RIOT GIRLS

PHOTOGRAPHY BENJAMIN ALEXANDER HUSEBY
FASHION JODIE BARNES
TEXT MARK JACOBS

WOMEN ARE THE KINGS OF COMEDY NOW, AND THESE SEVEN FEMALE TALENTS—EACH WITH A PLETHORA OF PROJECTS ON THE HORIZON—REIGN SUPREME. HERE THEY EMBODY A VARIETY OF AMERICAN ARCHETYPES, PROVING HOW FIERCE FARCE CAN BE

ANNA FARIS
Keenan Ivory Wayans gave me the most valuable advice,” says Anna Faris, who first broke through in the director’sScary Movie in 2000. “He said, ‘There’s no vanity in comedy.’ And that was such a liberating thought. I cling to that idea.” An endearing talent, Faris is recognized for being distinctly uninhibited in her performances. She has appeared in both prestigious films like Lost in Translation, Brokeback Mountain, and Gregg Araki’s Smiley Face (“I was honored to be chosen,” she says) and comedic leading-lady vehicles such as What’s Your Number? and The House Bunny. “I’m not crazy about snarky or catty humor. I’d much prefer to make myself the butt of the joke,” says the dramatically-trained actress. Next she co-stars with Sacha Baron Cohen in The Dictator as a granola hippie who runs a food co-op in Brooklyn. “I’ve been a part of some crazy movies, but never something quite like this,” says the rising star, who had to sign on without seeing a script. “Sacha is an insane genius. It’s exciting to be around him, but also terrifying. You really don’t know what he’s going to do.”

RASHIDA JONES
“I’m the next ‘It’ Animal Woman of comedy,” jokes Rashida Jones, calmly cradling a chicken on the set of her V shoot. It is unsurprising that her reassuring demeanor equates to being a natural animal whisperer. She currently stars as the adorable Ann Perkins on the NBC comedy Parks and Recreation, and consistently wins over audiences in quality projects such as The Office, Funny or Die, and The Muppets. She says that feelings of being a “professional dabbler” (“I’ve been really lucky to dabble with the best”) inspired her to co-write and star in the Sundance hit Celeste & Jesse Forever, which was scooped up by Sony Pictures Classics. “There was something inside me that I had to see if I could fulfill—and take the risk of failing,” she says. “I needed to write something [with collaborator Will McCormack] that I was at the center of, to see if I could tackle something that big.” The comedy follows a couple (Jones and Andy Samberg) who married young and then grew apart as they negotiate their continued affection for one another even after it’s time to divorce and disentangle. “We felt like we were seeing this kind of story over and over with our friends,” Jones says. “And I did have a part of myself as an actress that I hadn’t had an opportunity to share, since I do get typecast as the dependable, affable friend…or maybe slightly bitchier.” With a slew of hits under her belt, she can afford to take a chance on something new—and count a few chickens as well.

LIZZY CAPLAN
Think of Lizzy Caplan as the new standard-bearer for sarcastic, three-dimensional cool girls with excellent style. “I guess my predecessor is Janeane Garofalo,” Caplan says, channeling the famously bespectacled comedian’s proto-hipster persona in 1994’s Reality Bites. “Winona Ryder was still the leading lady in that movie. Now you can be both of those characters—a leading lady who has a bit of a bite to her.” Familiar to audiences for her work on Mean Girls,Cloverfield, True Blood, Party Down, and a recent guest-star appearance on The New Girl, Caplan has now taken the lead in two well-received Sundance features: she’s a bookstore manager avoiding an engagement in the romantic drama Save the Date, and she teams up with Kirsten Dunst and Isla Fisher (the three of them play characters she describes as “the opposite of loveable”) for a bride-to-be fête gone awry in the Will Ferrell-produced dark comedy Bachelorette. Caplan plays Gena, who has a raging cocaine problem. “Our film is much more of a Neil LaBute play,” she says, addressing inevitable comparisons to Bridesmaids. “Gena is probably the angriest character I’ve ever played, but you see a bit of her heart by the end of it.” Caplan also stars opposite Michael Sheen in the Showtime pilotMasters of Sex, directed by John Madden (Shakespeare in Love), a steamy drama in which she plays Virginia Johnson, the revolutionary 1960s sex therapist. “It’s very cool to be weirdly vindicated in this way,” Caplan says. “For a lot of women like me, [acting] has been about trying to change elements of our personality to fit more generic female roles. And now we’re not having to contort so much.”

ANA GASTEYER
“People who wear wigs and transform themselves are the funniest,” says Ana Gasteyer, still in full hair, makeup, and head bandages after her photo shoot. “I have pretty old-fashioned taste when it comes down to it. I like irony, but I love character-driven comedy. Well-demonstrated human behavior is as good as it gets.” A Groundlings player who joined Saturday Night Live for six years before leaving in 2002, Gasteyer is revered for playing full-tilt characters, including a manically conceited Celine Dion, the hilariously benign NPR host Margaret Jo of “Delicious Dish,” and the singing Alta Dena Middle School teacher Bobby Moughan-Culp (alongside Will Ferrell). She currently portrays Sheila Shay, the pastel nightmare on the ABC comedy Suburgatory. “I think competitive people are really funny,” she says. “We have an insane Mother’s Day episode coming up in which the whole town is trying to honor their mother the most.” Gasteyer also has a bevy of upcoming character-driven parts in feature films: a lesbian mother who speaks Greek and plays the lute in the dark teen comedy Fun Size, directed by Gossip Girl creator Josh Schwartz; a nudist mayor in We The People, billed as an African-American Meet the Parents; and a hysterical mother whose daughter (Anna Kendrick) is courted by Satan in the post-apocalytpic comedy Rapturepalooza. “I like being behind the fourth wall. I like the artifice to be really perfect. I like to see a real character,” she says as her headdress begins to unfurl. “I’m losing my bandage clips!”

ARI GRAYNOR
If you don’t know Ari Graynor, search “turkey sandwich scene” on YouTube for her completely improvised, inebriated-in-the-bus-station monologue (from 2008’s Nick and Norah’s Infinite Playlist) and get acquainted. Graynor is known for stealing movies as the raspy best friend that’s “a little more outrageous, a little brassy, a little drunk,” as she puts it, even though she hasn’t actually played the role so many times—she’s just the one you remember and want the film to be written around. So you can’t blame Rashida Jones, an in-demand best friend herself, for casting Graynor as hers in the Sundance hit comedy Celeste & Jesse Forever. “I think those roles are stepping-stones, a way of paying your dues—unless you walk out of the womb a supermodel,” Graynor says. “A lot of female comedians have been stuck in moments of being the best friend in good ways and bad. Now we’re pushing open the doors to say, ‘Listen, I don’t have to just be supporting. I can carry the movie in a different kind of way.’” Graynor does exactly that in For A Good Time Call… “We run a phone-sex line–so that’s pretty great,” she says of the comedy she stars in and executive produced. “I would be lying on a bed with a phone and we would be doing these camera swipes, and someone would yell, ‘Pretend he’s a redhead and has freckles on his dick!’ It was incredibly collaborative.”

JUDY GREER
In the ego emporium that is Hollywood, Judy Greer is a beacon of genuine goodness. She will unselfconsciously share the story about her first Oscars when she wore a Monique Lhuillier gown so fitted that using the restroom required her to strip the garment off and hang it on the stall door. “Thank god I do yoga and can actually zip myself up,” she says. Since debuting in the ultra-millennial teen comedy Jawbreaker, the actress has been both ubiquitous and just under-the-radar, a phenomenon that shifted recently with her charming role in the Oscar-nominated film The Descendants. She had already worked with top directors like Cameron Crowe (Elizabethtown), Spike Jonze (Adaptation), David O. Russell (Three Kings), and Mike Nichols (What Planet Are You From?); been the go-to best friend for a triumvirate of top Jennifers—Lopez, Aniston, and Garner (in The Wedding Planner, Love Happens, and 13 Going on 30, respectively); and been featured on various television shows: Arrested Development, Two and a Half Men, and the FX Network animated series Archer. Now Greer is shooting the pilot for a new sitcom based on her life, called American Judy. (“How bananas is that? I thought that was going to be just a working title. But it’s on the parking spots outside the production office, so I guess it’s real!”) She also has Jeff Who Lives at Home, with Ed Helms and Jason Segal, and Playing the Field, with Jessica Biel and Gerard Butler, on the books–signifying that the Tinseltown brass love her as much as audiences do. “I feel that positivity,” she says, “but I don’t understand why!”

WENDI McLENDON COVEY
A natural scene-stealer (look no further than Bridesmaids for crass cousin Rita with the semen-starched children’s blankets), Wendi McLendon-Covey is rightfully enjoying her time in the spotlight. The Groundlings alumna has been beloved for years for the exaggerated blondes she plays without vanity—like Deputy Clementine Johnson on Reno 911!, for whom “muffintopping” is a vital character aspect. “Jess Oppenheimer was a producer on I Love Lucy, and his theory was that if you set the table very logically in the beginning, your audience will follow you anywhere,” says the master improviser (her Bridesmaids outtakes in the DVD extras are wild). McLendon-Covey’s slate of upcoming features includes What To Expect When You’re Expecting, in which she fires Jennifer Lopez (who plays an aquarium photographer adopting an Ethiopian infant) and then throws a baby shower for her; A White Trash Christmas, co-starring Beverly D’Angelo and Meat Loaf; and the sex comedy Sleeping Around, in which she appears as a prudish J. K. Rowling type. She also appears as a Miami cougar in Steven Soderbergh’s male-stripper opus Magic Mike. “All I really got to see were those big green Channing Tatum eyes and his whole vibe,” she says of the film’s star, who charms her character. “And I saw another stripper get fitted for his mullet.” Translation: more hair-raising antics coming soon to a theater near you.