to be saying these things. No, but when I moved to San Francisco, I had left all of that behind and really was like, "No, I don't want to act. That's pointless. Why would I do that?" Like, "If anything, maybe for fun, but I don't want to try to make a living at it." And I hadn't finished college yet, so I was getting my residency in California to continue at SF State. And I was like, "I want to be an interior designer, and I want to be in a band." And I just wasn't identifying as an actor, at all, or trying anything really.
Janet Varney And so there was several years of that. And so it was just funny, cause when I did start working and someone would see a commercial I was in or something, it would be like, "I knew it! Straight to Hollywood with you!" And I'd be like, "No, no, no, no! No, no, no!" There was many years of me being like, "That's not who I am. That's not who I am. That's not who I am."
Sarah Enni What do you think that time was about? What do you think you were exploring? Or were you scared?
Janet Varney I started having horrible panic attacks at the end of my freshman year in college. I don't know. I mean I think it had a lot to do with the amount of pot I was smoking. And also probably biting off more than I can chew in terms of the classes I was taking. I found out if you're taking a photography class where you're having to develop stuff in the lab, you're gonna be spending too much money and you're gonna be doing that all the time.
Janet Varney So just stuff like that where as a kid, I didn't know what I was signing up for. And then I liked it enough to stick with it, but I was just not making great choices and I was over committed. And so I think I just flipped out and you're away from home for the first time.
Sarah Enni It's a lot at once.
Janet Varney And so I had nine months of really just... it was a struggle. I had to go to a class when school started again my sophomore year, I had to take each of my professors aside and say, "I have a panic disorder. I don't know when it's gonna hit. And if it hits, I will have to get up and leave. Sorry."
Sarah Enni Yeah, "Don't yell at me."
Janet Varney You know what I mean? But at least being able to own that I think helped me not have it happen. Cause once you give yourself permission then it doesn't feel as scary. Which is something I figured out I guess. And so when I finally got a handle on that, I think I was so relieved, it was almost like a reset. There was a sense of like, "Oh my God." And part of it might be Prozac, which they probably shouldn't put me on, cause it activated some serious ADD where I was like, "I can drop out of school. I'm fine!" But whatever that moment, I think there was a stripping down of like, "Oh! I'm not waking up running anymore. Wow. What do I want? What do I want?"
Janet Varney And at the time I was like, "I don't want to go to school right now." And so I left school. And then I really wanted to move to San Francisco. And so I did. I think that really, for me, I chose wanting to live there. And that was the most important thing. And I didn't care what I was doing to be there. Almost like, "Do you choose the relationship? Do you choose the job? Do you choose the place? Do you choose...?" And for me, I chose the place. I fell in love with the place. And I just wanted to have some kind of relationship to it. And so, I was just grabbing whatever jobs I could just to be there, and that just felt more important, you know? But there was no sense of like, "Hmm, I should sign up for the American Conservatory Theater." There's plenty of stuff there. It just took a long time. And other people goading me to get a commercial agent and that kind of stuff.
Sarah Enni It's interesting that place was such a strong thing for you at that time. Also, it couldn't be more different from Tucson, right?
Janet Varney Yeah. Oh yeah.
Sarah Enni Environmentally, it's a whole shift.
Janet Varney It really felt magical. I mean, it felt like a fairy tale place to me. When I went there I was thirteen and I had just never been anywhere like that. I'd never been to New York. Where had I been... Denver? My dad writes books about the Southwest; old mining camps and ghost towns and stuff, Southwestern history. And so everywhere I had gone sort of was that. I think maybe I had been to Seattle by then, but San Francisco just blew me away. It just blew me away. And I was like ,"Oh my God, this place isn't real."
Sarah Enni Yeah, it has magical qualities that's for sure. You're talking about mental health at that time in your life. And I do want to ask about, this is on your Wikipedia page if you feel comfortable talking about it, it mentioned depersonalization disorder.
Janet Varney Yeah. Yeah, that was how I experienced panic. I just felt like I was really, really high. For anybody who's ever smoked too much pot and been like, "Oh shit, I don't want this." That was what it felt like. But that began to happen to me when I was completely sober, in unpredictable times and places, which was very, very strange. And so that's how it manifested for me. And I thought I was going crazy. Once you've had that experience, there's a sense of like, "Let's hope I don't ever just, something doesn't make me snap." You know? But so far so good.
Sarah Enni A sense of it could happen again.
Janet Varney Whatever that is, makes you understand that your brain is capable of crazy things. And so you just hope like, "Oh, I hope that some horrible crazy thing happens, and some other part of my brain doesn't go [makes an escalating high "Blip" sound], and a bunch of doors close and a new one opens." And then I'm like, "And then I thought I was Jesus." But so far so good.
Sarah Enni That's pretty young to have depersonalization, that's terrifying. Just reading about it I was like, "Oh wow, that's shocking."
Janet Varney It's really weird and it's hard to describe. For me I think the high thing really does help, because luckily there is something that that sort of feels like. But when people say they feel like they're watching themselves from somewhere else, I don't understand that. I never have a sense of being outside in a visual way. The depersonalization and displacement for me is like you start thinking too much about like, "How am I moving my hands? Why does my tongue work? How do I know how to speak? What am I? Why do I have these? Why do I like this? Why do I like that?" It's just a very existential, weird, freaky feeling that for some reason also comes with this dread.
Sarah Enni Yeah, right. Cause it's not great to be like, "Do I even belong in this body?" Like, "What's happening?"
Janet Varney If you feel like you're just a bag of skin, pretending to be a human being, it's very disturbing.
Sarah Enni And at least when you're high you can be like, "This will pass."
Janet Varney "This will pass." Yeah. And if it happens to you, and you didn't do anything to bring it on, there's a sense of like, "What if the next time this happens, I will stay this way forever?"
Sarah Enni Yeah. So it took about nine months for you to cope with that?
Janet Varney I started having it at the end of my freshman year, and then by the end of my sophomore year I had found a therapist who identified what it was, because she herself had had it. I was very lucky. Because I had seen a couple of other people who were like, "Hmm, sounds like an anxiety attack." But they couldn't, you know? And she just got it. She just knew all the symptoms. Cause it's just a weird, it's a weird feeling.
Sarah Enni It's very specific.
Janet Varney It's very specific and very weird feeling. And so I did work with her and her partner, who was a psychiatrist who prescribed, and she was the therapist. And they did put me on Prozac and it totally worked. It was not very much, but it just...
Sarah Enni Got you back.
Janet Varney I was so resistant to anybody, other doctors, saying, "Oh, we should put you on something." But I trusted her so implicitly because she understood so much what it was. So my panic attacks went away and then I freaked out and dropped out of school. But I was very happy. I was a happy person.
Sarah Enni Well this is interesting to me, because also then when I read depersonalization, I couldn't not think then being an actor is also very much adopting other....not to be cliché about it.
Janet Varney No, it's true.
Sarah Enni But it is like disappearing in other people in other roles. And it's interesting that you experienced that total separateness from self, and then in dealing with that, stepped back from acting.
Janet Varney Well you're not wrong. And also the thing that caused me to finally take what I thought of as a risk, to take Prozac, was that I got cast in a show that I was the star of. It's called the Heidi Chronicles and it has a five page monologue. There's a scene that is just her giving a speech and it's just forever. It just goes on forever. And I was so excited to get it, it's a great play, great role. And I was like, "If this happens to me when I'm on stage, I can't..." And so that's what caused me to take the chance of taking the Prozac. And then I did a play the next year. And then I was like, "Screw this! See ya Flagstaff." Which I do still love Flagstaff. Great town.
Sarah Enni See ya Flagstaff! I love that. And it's also interesting to me that school was so tied to acting too. In some ways, the way you're describing it, it's more professionalized right out of the gate. That it was always tied to your education and to what you're supposed to do.
Janet Varney Mm, yeah, that's a good point.
Sarah Enni So then stepping back from acting is like rebelling. Like, "I'm gonna do my own thing."
Janet Varney That's true. Actually that's a really good point. I hadn't thought about that before but you're right, they were so closely tied that it makes sense that I would.
Sarah Enni At least need some time off, right? Before you go back to doing it your whole life. With writing, we talk about this a lot, people who want to be writers take creative writing stuff in high school and then go become a creative writing BA and then go get an MFA or whatever. And at no point there, are you not writing. And you kind of need to not write to have something to write about. I always tell people like, "Just don't study writing. Go study anthropology, or go get curious about the world. And writing is always there for you."
Janet Varney That's a great point. Well, I was so intimidated. I was a good writer when I was in high school. And then I took some writing in college. And I took playwriting as part of my major. But somewhere in college that also became hugely intimidating to me. I didn't trust myself as a storyteller. I really was very insecure about it. And again, it was one of those things where I was like, "I don't feel this. It doesn't feel easy. Oh my God, what's wrong with me? I better stop doing it." Which sucks. It's sad to have had that experience cause it took a long time for me to ramp back up again.
Sarah Enni I'm so interested in how you phrase that, not trusting yourself. Was it a skill thing, or were you really not sure what your story was to tell?
Janet Varney I think I was just worried that [pauses] I remember in one class feeling like I was just searching for... it's almost like having an awareness of being a college student. You know when sometimes you see there's this shorthand for a bad student film, you know? An avant-garde, like, "Oh, weird for the sake of weird." Like, "Oh, you thought you were so weird and deep back then." Like, "It's wonderful." I think I had a sense of that from the outside of myself. Like, "Ugh. Well, I better come up with something. What should I write about?"
Janet Varney And I remember being in this class and being like, "It has to be something shocking. Or it has to be something that's really gonna gut someone." And so I remember writing about this scary thing that happened to me when I was in high school and then just feeling really flat about it. Feeling like, "Ugh. I know I only wrote that because I felt like that's what it has to be, to be important enough." You know what I mean? Instead of just coming from the heart or instead of just using your imagination. I think I got trapped by this idea of it better be fantastic or it's not worth doing.
Sarah Enni I think there's something really, at the risk of sounding very possibly up my own ass, but when you're a smart kid, and when you're a smart, self-aware kid and you want to be an artist, that can be really devastating. Cause it's so intolerable to be bad when you know what it looks like for it to be bad. And the thought that you would create bad work is devastating. I think that's kind of what you're saying.
Janet Varney No, you're right. You're absolutely right. Yeah. You worry, "What if I don't realize I can't do it? What if I don't realize that?" How fucking awful is that gonna be for me to put something out into the world and have people be like, "Mm, you might wanna just..."
Sarah Enni And humility.
Janet Varney You might wanna just, yeah."
Sarah Enni Right. Anyway, that's so interesting to me. I do want to hear about coming back to it, and then how in getting back into it, how sketch and all that stuff came about.
Janet Varney Yeah, well that's primarily how it happened at all. When I had spent a year in San Francisco to become a resident, to pay in-state tuition at SF State, when I re-enrolled I did want to major in interior design and architecture. And in the process of looking up, whatever you call it, your year is when you enter. The department that interior design falls under is Home-Ec.
Sarah Enni Oh funny!
Janet Varney And I just couldn't get past that. I was like, "I'm not gonna have a degree in Home-Ec. I'm not gonna have a degree in Home-Ec. I just can't do it." And then I also was looking at all of these theater credits I had from the first two and a half years I was in school going like, "Oh what do I do with this? This just falls away? None of this counts anymore?"
Janet Varney And so I did declare a theater major at SF State, but I had already done all my performance credits. Cause of course, if that's your emphasis, you're like, "Mm-hm! I'll take Acting 101, 102." And so the stuff that was left over for me was all the behind the scenes stuff. It was like scene design and theater history and I think I had even already done makeup and costumes. I had really done everything that wasn't sitting at a desk, reading a book, or building a set. And even as a theater major there, I didn't perform in any plays. I just wasn't performing at all. But it turned out that I loved the behind-the-scenes stuff more in many ways.
Janet Varney I loved it. I mean, scene design made sense cause I was already into design. So then I started thinking, "Well how can I marry these two? Well maybe I could be a set designer. Maybe I could be a set dresser. Or, maybe I could be some sort of person involved in film someday that makes places. Creates the environment that someone has to live in in a movie or whatever." But even there, I wasn't identifying as a performer. But I did meet some wonderful people in that department and hung out with them. And one of my friends, a couple of years into me being there, said, "You know, I want to start the Sketch Comedy Group and you're really funny and you should be in it."
Janet Varney And I was like, "Oh no. No, no." I had never done improv. And there were groups that were doing that, but I was like, "Mm, that's not for me. I'm a serious actor." Or you know, probably more realistically like, "Oh, what if I'm not funny?" Like, "What if I'm funny in life and not funny at all when it counts?" So I hadn't done anything like that. And they really cajoled me, and I started going. We would start having these casual meetups where we would try to improvise ideas, and then we did start writing and writing together. But even then, there were three boys, and they were just so prolific. They were just churning out sketches. And they didn't care. I mean, if they weren't funny, they weren't funny. But they were just so fearless about it.
Janet Varney It was like, "I brought in six sketches. Hopefully one of them is funny enough for us to perform." And I, again, was just so intimidated by that. So I would write one sketch for every twelve of theirs. I would like [makes her voice wobbly] my handshakes, "I wrote this." And bless their hearts, if I wrote a sketch, they would be like, "We'll do it! We're gonna do this one!" They were so encouraging and I don't know that any of them were good, you know? But they really supported me. And so we started performing out. And then my friend Cole, who's one of the members of this group Totally False People that we were in, he was a working actor in San Francisco. When things would come through town, he would invariably get cast and he was doing voiceover and stuff.
Janet Varney And at some point he was like, "You know, you really should meet my agents here. They're really nice. What are you doing?" Like, "Why aren't you doing this?" And so I was like, "Oh, okay." And so I ended up signing with his agents and I started. I would get a commercial or, whatever. And I got my SAG card cause I did enough commercials up there. And then our sketch group got recruited to do the Aspen Comedy Festival, which used to be a thing that HBO ran. And then also someone came from MAD TV and scouted us. They were looking for girls, and they had me come down to LA and audition for it. So it started to become real maybe a year or two after we started performing together. Suddenly it was like, "That came to us instead of us going to that?"
Janet Varney So I was really forced to confront it being a possibility of like, "Oh, what if I wasn't doing this as a hobby?"
Sarah Enni Was that a good moment or was it scary?
Janet Varney That came to me in a time in my life where I was ready for something to change anyway, even if I didn't recognize what that was. But there was suddenly this opportunity presented to me by these people who were like, "We want to be your managers. Why don't you just come down for pilot season? See what you think. You're not committing to anything." You know? And so I had friends, some of my best friends from San Francisco had moved to Los Angeles to go to FIT, to go become fashion designers.
Janet Varney And so they had this wonderful one of four, a fourplex I guess, in Korea Town, that was just this beautiful old building. It was big, it was three bedrooms and then a huge living room and they had a day bed and they were like, "Just come stay on the day bed. Come be our roommate." And it was the two girls and one of their boyfriends and they already felt like family. So I came down for pilot season, which is just the time when all the networks would make all of these pilots and then none of them would go. But you know, you'd be shooting something and so you just have tons of auditions, especially when you're in your twenties and you're cute or whatever. And so I was just going out all the time and it felt so ridiculous to me. I had been working. I had worked as a project manager for an interior design firm, and I had worked as a buyer for a fancy upscale home furnishing place.
Janet Varney And I had worked as a producer for commercial photography. I'd had all these grownup jobs, all of which could have stayed my job forever. And then all of a sudden I was putting on a short skirt and driving across town to FOX, teetering on high heels to get the hot mean girl on what's-your-face. And so the whole thing just felt ridiculous. It felt like I was hovering above my own life, which is sort of funny now I guess... the depersonalization. But it was a sense of like there was something very reckless about it, even though I wasn't necessarily reckless. But there was something that felt like, "Oh my God! I mean, I'm not getting paid to do this. What am I doing?" You know, "Sleeping on someone's couch. Yikes!"
Janet Varney And then I started getting close to things and then I started getting stuff. And then there was definitely a feeling of like, "Uh-oh. Oh shit. What if I want to do this after all? And then I'm really gonna give a shit." Because it's just different when you, again, you've learned all of these lessons, all these ways that your work and your creativity are so closely tied to your identity. And how much easier it is, in some ways, to keep that at arms-length and do something that is not a reflection of who you are. And then when you're forced to reckon with like, "Oh, I'm just putting myself out there in a totally new way. What's that gonna feel like if it doesn't go well?" I had some real like, you know, just sobbing, when something seemed like it was... Cause there's so much bait and switch in this city.
Sarah Enni Things fall apart at the last minute.
Janet Varney Now it seems funny to me, but it's so painful. But yeah, it's like, "You got it! It's yours! You're gonna be the star of blah blah blah." And then the next day they're like, "Okay, well we spoke too soon cause the network has a deal with blah, blah, blah." Like, "They're actually gonna be doing it.” So much stuff like that where I would just cry and go, "What am I doing? What am I doing?" And bless my manager's heart. At the time I had this wonderful manager, Andy, who was really perfect for that person I was, which was that he would allow all of that and was so supportive. And he would be like, "You're gonna bounce back from this. I know you. You're a thoroughbred. You're in this for the long run. This is a marathon, Janet."
Janet Varney "It's a marathon. Get those feelings out. Let yourself care because that's what's gonna propel you forward. But you also can't hold onto this." Like, "You can feel shattered right now, in this moment, and then you go onto the next thing.”
Sarah Enni It's so funny to hear you describe it like that because it's making me think. My first book came out in February, and I had in the three months especially leading up to that, it was just a full blown panic. It was just depression. I could not figure out what was happening. And then the book came out and it was like getting to the top of the mountain and seeing the other side. And just being like, "Oh, it was just so scary." To be like, "This is gonna happen!" Then you're just gonna be out there and anyone can think any kind of thing about it. And I can't control it.
Sarah Enni And I was 34, and for the first time in my life, it was like, "I don't have control over this thing anymore." It was terrifying.
Janet Varney It's scary. It really is.
Sarah Enni But once you get in tune with it... my therapist was helping me so much and I was just like, "Oh, then you just have to own it and move forward."
Janet Varney Yeah. Yeah. And there's gonna be days when, you know, the good news is, yes, the longer you do something, ideally the better of a relationship you have with it. With both your success and your failure. But that doesn't also mean that there aren't gonna be days where you feel as bad as you did when it was the first time you ever felt that. And that that doesn't mean you're backsliding.
Janet Varney It doesn't mean like, "Oh, I haven't learned anything or I haven't grown." That's like, "No, you just have emotions and other things are gonna inform that stuff too." You know? So, yeah, I think the moment when I realized I didn't miss San Francisco that much... and also, when you live on someone's couch, you figure out like, "Oh, I don't miss my stuff. I'm okay having just this limited amount of clothes to wear." Or whatever. And then recognizing like, "Oh, I need to go back up there and I'm gonna have to pack up." And I was in a relationship then with a wonderful, wonderful person who did not have the relationship to LA that I did. And he came down to try to give it a go and was miserable and moved to New York.
Janet Varney So here are these moves that completely impacted relationships that I've been in, but you know, everybody ended up where they were supposed to be for sure. But, it was this just surreal moment of like, "Oh my God, I have shit on Los Angeles as a concept and a place for so long.” Living in San Francisco, you learn to be so contemptuous of LA, you know?
Sarah Enni Oh yes, Northern Cal is real.
Janet Varney You know, right? And then here I was being like, San Francisco had seemed so magical to me in such a specific way. And then LA seems so magical to me in this completely other way. Most of which was, there are so many people here who are so creative. There's always something going on. And it felt really alive in this way that I hadn't realized I didn't feel in San Francisco. That San Francisco, in many ways, feels very sleepy. It's a small town in many ways.
Janet Varney So I just felt so electrified by that. It was like this permission to just make stuff and maybe it would go somewhere, maybe it wouldn't, but you'd be surrounded by people who all knew what it felt like to make a thing and then have it go nowhere.
Sarah Enni And would take your thing seriously.
Janet Varney And would take it seriously.
Sarah Enni If you're like, "I made a movie on my phone in my backyard." People would be like, "Great! That can get you into a festival." That is not a waste of time.
Janet Varney Yeah! It's true. It really is true. You never know. Part of that's infuriating, but part of it is like… I'm not a gambler. I don't like betting money. But clearly there's some part of me that must like the numbers game because I've stuck with it. Even though you get rejected over, and over, and over, and over, and over. So you have to learn to really make those wins stretch out as long as possible across... like stretch that fabric real tight across all of those chasms of despair.
Sarah Enni Yup. Yup. Cover it right over.
Janet Varney That's right. "It's not there. It's not there."
Sarah Enni So I wanna just touch on Sketchfest really quick, because it's this really defining thing that you've built and it's so incredible. What is it and how did it start?
Janet Varney So SF Sketchfest is the San Francisco Comedy Festival. We kept our name even though now we do tons of stuff that isn't sketched. But we started as just that group that I was in. Our friend Gabe was actually working on a one-man-show that I loved of his, but the three of us ended up starting this festival because we needed a place to perform. So we found a theater that we could rent for a month. We were like, "We don't want to do something for a month! We're gonna be so tired of our 45 minute show."
Janet Varney But we reached out to these five other groups that we had met in various comedy clubs, and other awkward places, that were letting us do sketch even though they were like, "I mean, this isn't really what our audience wants." And said, "If we put this on as a festival, maybe the press will be interested and people will get excited." And it's like, "People like festivals. Right?" And so we did. We did that for a month and we just did really well. And it was a very stressful but very fun experience. And you know, the next year we went to a larger theater and managed to coax some headliners in from out of town and accepted submissions from people all over. And so it's just grown out of that. But that was not ever a career plan for me.
Janet Varney We were very stubborn about, once we had started it, it was like, "Well, we can't just not do it! Now we've done three, what are we not gonna do a fourth?" It really was, every year it was like, "Well, now we've done five." It was sunk costs. Like, "Well, we're just gonna keep doing this." And the more we did it, the more people would tell their friends that it was fun and that we took care of people. And so we were getting these bigger and bigger names. And that becomes really exciting too when you start going like, "Oh my gosh, we have this dream list and now we're actually checking people off the top part of it." But it was really hard work. And there were definitely times where I was like, "This isn't what I want to do."
Janet Varney "I don't want to be working this budget. I don't want to be settling books and paying off credit card bills and stuff." I didn't want to have that get in the way of me as a performer and a writer in LA. I feel so disrespectful to the festival saying this, but for many years it was just a thing I was doing, but I didn't want it to define me. Because I didn't want people that I liked to think of me as a producer instead of a performer. I really struggled with that. So there was this hard time where it was sort of like, "Where does this all fit together?" And then I started working enough outside, just working as an actor, that I ended up working with those people organically.
Janet Varney And so then it just became like, "Oh, okay. Now you can both perform and run the festival." And it doesn't feel like it's one or the other. But again, I credit my partners. And in particular my partner David Owen, who still lives in San Francisco, for really being the glue in certain ways. Because he's been up there, and he's become an expert in festivals, and worked for all these other festivals and brought some of that knowledge to us. And he would be the person who, some years when I was like, "I just don't know..." You know? He'd be like, "Come on. Here's a list of things we need to do."
Janet Varney So for the three of us to have this relationship where, it's been almost 20 years, and they're like my brothers. They're like my blood. Which means sometimes we hate each other but always, underneath, we just love each other and are so fiercely protective of one another. And I'm so happy to say that. Instead of relationships where you hear about these bands who break up right when they get famous, or these sketch groups, or anyone where they end up just imploding. I feel that has the potential in any relationship, and for whatever reason, we're just lucky enough that it's only gotten better year after year. And it was really hard for a while cause we were just scrappy, trying to just do everything. We didn't know.
Janet Varney And now it feels more comfortable. We're more comfortable in our producer skin. And every year I love them more and I feel our working relationship gets better, which I think is unusual in some ways.
Sarah Enni Yeah, it's very unusual and it's interesting, I always end up in friendships that are three, it seems to balance well. It's not right for everybody, but I always am like, "No, we need two people to be able to talk about someone else, and then flip around. And just know that we're all doing that and then we can just stay sane."
Janet Varney Yeah, there's something to be said for that. Four? I don't know.
Sarah Enni And you already touched on it, but I find it so interesting that not wanting to be seen as this one thing, but obviously now looking back, but also by putting on Sketchfest for almost two decades now, you also have created all these great connections for yourself, which is massive. I mean, do you think about it that way?
Janet Varney I do. I definitely do. Yeah, I definitely do. It has turned into a very symbiotic thing for me with work for sure. There's definitely stuff that's happened to me that I feel Sketchfest made possible in a different way cause it did introduce me to certain people. One of my best friends of all time now, who I love and would take a bullet for, is Bruce McCullough. If you would've told me at fourteen that one of my best friends would be one of the Kids in the Hall, I would've been like, "What are you talking about? You're insane." And I met him through SketchFest. And then there are things that I'm able to bring to the festival because I have a relationship to them in Los Angeles, for one reason or another. So yeah, now I'm so grateful that both have existed, side-by-side, for as long as they have.
Sarah Enni Everything builds on everything else.
Janet Varney Absolutely. Absolutely.
Sarah Enni And it's good to get to that point where you can be like, "Oh no, all this work is paying dividends in all these ways that I can't even measure or see."
Janet Varney That's part of it. I think you and I both are just open, we stay open. And that's a very different kind of existence than being very focused on one thing, and one way to get it, and one ambition. That's different. And there's part of that that I admire because there are people who have only ever seen this one thing and been like, "Oh, I will make it there." And they become the person who is the go-to for X, Y, Z. Versus me who's always like, "Well, I don't know. Someone might bring something really fun to me that I would never have thought of myself. And then who knows where that'll go." So it sort of spreads you out in weird ways.
Sarah Enni Yeah, I agree. There's some part of me that's like, you see a prima ballerina and you're just like, "What a dream! You've only ever wanted one thing and you're fucking doing it!" But yeah, that isn't my nature for sure. I'm a little bit more spread out.
Janet Varney Well, and once you start feeling like you never know where inspiration's gonna come from, or a connection is gonna come from, or success is gonna come from, then it's hard not to lean into that part of it and just go, "I don't know? Sure I'll take that meeting." Or whatever. That makes me sound super important, but you know what I mean? Just to stay open.
Sarah Enni Yeah, exactly like, "Yeah no, I'll meet anybody. Great! No, I'll have coffee with anybody." So I'd love to talk about acting and developing your craft, these early roles. It's a broad, weird question, but I'm just interested in storytelling in this art form. How do you think about characters? How do you prepare the characters? How did you think about your expression?
Janet Varney Well, it's hard because when you just want to work at the beginning, you're definitely just excited to get anything. I remember one of the first things I booked, after I'd lived here, was a guest star on Busy Phillips's UPN show that she was the star of called Love, Inc., where she played a matchmaker. And the transition between when I auditioned for the part, who this character was, which was something at a casino. I don't even remember my significance in the show, because by the end all I can remember is this thing that they did. Which was, it was my first experience because it was multi-cam, auditioning, getting a part, then getting the next version of the script for the table read, doing the table read. Then getting a new version of the script, every morning, getting a new version of the script.
Janet Varney That was totally... a lot of things were changed, including you're like, "Oh, did they...? I loved that joke." Like, "I had this one funny thing to say, that's gone?" And by the end of the episode I went from being one type of character, to being a pregnant woman who's "tell", when she's at the poker table, is a baby kicking. So they have to fit me in this pregnancy suit with a pneumatic thing that would push. Like, push, push, "Oh the baby's kicking." Which was so far afield from what I got cast as. So that was an early lesson in like, "Oh, so I have no control over this." Something that I think might be the best part about what I've been hired to do might just completely go away. And I just have to roll with the punches,
Janet Varney So in terms of feeling like you have the room to craft anything, it was so different than doing a play where you're really getting to know that character, and you're doing it over and over and over again. And learning what it feels like to be in another person's skin. So often with TV, there's so much time between every sentence and every moment, that you're trying to find new things to feel interested in about it, or what have you.
Janet Varney So yeah, so I think for me, I don't know that there was a ton of stuff early on that I even had a reason to work hard. I mean, not work hard on, obviously I was prepared and did my job. But it wasn't until a little later on in my career when I started getting stuff that I really loved. Like being able to do Burning Love, which that girl came out of whole cloth.
Janet Varney The description that Ken gave me when he asked me, Ken and Erica gave me, was like, "She's the athletic one." And I was like, "Can she be gay?" Everything to me came from that place. And so that was an experience of just like, "Oh God, I just get to be this person." And we shot so fast, and we were improvising so much, that I just lived with her for a really long time, and it was great. Or something like the Legend of Korra, which was this amazing show with beautiful scripts and just gorgeous animation. Where the first time I would see myself, really for any length of time, my voice being attached to something that wasn't my face. Those are the things that really started to feel like, "Oh God these are the things you're proud of." These are the things that you really feel you're doing something with.
Sarah Enni Yeah. And Burning Love is a fun example because it's such an exaggerated whole show, obviously. But that character, it's interesting to me to think about you as an artist, that someone would know Janet Varney better based on this weirdly exaggerated cuckoo bananas whole cast. But then seeing you express herself that way and having so much fun doing it, being like, "Oh!" I don't know. Does that make sense?
Janet Varney I think so. That was definitely when you get stuff where you feel you're dialing up one part of yourself and dialing down another... that's really fun to play with. Because she was so real to me. When I think about that character, I don't think about anything funny.
Janet Varney I don't think like, "Oh what a kook she was." When I think about it I'm like, "Oh Carly, what were you doing there?" I feel so much empathy. You know? I'm just like, "Oh girl, you wanted to make out with almost every one of those girls." I'm like, "No one was into you. Maybe Deanna's character was, but was she?" I remember feeling all those feelings, not really thinking about it as funny. Really feeling like, "Ah geez. What is happening?"
Sarah Enni Which is what makes it funny. Right? You're like the honesty there. Yeah. So I love that. And you've gotten the chance to be a little bit more on the creative side and create things for yourself. Including what I really want to hear you talk about, creating Fortune Rookie, because you're playing, quote unquote, Janet Varney. Which is hilarious.
Janet Varney Yeah. Boy you don't realize until you are doing it, there was things that I ended up cutting out because I was like, "I can't! This is a horrible thing to say.” And I named myself, myself. So thinking it was fun to blur those lines and then when you're actually shooting something realizing, kind of to your point about the book, actually having a moment of recognition of like, "Oh wait, people are gonna see this." This isn't just internally funny to us as a crew and cast like, "Oh it's so funny cause Janet would never say something so horrible." Then you're like, "Hmm, that's putting a lot of assumption on the entire audience that may see this, to somehow know that that's a joke."
Janet Varney So there's plenty of stuff that we kept in that, I mean, she's definitely a fairly clueless person in many ways. But yeah, there was even some more stuff like that, that I was like, "I need to rewrite this. I just don't want to be thought of this way. I don't want to take that risk."
Sarah Enni Right. How did that show come about?
Janet Varney So I went to see a psychic. Because a girlfriend of mine here, I've just been waiting to find out that it's all real, but that never happens. And this was the first time that someone truly convinced me like, "Oh, this guy must be legit." Because she was just ticking off things he was right about. And so I was like, "Well, if ever there's a time to go, I guess this is the guy." And so I went. And then I just realized I was spending so much time, after the fact, trying to make things fit. And it was so striking to me how much power that a perfect stranger has over you, and over choices that you make in the future.
Janet Varney Like the idea that someone you don't know will be like, "This is gonna happen." And then you manifest that? Is frightening to me. Wow.
Sarah Enni And in LA we're surrounded by people who are sort of leaping into that all the time.
Janet Varney I mean, I feel like I dated someone because he kind of matched a description that the psychic told me. I was like, "Mmm, I don't know, maybe this is...?" You know what I mean? So I bought into it enough that I was hoping that this was finally the proof that someone was good at this. Then after a year, maybe less than that, immediately I was like, "I think some of that was total bullshit." But I still wanted some part of it to feel like it was worth the money.
Janet Varney So I was just fascinated by the power of that. The most specific thing being, and the most positive thing being, that whether he intuited it or it's just one of many things that he trots out to people that he's talking to, cause I think he probably has a bunch of arrows in the quiver that are like [adds Eastern European type accent], "You are very lonely...?" You know? But one of the things he said was like, "You need to fire one of your reps." And he said that and I immediately knew exactly who it was, and that he was right. And that has nothing to do with him intuiting anything. It was just something I'm sure he says to twenty-five percent of the people he sees cause like, "Stab in the dark."
Janet Varney But it was so true. And hearing it said to me, and having that concrete realization in my gut, I was like, "Oh yeah. Yes. I've been avoiding this with myself." And I did. I ended that relationship. And so just that idea of when the best versions of those folks are telling you something you already know, and giving you permission to act on them.
Sarah Enni The Fortunate Rookie is...
Janet Varney So I really was just like, "Oh my God, it's so crazy that you could have that much control over people." And so at first, I wanted to do it as almost, well first I didn't want to be in it. I just wanted to write a sitcom about a girl who grew up in a family of con people. And they each had their own specialty. And so hers was that she was portending to be a psychic. And then her brother goes to jail and she has to take their kids. And these kids sort of give her a conscience, which hopefully I'll still be able to do. Cause that's a fun way in.
Sarah Enni That's a great concept.
Janet Varney But I had this development deal with this unscripted company, with this guy that I just loved. And he wanted to make it into a sort of... he was like, "What can we do with this that's unscripted? And I was like, "Well we could do a daily show type thing where I'm meeting with real psychics and learning the trade, and I can give readings to people on Hollywood Boulevard. We'll just see how much that works or doesn't work or whatever." So we were taking it that way.
Janet Varney And then I added a sketch component where it was gonna be like all of that would happen, but also there would be some sketch where, Kristien Schaal is actually playing someone totally different. And I'm reading her fortune. And then it evolved when I was meeting with IFC into this, at the time it wasn't so unintentional, but it was like, "Oh, it's Portlandia, but it's Los Angeles."
Janet Varney And so this idea of being a version of myself and having people who play themselves, and people who don't, and just weird versions of ourselves. And it was so easy to work on. I mean, it was just one of those things where once it fell into place, it was just like, "This is too easy." And Brandon, my sweetie and I who wrote it together, we just have this, still, we have a list of things. Because the stuff that happens here is so absurd.
Janet Varney It's just one click away from parody. I was at the doctor's office and I realized, I mean listen, I had a doctor's appointment because my neck is fucked up real-life. But I realized I had an audition and I hadn't brought my sides and I had to fucking ask my doctor to print out my sides, which was so off. I knew in the moment, I'm gonna ask the most obnoxious thing. The girls loved it in the office, they loved it. But I was telling Brandon about it and he was like, "Well in Fortunate Rookie, the nurse would read the sides, become interested, and then get cast in the role.
Sarah Enni And get the part, oh my god!
Janet Varney: Yeah. It's like, "Oh! That's one click away." That's all, you know what I mean?
Janet Varney: So our lives are full of that. And it is this thing that was just so fun and so easy and such a labor of love. But the people that were in it and worked on it, it was just a joy from start to finish.
Sarah Enni It's so fun. What's it like writing for yourself?
Janet Varney It was really fun. I think improv really helps with that because, especially the UCB [Upright Citizen Brigade] school, for better or for worse, I didn't go through the Groundlings program where it really is so much about character. And you know, you went through UCB, it's about game. And so half the time Matt Besser is on stage, no, ninety percent of the time Matt Besser is improvising. He's Matt. And I would say, I am me very little of the time when I do improv, because most of my friends came from Second City and IO.
Janet Varney So they are very character and concept-based, and action, and be on your feet doing an activity, all that stuff. But it's nice when you learn from your friends, and when you have all those different disciplines coming together. But I think somehow that makes it easier to write for a version of yourself. Because if you're doing a lot of improv, you're kind of doing that anyway.
Sarah Enni That's a really, really, good point.
Janet Varney Which I never thought about before, by the way.
Sarah Enni I think that's a really good point. I think that's why I am so drawn to UCB. It very much rewards you for being in your own head, of all of them, that's the one where it's like, "Do you think too much? This is the place for you." So I was like, "Oh… my people!"
Janet Varney Ah, It's so true.
Sarah Enni Okay, you're getting the chance to do more creating as well, and writing for yourself, or your friends. How does it feel to be at that point in your career, and how do you think about that power?
Janet Varney Yeah. Oh, I love it. Once you get a feeling for writing your own words, or getting to write something for someone else, it's just different. It's different than saying someone else's even... and I love doing other people's things. There's no sense of, you know, "Oh, I don't want to do that anymore." But there's something so special about writing. It really is. All of the experiences you have, where one day you don't feel like you know where something's gonna go and you just beat your head against the wall.
Janet Varney And then some days something just pours out and you're like, "I don't even..." And then a year later you find something, and you're like, "I don't even remember writing this. This is pretty good!" You forget! If you're just doing it enough, you forget what you've written. And then you can look back objectively and not be so mean to yourself. Because it really does feel like someone else wrote it.
Janet Varney So you are able to go like, "Hey! I remember after I wrote this I felt really insecure about it. But now that I'm looking at it, and I have no memory of it, this is great! Let's do something with this." All of those things are really exciting. Brandon and our other partner, Ryan that I've written and produced stuff with in the past, we sold a pilot and we've just finished turning in our most recent draft of it to the network.
Janet Varney And all of the clichés are true. I love all of the characters. I feel like I know them. I want so much to see them come to life. And just the process too of writing. Again, that's something that I really wasn't good at. If I wrote something and it wasn't good, the first thing I wrote, I would just be like, "Well that's garbage," and throw it away. And that's why I love crosswords, actually. Because that's the first thing that I understood I could walk away from something, and come back and have an answer. I was never a chess player. I was never gonna be like, "Hello old friend. Three years ago you moved the queen to blah blah blah. But I've been thinking about this for three years!"
Janet Varney You know what I mean? It was like you play Clue, you figure out who did it, or you didn't, and then your game is over. And crosswords really are like, you can look at something and you can be like, "I cannot complete this. I have no idea what these clues mean." And then you go off for two hours and your life happens and you come back and you're like, "Oh, it's the Dukes of Hazard. Why didn't I see that?" But that is not dissimilar from writing, which is, it doesn't have to be perfect. You can get it out there. And if you're a collaborator, even better, because someone else is gonna go, "Not that, but this." And you go, "Oh yes." And they're like, "Aha. But I never would have thought of that if you hadn't brought this in. So thank God you're telling your stupid ideas because we're gonna make gold!"
Janet Varney That whole process is such a revelation to go, "Oh!" You write a draft of something and then you walk away from it. And then you can come back with a critical eye and actually say, "I'm gonna kill these babies. I'm gonna kill these jokes. They don't work, but what about this?" All of that stuff feels so grown up to me.
Sarah Enni Oh, that's interesting.
Janet Varney But it feels it came late. I'm not a person who regrets, but I definitely am like, "Oh!" I do have a sense of like, "Oh, I missed out on this earlier. I should've been doing more of this." Because it's completely satisfying on just a totally different level, you know?
Sarah Enni But it's interesting, in some ways too, you need to fill a well in order to appreciate what you're doing, to some degree. And you bring so much more to it now having been on the other side. I mean I can't imagine the satisfaction of going from reading other people's words, and then being like, "No! I know what it's like to read a bad sentence on camera, I don't want to do it, or make anyone else do it." Right?
Janet Varney Yeah, yeah. I guess that's true. Yeah you're right, we all come... I mean that's what I tell other people so I should take my own advice. But we come to things as we come to them. And in a perfect world, the goal is to just not want to go backwards and change something.
Sarah Enni And I mean it is actually interesting. I'm trying to be, this is a weird thing to say, but I'm trying to be better about actually having regrets because for a long time I was like, "No, I don't regret a thing. Everything was meant to happen." That also dismisses some honest feelings.
Janet Varney Fair.
Sarah Enni That's not great either.
Sarah Enni But it's an interesting process.
Janet Varney No, you're right. Cause I think it's almost like there needs to be a slightly different word because regret has a sense of you drag it with you. You know what I mean? Rather than saying, "I wish that I would've given myself permission to do blank." That doesn't mean you're carrying that as an albatross. And I think that's what we think of when we think of regret. Is like, "Oh, I'll never get over this thing! Cause that's regret." Rather than like, "There was a missed opportunity there. And if I had been kinder to myself, I could have done it." And that doesn't mean I made a huge mistake and everything's gone to shit from that point forward. It means recognize that the next time it happens rather than just putting blinders on and be like, "Nuh-uh. Nope, I don't look back!"
Sarah Enni Or be in a good position to give someone advice about it, just be like, "Looking back, critically thinking about my life, this is something at this juncture I would have... If I could do it again, I would do it differently. So, you do this!"
Janet Varney Absolutely. Yeah. No, I couldn't agree more.
Sarah Enni Yeah, I think you're right. It's the word that's the problem. Was there anything else about... you've done so much and I could talk to you forever.
Janet Varney I love that you think that. I mean that's one of those things that when it's your own life you're like, "What?"
Sarah Enni No, you've done so many things, which is very cool. And then Korra is just so awesome and also challenging to think about acting when it's all in the voice. That's a big challenge. What was that like?
Janet Varney Yeah. First of all, if you're a person who is used to using your whole body and gesticulating a lot, you're gonna bang into the music stand that you have way more than anyone else in the room. But it was extraordinary. In some ways doing voiceover is the most like being a little kid. Because nobody's giving you all the stuff to build off of. You're not on a set, you know? I mean, I can't, by the way, imagine working on a green screen. I feel like I would go crazy. Everyone in a Marvel movie, I salute you, because the idea of like, "This tennis ball is a monster!"
Sarah Enni Yeah, these are flying space aliens you have to react to.
Janet Varney And you're in eight inches of prosthetics. I mean, it just sounds awful. But being in that booth, it is the most like being a little kid in terms of your imagination. And just surrendering to having some version of it in your head, even if it's not as concrete as like, "No, I'm imagining kicking someone." There's just something intangible about it. But you're relying more on your imagination I think.
Sarah Enni Yeah, which is cool.
Janet Varney It's great. Yeah, it's really great.
Sarah Enni And you were in the room with the other voice actors?
Janet Varney For the most part, yeah. Whenever they can Nickelodeon, as far as I know, I mean that's been my experience with other shows of theirs as well. They love having the actors together to really interact with each other rather than, "And then this person goes in and they read this. And then this person, from their house in Maine, phones this in." It's so fun. It's so fun to do it with other people, and it really does make a difference to be able to act.
Sarah Enni Yeah. They do that with Adventure Time, I know. I feel like you can tell. I feel the undertone of kindness in that shows.
Janet Varney Yeah, absolutely!
Sarah Enni So audibly present.
Janet Varney Absolutely! I think that's a real thing. And then if you're a person who's created a show like that, you get greedy. You're like, "This is how I want to do it because this is where I've seen it work."
Sarah Enni Absolutely. And I think it was around the same time that Korra was coming out that you started The JV Club. So tell me, I'd love to hear about how you even thought about starting a podcast. What made you want to get into it?
Janet Varney Yeah, well it was in the phase where, it's funny cause I remember thinking eight years ago that everyone had a podcast. Now I realize how funny and how innocent that was. In my mind it was like, "Everyone has a podcast." Like, "Doug Benson has a podcast. Jimmy Pardo as a podcast..." There was like five people I named off and it was like, "Everyone!" But I did not feel that there were a lot of women in podcasting. I definitely was like, "Huh." Cause I would look at networks that were coming up and being created in comedy.
Sarah Enni Especially anywhere related to comedy.
Janet Varney Yeah. I was like, "Huh." And so there was some part of me that didn't like it. And I felt like, "Well I want to [pauses], why can't I talk about real stuff but still have it be funny?" And I mean this with all love. Jimmy Pardo is one of my favorite human beings on the planet. And he has an enormous heart and that is evident on his podcast. But he also gives people a lot of shit. And it's very funny. He can be very snarky.
Janet Varney But yeah, I think I was feeling an exhaustion with snark, in a sense. And I'm a very snarky person, so that's saying a lot. But this idea of like, “Could it be funny and also somehow could you feel better afterwards?” Or, “Could you have learned something?”
Sarah Enni In earnestness.
Janet Varney Or gotten to know someone and be vulnerable in that way. And I also felt like I just kept having this recurring feeling, being in Los Angeles, of feeling so much closer to being a teenager than any other time in my life. Because you go into a room full of women who, some of them are looking you up and down like, "Nuh-uh." And then some of you are like, "Oh my God, hi! I never see you except for when we're in this room together. What's going on?" You know? Stuff like, "I hope you get it."
Janet Varney I mean, I hope I get it but, "I hope you get it." And worrying about those things. I spent so little time worrying about how I looked in San Francisco. I mean we all, of course we think about how we look, right? But I mean, I had a tattoo and short hair that I dyed every other day in different colors. And that form of expression was so much more about just exciting personality rather than like, "Ooh, maybe I should do my hair a shade lighter." Because like, "It seemed like when my hair was like that I was working more." Just, "Ugh."
Janet Varney And so I thought, "Well, there's so many women in this business that I feel I would like to explore that with." And so I pitched it as, "I'm not gonna pry into your personal life of today, but I would love to talk about how you got through being a teenager, because it's such a hard time. And what's universal about it for everybody?" And so I just started. I bought the gear and I started recording episodes. And I recorded a bunch before I ever released it. Because I was afraid that if I did one, and it didn't go well, I would stop. Or that I would take people's criticism and make a bunch of changes inorganically.
Janet Varney So it was just a "put your head down and just do it." Which is again, not necessarily characteristic of me. It felt good to have something... I think I had a sense of it through Sketchfest of like, "This is a thing that is mine that is not gonna be taken away from me."
Janet Varney I mean it could be if we sold no tickets, which is always possible. But there was no sense of like, "No one said you have to have this many listeners in order for us..." Chris was like, "Well of course we're gonna put it out there. And also, keep doing it. Even if you feel like no one's listening, just keep doing it because people will find it." And he was right. I mean, again, I just put my head down and just kept doing it. And then before I knew it, it was like, "Oh, you've done 50 episodes." Like, "Huh?" So just feeling like I had something that I was responsible for also meant that no one was gonna tell me what to do.
Janet Varney I mean a lot of us do what we do cause we don't want to have a boss, I think.
Sarah Enni Oh, a hundred percent.
Janet Varney So, being able to go like, "I had this amazing conversation and something came out of it. And then someone else heard it, and it made them feel better." Like, "Great. Done. That's all I need."
Sarah Enni The other thing that I thought of is, for me writing books, that's so slow, and a lot of it is so out of my control. So I feel having the podcast was like, "This is something creative, or interesting, or whatever, that I do. That it comes up every week and I control it in this way."
Janet Varney Yeah! Well also I would imagine writing is so isolating. That's not a thing... if you're writing a book and it's just you writing that book, it's a totally different experience. So just having the contact and the...
Sarah Enni Camaraderie.
Janet Varney Understanding and speaking to other writers and all that stuff. I mean, absolutely, I think I would be inclined to do the same thing just to be connecting with the world in some way.
Sarah Enni But then you also are not waiting on an exact... You're not waiting on scripts or having lines changed. You're doing your own thing.
Janet Varney Absolutely.
Sarah Enni What's it like to also be converse to your other jobs and performances... this is people getting to know you. Just you.
Janet Varney Yeah. Yeah. I think that part felt the easiest to me because the whole idea of the mystique of a person who's working in show business and stuff. I think there's plenty of... I mean now there's a version of that, that's the bad version, which is a bunch of reality shows where people are getting drunk. As if that's real somehow. As if watching someone get a manicure it's like, "And now I'm seeing the real them." Which maybe some people will argue, "No Janet, you're wrong." Cause I don't watch the Housewives. I have plenty of friends who love them.
Janet Varney But the idea of feeling like I had to hold something back, and I'm sure that there are plenty of people who are like, "Ugh, overshare." But you can have people say that, but when someone says like, "Thank you so much for sharing that. I really needed to hear it in a really hard time." In some ways, some people talk about having kids and stuff, just the other stuff becomes so much quieter and so much less important. You're like, "Oh, okay. But also this. Also this person." If I touched someone and made someone feel empowered to do something then like, "Sorry I'm an over-sharer. It worked out."
Sarah Enni And I wonder how you think about this, cause you and I both have a very similar format where we're just having honest conversations with largely female creators. And it's the anti-Twitter. It's long podcasts. There couldn't be more context. So when you say something a minute [pauses] fifty-eight, it's like, "No, I have a sense of who this person is. I'm not gonna just take that headline and..." You know what I mean?
Janet Varney It is, you're right. And I don't know if me doing it was in reaction to that, but I think there's almost certainly some unconscious part of that.
Sarah Enni Something, cause it was 2012 when you started, which is when we all started to get really consumed with...
Janet Varney Yeah. It's, I definitely remember Twitter being a thing that I was like, "I don't know." I'm like, "What a Twitter prude." But yeah, I think that's exactly right. I say that sometimes like, "Please don't look to Twitter for my political views. I just am not gonna be that person." I can't. I don't want to. I can't be a part of the algorithm of haters. And I know that people are doing positive things and organizing and eliciting change and all of that stuff. I know all of that's happening too. But in terms of what my heart has the energy for, and what I can survive, you gotta listen to the podcast if you want to hear me talk about Trump's America or whatever. And that's not something that I do all the time. But I don't want to have to put it into a sentence. That's terrifying to me.
Sarah Enni Well, talk about snark also. It's a reaction. Twitter is all snark. That's what I feel wears me down the most is when you're scrolling, scrolling, scrolling, and then your inner monologue starts to mimic these [snaps fingers] "Uh, uh, I just wanna take something down!" And it's like, "Well that's so uninteresting and wearying." Cause the reason I started the podcast was I was listening to Pete Holmes and Marc Maron talk to people for two and a half hours. I was like, "I really feel I know these people and I love this long-form setup." And then to have more women doing it, it's like, "Yes. Long lady conversations."
Janet Varney Yes. Agreed.
Sarah Enni So we wrap up with advice. I would love to ask you, for people who are looking to maybe write for performance, and maybe write for themselves, if you have advice for how to go about doing that?
Janet Varney Well, just circling back to what we were talking about before, just write a bunch of stuff. I know that that's such a cliché and I feel I remember hearing it and being like, "I know, but it's gonna be bad!" Just quiet that voice in your head and just do it. It's hard because it is that thing where, if you can think of another thing in your life that you both get frustrated by and love, maybe use that as a comparison. Because the test is not, "Oh, I just have to be happy doing it all the time." It has to be like, "I get frustrated and I hate it, but there's some kind of underlying joy." Sometimes I think of joy as more long lasting. And it doesn't mean that there's not other emotions that get piled on top of it. But rather than just like, "Happiness!" Like, “I felt happy when I was writing this."
Janet Varney That feels very fleeting to me. So don't set out to do something that you think other people want from you, because you think that's gonna get you where you want to be. Because that will start you down the road of always doing that. And then you will feel unfulfilled. Do a thing that you're like, "You know what?" And by the way, also do a thing you feel you've seen a million times, because you got to let go of this idea that you're gonna make Memento. Which Save the Cat is a very good book for that reason. It's good for people who are like, "But I have to dah, dah, dah, dah." It's like, "Mm-mm. No you don't. No, you do not." What's unique about you will come out. You should not paralyze yourself thinking that. Because in this world with the internet, it's all out there.
Janet Varney And the best you can do is just hopefully not plagiarize someone, but also don't dig deep to find all the versions of the one thing you're interested in. Because then you will just be finding ways to talk yourself out of stuff, you know? So put that away. Allow for the fact that there's five people scattered across the world who are making the same story, and just do it. And listen, you might get to the end and think it's the most extraordinary thing, and then you try to sell it to someone and they go, "We just bought that from someone else." Yes. Deal with that heartbreak when it happens, but don't stop. Then do the next one, or already have started the next one.
Sarah Enni Yeah. And that's the real ticket is just always have an iron in the fire.
Janet Varney Yeah, absolutely.
Sarah Enni Heartbreak is a lot. You can distract yourself out of some heartbreak.
Janet Varney A hundred percent. Why do you think I do so many things? It used to be if this one thing I was hanging everything on it, and then it didn't work out, and I was like, "What am I...who am I?" You know? There is an actual... that just happened. I was up for a job. I felt like maybe I was gonna get it. It didn't come through. I had that feeling in the pit in my stomach like you have in high school when someone rejects you, and I had time for like five minutes and then I was like, "I don't have time to feel this way. I have a deadline for this. My partners.... we're doing Sketchfest. This is happening. There's no time for me to go off and lick my wounds" Oh, there's a lot to be said for that. A lot to be said for that.
Sarah Enni Yeah, I like that. And then you're moving into another space where people see you as not this failure.
Janet Varney You get to see yourself, not as the like, "I'm just this. And this didn't work out."
Sarah Enni Yeah, yeah. That's huge. I think that's awesome advice. Well, thank you so much Janet. This has been a total joy. Thank you for coming over.
Janet Varney Thanks Sarah. I was looking forward to it. I'm so glad.
Sarah Enni Thank you.
Janet Varney Thank you.
Sarah Enni Thank you so much to Janet. Follow her on Twitter @JanetVarney and on Instagram @thejvclub. And follow me on both @SarahEnni and the show @FirstDraftPod. For links to everything that Janet and I talked about in this episode check out the show notes, which are at FirstDraftPod.com. And right next to those show notes, and even in the show notes, you can find a link to the 2019 Listener Survey. If you've got a couple of minutes, filling that out would be really fantastic. Speaking of having a couple of minutes, if you have any writing or creativity questions that you'd like me, and a guest, to address in an upcoming episode, please leave a question on my voicemail box. That's 818-533-1998. I would love to hear from you guys and get a little bit more feedback. And get a sense of where you're at and maybe see if there's anything that a very smart future guest and I can help you with.
Sarah Enni If you enjoyed the show today, please subscribe to the podcast where ever you're listening right now. And leave a rating or review on iTunes. I'm gonna read a recent review that was left on iTunes. This was left by DBoy Johnson. DBoy Johnson says, "Fantastic long-form interviews. I have the longest commute of anyone I know, and I'm incredibly happy I found First Draft Pod. Every writer and illustrator should listen in and also aspire to be interviewed by Sarah Enni one day. This podcast offers fascinating long-form interviews with great questions and diverse subjects. I really appreciate how thoughtful the questions are and that Sarah keeps the conversation lively without overwhelming the interviewee. I always learn something that I feel is useful for my writing life. Thanks." That is so sweet. What a lovely review. Thank you so much DBoy Johnson. It's tragic that you have such a long commute, but I'm so happy that my podcast could be one of the things that makes it a little bit easier.
Sarah Enni And thank you for your really, really kind words about the interviews. They're very special and important to me, and hearing that they matter to other people is very, very affirming. So thank you so much. Leaving a rating or review on iTunes really helps boost the show and get it in front of other people who might not find it otherwise. And that kind of organic growth is incredible. So DBoy Johnson, you're the best. And anyone else who has a minute, leaving a rating would help a ton.
Sarah Enni Hayley Hershman produced this episode. The theme music is by Dan Bailey and the logo was designed by Collin Keith. Thanks to production assistant Tasneem Daud, and transcriptionist-at-large Julie Anderson. And as ever, thanks to you hilarious over-thinkers for listening.
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