Hey, hall, are hi? Okay with speed dating, let's not do any foreplay. Okay. So you were just revealed to be on the Mask Singer as a starfish, absolutely, which is what I refer to the tush sometimes, so so the tush hole. So you were the starfish, which is so cute and fun. And I was actually going to be on the Mass Singer at one point and then I like we practiced a couple of times, backed out. It felt like overwhelming and a lot of work, and I just was like, I don't know if I can
do this. And because I'm in New York, so where do you live in La So you were it was convenient for you to go yes, and how how was it?
Uh? It was great until like I kicked off. I'm just kidding. It was great the whole time, you know what. I'm so like, I got to do three episodes, like I made it to the semifinals. I mean, I'm literally walking in a starfish costume that it's so hard to walk in and then i feel a little out of breath, but I'm singing and I'm like, oh my god, I'm more of a jazz singer, you know, Like what am I doing? Am. I had my comfort zone. I had a blast. The audience is amazing. It was just it
was a great time. I felt very taken care of. And I loved the costume.
Love Starfish and I love I Love. That's so cute, and I love Jenny McCarthy. And that's like the highest rated show on Fox. I think it's like a big show for them.
It is. It's crazy.
It's great with our highest rated primetime I think, or it used to be. Are you a decent singer?
I do? I sing with Jane Lynch. We did a Christmas album together about eight years Wow, Swinging a Little Christmas. We were actually number eight on the Billboard Top ten. But you know, it's more like a jazz album. So I so this, you know. And I never got to sing on the office because they literally said, what if Meredith sings, she doesn't sing because it's supposed to be a documentary and not everybody in Scranton, Pennsylvania knows how to sing. So yeah, I sort of had to like
hide this little talent. But I also, you know, it was just really really fun to kind of be in a position where people may or may not know who I am, but they don't think of me as a singer. So even though I.
Well did anyone guess you.
Ken Jong did the last the last night, he's the only one. But you know, I mean, it was nice to be considered, you know, to be mistaken for Amy Poehler, Tina Fey, Katherine O'Hara, Meyer, Rudolph Kate McKinnon.
Really all funny people, yes, right, I know.
Really that's interesting, really funny women. So yeah, so I was it was the whole experience was fan damntastic.
All right, So you're working a lot, right, I remember, like you've been working consistently since the office, right.
No, I've been busy. It's it's been great. Yeah. No, I'm super lucky and I feel like I get to do a lot of different things, which makes life so much more fun because I used to do a comedy act, so I used to do a ton of clubs and comedy festivals and I just kept doing that two years ago because my comedy partner left the business. But I've been touring with Jane Lynch for the last eight years. Like we get to play places like the Kennedy Center and like the Carlisle Hotel. I have a lot of
different playgrounds. I still get the guest star a lot on TV. I've done a ton of game shows. I still do a lot of voiceover. I'm recurring on a Disney Channel animation show called Kiff right now. So you know, I have a great I mean, I have a really good life. I really do.
It must be so fun to work with her. I saw her in Monacito and I was like sort of starstruck to I mean, I saw her at the cafe outside in Monacito and she was really nice. And she was actually really nice to my daughter too. And Room is a big fan of Glee, and I like her a lot. She's a great actress. I told you now. She's going to be fourteen and a couple of nights.
I saw you on a plane from Newark Airport once when she was an infant.
Oh that's so really, she.
Was so little. I can't remember what time in your was.
But she's so nice. I'm so she's such a good girl.
She's fourteen, Oh my god, crazy, I love it.
So you're in a new movie called The Prank Yes with Rita Marina And what's that like? What is it about?
Horror comedy? And Rita Marino plays this really sadistic, evil physics teacher and I'm the lunch lady, and it's just like it's a it's a buddy movie about a male and female friends and seniors in high school and they sort of they hate their physics teachers, so they decide to pull a prank and it gets out of hand so fast because of the Internet and social is so intense. My whole thing, you know, my whole message is like
watch this movie, but do not hit send. Like whatever you do, kids, no matter how mad you are at somebody, it could open. No.
I totally always tell them. I mean I really am serious about that with my daughter, not just that it always lives forever, but I was just like in this the crazy divorce I went through, I learned, like take six hours before responding to an email that you know is in a situation where like just not normal every day email. Thenything's heated or there's anything charged. Wait six hours short, respond to something.
Your trigger finger is that's that's a dangerous place. Like yeah, the faster you respond the worst, it.
Is the worst. And emails better than text because email slows it all down. Text psych is like really dangerous.
Totally, totally. Yeah, inflame situations very quickly, and it's so easy to misunderstand people's tone of voice, and so when they they text, it's like it's yeah, it's easy to misunderstand for sure.
So how does the Office still play into your life now? Aside from that it's on, like are there reunions? Are They're like things that you guys do to monetize it on the road.
You know, I do a lot of conventions, Like there's a there's a lot of fandom with the Office, and we do we get to do these fan expos in particular where it's like people from in Office, people from Star Trek. Sometimes there's people from like you know, Back to the Future. There. I kind of see the same people all the time. It's great, people from the Mandalorian like it's it's it's awesome.
What about podcasts.
I don't have a podcast, but I'm sometimes part of the Office Ladies podcast just a little bit. We I just did a commercial with a few people from the Office for AT and T. We're not we're not our characters, we're just ourselves. But it actually starts airing this week. So it was really fun to get to work with everybody again?
How crazy? Really is the gift that keeps on giving? Right, Like when you get on something like that. Absolutely, I mean, did you think it was going to be so big? What we thought it was? You on a stupid show?
Yeah, it was so before it was before streaming, and I knew it was going to be a good show. I actually thought it was going to be too good for network. So I'm really glad we lasted. I thought it was too smart for network.
Like Arrested Development type of thing, totally meaning it's like people can't wow interesting, that's interesting? And so you wanted SNL?
I did. I was up for SNL in nineteen ninety one. Only took thirteen short years to get the office. Long time in between a lot of waiting tables, a lot of different cities, a lot of you know, crazy crazy gigs and off Broadway and comedy clubs, oh my god, you name it.
Have you ever done SNL?
No, I'm not. I did a voice in one of Robert Speigel's cartoons he used to do Saturday Evening Saturday TV fun House, and I remember they did like a parody of Charlie Brown Christmas and I was Lucy.
And wasn't that like, was that oddly like the pinnacle of your whole life just even being on SNL for a second or now totally and actually even being.
Up for it. But I had two friends that were up for it and actually got it the year that I was up for it, So I was like sad for me, happy for my friends, Like thank God for therapy because it's a lot to navigate, you know.
That reminded me years ago. I went and I brought a girl with me to come with me on an audition that I went on, and she ended up getting the thing, but she wasn't even an actress. That was really hard because I sucked. But I forgot to tell you I'm an actress because I was just in a Lifetime movie. So I'll tell anyone else I'm My dream
is to be on SNL. And my only thing that I ever regretted in my life was the internship for SNL that I was granted, but NYU would not give me credit for it for whatever reason at that time, they would not give credit for that internship and SNL wouldn't let me take it because I wasn't getting credit. And I would have if this. If this Bethany, with this personality and this fight, I would have pushed my way through. It's always been a massive regret that I've
never gotten to do Saturday Night Live. But shout out to that writer's room because I've been in many skits without being there, like I've been. I've had Maya Rudolph talk about me. They've talked about the why and the skit. Like I've been on SNL without being there like three times. But it's my it's my dream. I'm you watch it now? You still obsessed with it?
Yeah, I mean I'm not obsessed, but I do watch it.
I'm obsessed with this guy, Marcelo. I think he's going all the way. I think he's that good. I really do. I'm obsessed with him. I message him, we like have messaged on social media, like I just and not a lot of people are talking about him, and I'm like, I feel like I want to be his like spoke person. I just I tell anyone who will listen about him too. I live for him. I just think he's great.
I'm not a pretty sure I can't cast him, but you know, maybe I'll get to work with him someday.
Yeah, you have to if you do something it suggests him in a role. I live for him. I want to be his manager, but I don't even think he has to pay makes I don't want to do all the work. So you were told no makeup a very little for the office, and you said you were representing the unpretty people.
Yes, I mean the office. I mean especially when we first started, there was not a show like that on television, with like the horrible lighting and you know, I mean first season Steve Carl's hair was terrible. It's like this horrible slick. You know. We were supposed to look like normal people in Scranton, right from Pennsylvania. So I can tell you Scranton is not the beauty.
G by the way, I've been to the outskirts of Scranton. If you could imagine that there are outskirts of Scranton, there are Hazelton, Hazelton, Pennsylvania. It's a sexy place. It's a really sexy place, like the normal.
People in the world. It's like, you know, you come to l New York, you feel like you see beautiful people. Yeah, you know, let's just represent the whole world, can.
We Yeah, I got it. So you did you've done everything you did Dancing with the Stars.
I did season at four years ago, season twenty eight, and I actually did four too. I did like forty five of the live tour shows on tour with those guys. It was amazing.
You like these You like being part of a group, like you like being part of a whole, like camaraderie, group, like theater production type of thing.
I'm an ensemble person. I was. I'm the youngest of seven kids. I was born into an ensemble.
Yes, you had an ensemble cast at your house. That's so true.
So you like total ensemble yes?
And I are you in a relationship?
I am. I met my boyfriend on the office. He's an NBC photographer. He's a TV photography just all the big photoshoots for every big show like Seinfeld Friends, Will and Gray's Frasier.
I think I remember that.
Yeah, yeah, but we met the show. So I actually got a I got a show at four and a guy. So we've been together for eighteen years.
Wait, so forty Okay, So you don't have children.
No, he's got three kids.
And do you feel like they're like your step kids?
I mean yeah, yeah, during my life and I love them and you know, of course their mom's still around, but yeah, yeah, it's it's been really fun to watch them grow up and and you know, and to have a small part in their lives.
Did you want to have children or that was a choice at what age that you said this is not my path, you know what.
I was still waiting tables when I got the office. I was forty when I got the office, So I was like, I remember there was a woman I worked with who got pregnant, and I was like, I don't think I could be pregnant waitress. I don't think that's I don't think that's what. I don't think I want kids that better. I also feel like being one of seven kids, I felt like it was hard enough to just take care of myself. I didn't know if I had the equipment to actually mother someone else.
So got it, I understand, I got it. I've been talking a lot about like the different choices and the constructs that society puts on people and it gets them on this path. And like this other podcast that I've been doing about divorce has all these people talking about their truths about having kids and thinking they had to do everything early and thinking they had to check all these boxes and thinking about what their families want and thinking about what they needed to do, and not being honest.
And I don't know. I just think young girls are being marketed so many different things and it's irresponsible because it's not that it's bad, it's just not everything is what it's cracked up to be, and not everybody wants to be, you know, in every single telephone commercial, like meaning every like what it's supposed to look like. It's just it's very interesting. I've been thinking about that a lot. So you also are attached to the Alzheimer's charity, the Magic of Music Gala, So this is.
The most lynch. Yeah, this is my second year with them. I hosted last year and last year we gave know we're to see you because he was as he's given a lot of money and you know, we're just trying to we're trying to get a cure. We're trying to raise enough money to make a difference. Uh, this this disease is this. I just feel like it's rampant and I just feel like it just affects everybody in the families that I mean, my Rosemary, who was my godmother.
She was so smart. She had she had a law degree, she was a sports writer in the fifties, and a mom, you know, and and a wife like you know, and and I when she got it, I thought, oh my gosh, this is like the smartest. It doesn't matter, it just it can affect anyone. But to watch someone you love become less of who they are, it's just it's just tragic, devastating. It's devastating.
And this is you and Jane do this together. Does she have a connection to Alzheimer's too?
I think we all do. Yeah, I know there's I think she has a friend. Yeah, there's there's you know, I won't speak for her, but I know, like we like, again, this is a really this is this is a really important victory that we have to win. Like we've got to figure this out. So I always feeling like what I want to say is like, if you can make it to the gala, it's it's May ninth at Sony Pictures,
you know, on the lot. But whatever, if you can just give any amount to the Awesomer's Association, like anything helps, Like that's really what why I'm even mentioning it, because we I just hope we get closer. I mean, I hope we actually in our lifetime to see at least figure out how to prevent it something.
It's yeah, it is.
Great, such a crazy mystery right now.
And it's sad. It's sad. It's like, yeah, it's like a loss of who you were, you get yeah, and that's sad. Yeah, it is. It's tragic. I don't think. I don't think about it that much and now I'm thinking about it. Is she one of your closest friends, Jane?
Absolutely? Yeah. We known each other for oh my god, since like nineteen eighty eight. She was understudying at Second City. The first time I went to see a show there and I went to study there, and then a couple of years later I became her understudy. It's like, life is so so so crazy. And then when we were
both in Hollywood, we would sing It Benefits together. And then Lee ended the same year that the Office ended, and uh, she just she got asked to do a cabaret act and she's like, I want to bring it, so we ended up doing it together.
We had It's so much better if you think about it. You guys have had parallel lives and now that I think about two massive shows, right that, Yeah, that are like complete your career.
But you know, I'll tell you, with that bigger career, it goes more responsibility. So I probably had more fun. Yeah, I don't have big shoes to fill out On our regular basis.
Do you have like a social life or you like, do you have the right level of work, Like you get to have a lot of free time also, I mean sometimes yeah.
I mean I feel like I have a lot, a lot of flexibility, which is fun. And you know, my boyfriend I we don't live together. That's another secret to our success.
Because he has his kids in his house and you just and that's all not because it's.
Not even not so much of that, but it's it's because for a while the kids weren't there. Uh, they came back in their twenties. But I feel like, you know, he never he got married to his high school sweetheart years ago and then never lived alone before. So I feel like he really enjoys having a space to himself, and I enjoyed my space. And I don't want to you know, I mean, it's not broken. I'm in the city.
Here, no, no, no, no, it's I love this. You wait to say it again. You're in the city, he's aware.
He's by the beach. He's literally a block for the beach. So it's it's been toad. It's no nice.
So how do you organize it? Like over there? You're on the weekends.
Because he's he's because I'm no dummy. It's nice to be at the beach on the.
Way, Yeah, exactly. And what about the stuff, because all I ever care about is this stuff. Where's all the stuff?
Well, you know, we kind of it's I have some stuff at his house, he has some stuff at mine. But basically we just kind of keep it stepparate, you know, because there wasn't there was It's not like we lived together and that we had to find another place. You know. It's kind of it worked out perfectly.
Yeah, Now you don't want to have kids, he has three kids. There's no chance you want to get married legally married?
True, I think so, I don't think so. I mean, I don't, I don't. I don't know. I feel like maybe for insurance purposes, but I don't even think. I know.
You think it's weird, like you're gonna wear a big puffy dress for what you don't want to have kids, and I you have to sign a legal contract. I'm shoving my narrative on you right now, and I.
Just want to find it with you. I mean, because I feel like it's and also we don't want to ruin a perfectly good relationship. There's an archetype that you step into when you do those kind of ceremonies, and sometimes your expectations change, like it's, oh my god, just that messes it up.
By the way, But but no, there are different expectations and other people's expectations on you too, the society's expectations, and it's just a different shape and there are kids and all that. I totally totally get it. Where do you have to go today?
I'm actually going to the Turner Classic Movie Festival tonight. They're showing up Pulp Fiction tonight with Josh volt uber Thurman and Samuel L. Jackson. And then I'm presenting this weekend one of the MGM musicals with Jidigar. Like I get to write, like do a little history lesson and write about I used to wait on so many old stars when I worked in Beverly Hills before I got the office.
So yeah, where did you Where did you work? Because I was a waitress.
I worked at Kate Madelini, but I also.
Worked in Oh. I loved Kate Madeleine and Losianaga. Yeah, and they were always opened, like really late or twenty four hour. Didn't used to be open twenty four hours a day.
You're really late. They were open till four am on the weekend. That's still there, No, it's the building still there. It's been empty for probably nine years. I think.
Wait, that was so yes, that was so iconic. I was not a waitress. I totally just I was a waitress, but not in La I was a hostess at La Scala. Oh, of course for years, slinging chop salads. I was. I was. I controlled who got seated, and everybody wanted to sit there, all the celebrities and all the writers. I met so many people in the entertainment industry that I still know today from sitting at the front of La Scala. And I was meeting paid eight an hour. I was driving
there with my Ford probe. But I got a free salad, which they don't do anymore. But I also would add, you've had the scholar chop salad, right, that's delicious. It only it's the best scam in the world because it's literally iceberg, a lot iceberg, which costs zero cents, iceberg, lettuce, salami, provolone, chickpeas, the vinaigrette that I can make. But I would order, I would add tomatoes, I would add turkey, I would add avocado. I made that a twenty was a twenty
one dollar salad. I was so proud that I got it for free every day.
I also worked in New York at a restaurant across from Carnegie Hall.
The Red Eye Grill, and I know the Red Eye Grin.
I did the private parties both of those places.
Yeah, you know what you're reminding me that, like when my daughter's older, Like, that's a rite of passage. You must wait tables. I waited tables.
It's a long islid man, you really. And it's funny because after I got the Office, I found myself on like some people. I remember JJ Abrams saw me at the Emmys the year that the Office won, and he's like, oh my gosh, you were our waitress. We love you, We're so happy for you. And then there are other people who wanted to talk to me, who did not remember that I was their waitress who were really mean, and I was like, oh, I'm going to keep it moving because I mean, I would never spit in their food.
But I'm like, I'm not going to hang out and talk to you.
No, And I remembered I was a waitress too, because actually La Scala, on the days that they were short, I would wait the tables, and the same thing at claw Foutee, the restaurant at Sunset Plaza. I've had every job, and I that's probably why I'm the way, and I loved it. I always loved working. I loved waitressing, I
loved hostessing. I love to work. What I didn't like was when I was in pr in La and I it was before there was even like a thing to do the envelos and we still lick envelopes for invitations and close them. And I remember I'd have the phone on my shoulder making phone calls, and the owner of the place that the head publicists would say that we weren't allowed to make personal phone calls, like why fucking licking in, why can't I make I hate stupid shit like that.
I used to sneak on the phone because it was like back when I had a page or this is like get on the nineties, Yes, trying to get your messages. And I was always sneaking. I always had the code they had, like a secret code to the phone, and I always got it, and I would make really short calls and just check my voicemail and like for you know, because otherwise you're out of business. Forget.
That was another stupid thing about the nineties and the eighties, like not being able to use the phone. Like why right now everybody could text all day at work? No one's I'm not like going to my assistant. Oh are you texting at work? Who cares to call? Whoever? You want? Just get your job done.
Right, as long as you get your job done. I know as a long did you get susation?
Yeah, So it's well, that's that's very very archaic. That's funny. All right. Well you're the best, and I love talking to you. I just think you're so great.
You could talk to you. Yeah, and you know, my dad owned a bar, so I feel like I'm a bar owner's daughter. Anyway, It's all good. I love tables. I wish I wish we got to work together at a restaurant. That would be so crazy fun.
We would be friends and we would laugh. We would but maybe else you and we're in l A a.
Rise of the same. People love you. Thank you so much, Thanks Bathony.
Bye,