“In the Envelope: An Awards Podcast” features intimate interviews with award-winning actors and other creatives. Join host and Awards Editor Jack Smart for a front row seat to the industry’s most exciting awards races, and valuable acting and career advice from contenders! This episode is brought to you by HBO.
For her work as the eternally exasperated, cellphone-clinging, Washington D.C. political world-climbing Amy Brookheimer on “Veep,” Anna Chlumsky has received six consecutive Primetime Emmy Award nominations for supporting actress in a comedy. HBO’s award-dominating political satire (from original creator Armando Iannucci and later showrunner David Mandel) ended its seven-season run this spring, with fitting conclusions for TV’s most ridiculous vice president (producer-star Julia Louis-Dreyfus) and her bumbling cohorts (Tony Hale, Reid Scott, Timothy Simons, Matt Walsh, and more, a SAG Award-winning ensemble).
READ: Breaking Down the 2019 Emmy-Nominated Comedy Actors
Chlumsky’s journey through the acting industry is an unusual one; breaking onto the scene as a child star in the hit films “My Girl,” “My Girl 2,” and “Trading Mom,” the native Chicagoan became disillusioned with the business in her teenage years and took a much-needed hiatus. She didn’t come around to the idea of pursuing acting passionately—of finding joy in the craft itself—until a lightbulb moment seeing Mercedes Ruehl in a play, after studying at the University of Chicago and working in the publishing industry. So she trained at Atlantic Acting School, booked off-off-Broadway work through Backstage casting notices, and began appearing on “Law & Order,” “30 Rock,” and more, until Iannucci cast her in “In The Loop” and “Veep.”
Her number one piece of advice, in acting or in life? Tell the truth. Listen to Chlumsky’s deep dive into her character-building process and her best advice for child actors and their parents, below.
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