There are so many different women that have sprung to life in actress Allison Janney's capable hands:  C.J. Cregg in TV's The West Wing, the angry but loving mother in Juno and a host of small but memorable roles in indie films such as Margaret, Away We Go and Liberal Arts. Her latest creation, Betty in The Way, Way Back, is a loud-mouthed, brassy, borderline alcoholic mom who gives the intelligent script, a coming-of-age story about a boy on summer vacation, some welcome comic relief and zaniness.

At the film's press day, we sat down with Janney to discuss the film, her wild role in it, a few of her guilty-pleasure movies and a host of other topics. Throughout our conversation, sentences are punctuated with laughter, her somber, serious voice suddenly breaking into a laugh at any small thing she found funny--and Allison Janney finds quite a bit about the world to be hilarious.

Fandango: As a mother Betty comes across kind of harsh, making fun of her son's lazy eye--to his face!

Allison Janney: I think she's known her husband is gay for quite some time, and thus the drinking. She's still not really dealing with things, covering up the drinking with the excessive talking. I think she wants her kids to be on her side, which is awful when parents do that, and she's at that very vulnerable place where she needs them to be on her side and she also doesn't want her son to be hurt. Her methods are terrible but I wanted to make sure you saw that she really loved and cared about this boy.

Fandango: There are moments when she'll just grab him, hug him close. Very subtle but beautiful.

Janney: Well thank you for noticing. I wanted to put in those little moments. She loves this little boy and she's trying to give him this tough love, and she knows he's gonna get so much s**t from his peers in high school. He has no idea what hell he's going to face; she wants him to toughen up, hear it from her first so he can better face what's out there in the world.

Fandango: What was one of the most difficult scenes to film?

Janney: I think they discovered a little Betty goes a long way. The hardest for me was Betty's energy level. I am the exact opposite of Betty, I'm very lazy and slow and I'd have to gear up mentally. Sometimes I would almost start to cry before a take. She idles at a level that will break your heart and kill you. Steve Carell, he'd love it when they called cut because every muscle in my body would go slack and I'd sit like this [slumps over] and that was his favorite. I don't think I'm gonna push for a Betty sequel, no Betty spin-off.

Fandango: You have quite long monologues in this movie… were you free to improvise?

Janney: No, I didn't want to, they were very specific. Jim [Rash] and Nat [Faxon] worked on the script for a very long time, there were a couple things I threw in because either in the middle of the take I forgot my line and so I was stalling for time, like, I said "Come on, press my laundry." [WATCH THAT SCENE BELOW] That was not in the script, and there were another few things I put in but not because I was trying to make it better but because I forgot my line. [Laughs]  

 

Fandango: Was there any useful piece of advice you gave to anyone else on set?

Janney: Anna Sophia [Robb] [pictured below; plays Janney's daughter in the film] was about to go do the prequel to Sex and the City, The Carrie Diaries [series filming in New York]. I told her to protect herself. If you need to find a little place to go off and sit by yourself or at lunch be by yourself, don't worry about being antisocial or having everyone like you--you really have to look out for yourself because everyone else will want to poke at you. Don't be afraid to say what you need. If you don't want them to adjust your costume right before you shoot, then just say "Please, no." You have to really protect yourself and put up boundaries, but in a nice way so you don't come off like a bitch, like "DON'T YOU TOUCH ME!"

Fandango: Are you hoping to do any of your own writing or directing?

Janney: I was just thinking how boring I am, "God-- is this all you're doing?" I really don't have any interest in directing, I wish I could write. I'm going to attempt to try to find what my voice is, and maybe I could possibly produce something. Never directing. I would have to delegate someone to answer all the questions.

Fandango: What have you been reading this summer?  

Janney: I just finished Kristen Johnson's book Guts, because she was a friend of mind from New York and we had similar issues with being tall girls trying to start off as actresses. We started off in the theater together and I ran into her recently and she said "Why haven't you read my book!" I'm also reading a book on Buddhism. I don't have a good fiction right now. I need one.

Fandango: What's the first movie you remember seeing in theaters, and did it have an impact on you?

Janney: I really think this is gonna be very cliché and typical; my first movie was Bambi, and I just remember being horrified by it. Truly horrified. I never thought of a mother dying before, I don't think that concept entered my mind until I saw that movie; it was pretty traumatic for me. That's the way Nemo starts too. I was in that one.

Fandango: What's your favorite guilty-pleasure movie?

Janney: Groundhog Day, no matter when, every time that movie comes on I watch it. Any Hugh Grant movie. Love Actually is one of my favorite movies; it makes me sob. Legally Blonde movies too. The House Bunny, I loved Anna Faris in that one; I'm going to be working with Anna in this new CBS comedy series Mom and I was excited to get to work with her. I'll get some dirt on the behind the scenes of House Bunny.

Fandango: What's one question you're tired of getting asked in interviews?

Janney: "How do you memorize all those lines?" That's a question I get tired of being asked in general, everyone asks that. You just sit down and do it. This was my great analogy -- learning lines is to an actor, what putting running shoes on is to a runner, it's just something you have to do. You just do it. Everyone puts them on differently, you lace 'em differently, but you get it done--otherwise you're going to trip and fall and hurt yourself.

Check out our exclusive interview with the film's star Sam Rockwell.

For more on summer movies, visit our Summer Movie Guide