Kristen Wiig on the Art of the Awkward.

In 2012, Kristen Wiig made it onto Time magazine’s 100 Most Influential People of the Year list – and last year she did it again. The Saturday Night Live alum and star of Apple TV’s period comedy Palm Royale reflects on her repeated interfacing with the zeitgeist.

Kristen Wiig for Perfect Issue 11.

Photographer: Yasmine Diba
Fashion Editor: Simon Robins
Writer: Paul Flynn

Last year, the genius comic actor and writer Kristen Wiig found herself on the Time magazine list of the 100 most influential people in the world, a nodding acknowledgement for her brilliant work in the expensive-looking Apple TV comedy drama, Palm Royale. For the first season, Kristen played Maxine, a social-climbing charlatan nudging her way into late Sixties Palm Beach high society through the back doors of its leisure club demimonde. She was the anti-heroine you couldn’t help but adore. For the second, she doubled up as Maxine and her twin sister. The cast list for Palm Royale was heaven, with Allison Janney, Kaia Gerber and, yes indeed, Ricky Martin joining Kristen for a contemporary roll call of flashy miniskirted high camp. This was simply one more jewel in the crown of one of America’s finest comics.

Kristen earned her comedy props in the improvisational comedy sketch troupe The Groundlings, before ascending to a definitive residency on America’s crowning comedy vehicle, Saturday Night Live. She will be beloved forever for the bittersweet romcom Bridesmaids. Oh, and if you’ve never seen her take on Liza Minnelli, make haste to Google. We speak to Kristen in late July.

So the theme of the issue is zeitgeist. What does that word mean to you?

Oh God, you’re going to start with the hard-hitting question? I don’t even feel like I would know what’s in the zeitgeist right now. I feel a little like I’m in a cave, because I’m not on social media. I’m on another planet.

Did it take a little longer for Heated Rivalry to arrive in your world than other people’s?

No, no. That one I knew about. Not to say I’m never going to use social media, because I do think it’s good for work, so I’m toying with the idea of going on it.

Toying with the idea of going back on it?

No, I have never been on it.

Wow, that’s like hearing someone say they’ve never drunk alcohol.

Yes, I have drunk alcohol (laughs). Social media? It might be happening.

What was the zeitgeist when you were a teenager? How does that word relate to your past?

I am of an age when as a young girl we had those teen, almost like tabloid-y magazines for young girls. They had [sitcom stars] Ricky Schroder and Kirk Cameron on the cover. All those guys. Music for sure was a big thing. I was definitely a Duran Duran girl.

Which member was your favourite?

John Taylor. I was also a big Billy Idol fan. Maybe it was the times, because it was the Eighties, or maybe it was my age, but I just feel like it was music that was the big thing for us – trying to get the new tape, you know? You put the posters on your wall. It was such a big part of your teenage life.

I had Billy Idol. My stepsister had the Duran Duran posters. She was a Nick Rhodes person. Now I feel like it’s TV shows. Everyone’s talking about what they’re watching. That’s the water-cooler talk now. ‘Oh, have you seen the latest episode of Widow’s Bay?’ or whatever it is. Or film.

Actually, this year feels good for a new film zeitgeist because of the new horror school with Backrooms and Obsession.

I have not seen either of them. I don’t love scary things, though.

Can you cope with David Lynch eerie?

Oh yeah, of course.

That’s more what Backrooms is. Anatomising oddness through normality.

I do hear that it is incredible.

“To do what you love is such a gift. If I can just keep going and try new things and surprise myself, then I’m happy.”

Last year you were one of Time magazine’s 100 Most Influential People in the World. Does that make you feel like part of a zeitgeist?

Oh, I don’t know. Obviously, I was surprised and very, very honoured. We show up for work and do what we do and usually the film or the show comes out months to years after we’ve done it, and then all of a sudden you’re talking about it, and it’s such a weird thing. Time is so sort of different with this business. I definitely don’t think differently about myself [because of it]. It was kind of around when I had done Palm Royale. And when you’re in something, it’s so hard to really understand how other people are seeing it, or even if they’re seeing it.

You were first in that list in 2012, then last in it last year, and what’s so pleasing from an outsider’s perspective is that it forms a continuum to wrap around your career. There’s an arc. People give a fuck about you. When that happens to talented people it makes you believe in something longer than trend, maybe bigger than a zeitgeist.

Thank you. I mean, all I can ask for is that I can keep working and doing this. I need to knock on wood that I get to keep doing it. I do feel really lucky. To do what you love is such a gift. If I can just keep going and try new things and surprise myself, then I’m happy.

How does the zeitgeist relate to what is funny? It changes so frequently – what was funny five years ago might not be funny now.

I don’t think that there is an answer to that, and that’s why we keep trying to do it. Whatever it is I do is sort of like my… ‘style’, for want of a better word? I don’t even know what that is. Yeah, you have moments where you think, am I changing enough, am I changing too much? What is funny does change as the years go by. Will this still work? Am I a different performer comedically than I was 20 years ago? It’s such an abstract thing. And as you say, what’s funny changes. Probably it changes faster now because everything is faster.

I do like to observe. That’s part of how you create characters. Speaking about my time on Saturday Night Live [SNL] specifically, so much of it comes from seeing real people, just imagining what they would be like. Or at a dinner party. Drawing from real life and real people has been my way in to creating a lot of those characters.

Nothing makes you see the world in a better way than when you have allowed yourself to laugh at it.

You kind of have to like the characters to know who they are. It’s never making fun of anybody, it’s never at anybody’s expense. I just don’t gravitate towards that kind of comedy.

Which brings me quite neatly to the fact that Katie [Grand] loves the ‘Liza Minnelli tries to change a lightbulb sketch’ you did, your SNL masterpiece.

(Roars laughing)

It always reminds me of that great John Waters quote, that you are only ever allowed to make jokes out of things that you really, deeply love.

I agree. That’s true. The first one of those we did was Ann-Margret trying to throw away a piece of paper in a trash can; Liza was the second one. It was just Ann-Margret dancing around, trying to throw a piece of paper away. How can you not love Ann-Margret and Liza Minnelli? I think I wrote that one with James Anderson. It was just a physical comedy bit that we did not think was going to make the show. Then it did. You sit at a big table reading the sketches, and some of them require you getting up and acting them out – and those are always the ones that you feel, ugh, sorry! If this doesn’t work this is going to be really embarrassing. I must’ve acted it out in front of everyone.

When you got the SNL gig, did it feel like being handed a gold standard seal of comedy approval?

No, no, no, it was more like, now what do I do? I had been at The Groundlings for a while and, to go back to that terrible word ‘style’ again, you develop the way you do comedy, the way you write, and I felt like I got such a good base there. I remember thinking, OK, I am at this show now, I know what I do and how I do it. I was kind of nervous. Like, OK, I hope that it works, because this is my dream job.

The citation next to your Time nomination was this Marielle Heller quote about you: ‘Kristen Wiig cannot give a dishonest performance.’

I loved working with Mari [on 2015 film The Diary of a Teenage Girl]. I honestly do not know how to respond to that. So much of what we do comes from our instincts and our knee jerks that it’s so hard to then later go back and talk about where it came from or what the feeling was behind it. When you’re doing it you’re honestly not really thinking – it just sort of happens.

I guess this is particularly true with humour. We’ve all been in that situation of trying to recount a thing that felt like the funniest thing in the world in the moment and just does not translate in the retelling.

Oh, I am the worst at that. I am a terrible storyteller. If I am at a dinner party and someone says, tell that funny story? I want to leave my body. I am so bad at it. It will not sound funny. I don’t know how to end it. And people are just staring at me. Like, I thought she was funny? Tell a funny story!

When I was on the show, every two weeks on a Tuesday night we would have these cast and host dinners. Some of us would go out to dinner with Lorne [Michaels, SNL founder] and the host. I remember Alec Baldwin, he would just talk and it didn’t matter what he was saying, it was so perfect. And everyone was hanging on every word. It’s funny when it’s supposed to be funny. And I remember thinking at the time, I don’t have that gene. I think that happens with a lot of comedians, especially where you think they’re just going to show up and do funny. I’ve found that there’s more comedic actors than I would’ve expected that are really kind of socially shy, really quiet and introspective.

It’s a channel, doing something for a living. You’re finding something that’s not just being the funniest guy in class. It’s a craft. Making an active decision to turn whatever your instinct for humour is into something solid and formed and it is now specific and precise, it’s not just turning up and saying, ‘Hey, I’m here and I’m funny.’

Can we just put quotes around that and say I said it? (Laughing) That was really well put. There are different channels, like you say. Same as someone who is a very gifted dramatic actor. We all have different channels.

Wouldn’t that be great if Daniel Day-Lewis showed up and was fucking hilarious?

I bet we would be hanging on every word, regardless.

Honestly, no matter how many times I’ve seen it, the line ‘You’re a little cunt’ in Bridesmaids will never not be the funniest line in a film ever…

That’s the line, huh? Oh my God, we were so scared to say that word, because… obviously.

What works so specifically about that film as a script?

People have different parts that they gravitate towards – the female friendship part of it, then the marriage part of it. We got so lucky with the people in the movie, cast-wise, letting them all just bring what they bring every day. I loved seeing those girls just do their thing. It’s my favourite thing to watch. And not knowing that people were even going to see the movie when we made it, there’s an innocence to it. Obviously, it holds such a special place in my heart. Like, a huge place.

It is the literal definition of zeitgeist. When we think back to the early 2010s, to 2011 specifically, it’s Rihanna’s ‘We Found Love’, Game of Thrones, Drake’s Take Care album and Bridesmaids.

Oh wow, thank you.

Talk to me about Maxine on Palm Royale. How would you explain her to a stranger?

I sort of unconsciously gravitate toward characters that are that woman at the party that you don’t want to sit with. I feel like Maxine fits that. And there is something that I liked about playing someone who really wants something and was not great about how she was getting it. That just opens it up comedically. I really want to like this person. We really tried to make this seemingly unlikeable person on paper someone that you root for. People get confused. She’s terrible, but I want her to win. It just felt so special to play.

Is making people laugh professionally a way of channelling your awkward?

Totally. It’s so that when people meet me and see that I am really awkward, they’re like, well, I guess that makes sense, rather than if I’d played all these polished people. It’s so hard to talk about yourself in some ways. Only because there’s something about all this that I just don’t know.