Busy Philipps doesn’t have to act. The Freaks and Geeks alum has enough going on. She’s the author of a best-selling memoir, she’s the host of a popular podcast, and her Instagram account runs strong. She was even ready to give up the job that first made her a name. But then they pulled her back in: As per The Daily Beast, Tina Fey made her reconsider quitting the acting side of the biz when she gave her one of the leads in the new Peacock show Girls5eva.
Philipps recently appeared on the publication’s podcast The Last Laugh, where she discussed her two decades in the entertainment industry, dating back to Dawson’s Creek and including the likes of her short-lived late-night E! show Busy Tonight. She said her disillusionment with acting reaches back to 2017, when NBC didn’t pick up a pilot, produced by Fey, that would have seen her star alongside Carey Wilson and Bradley Whitford.
“That was when I was like, I’m done. I don’t want to act anymore,” she said, confessing that she felt like she “hit the end of the road creatively,” and adding, “I really struggled with this industry and the systems in place and so many things that just felt fundamentally stacked against me from the beginning.” Besides, it seemed, for her at least, that “the jobs didn’t exist,” and that those that did were “like, oh, three lines as Jennifer Garner’s best friend?”
When Fey came calling, she’d even stopped going to auditions. The rest, as they say, is incredibly recent and still-developing history. Since dropping onto Peacock in early May, Girls5eva — in which Philipps plays part of a ’90s all-girl pop group who reconvene after their one hit becomes popular once more, with messy results — has received rave reviews. So it seems we may see more of the one-time Kim Kelly from here on out.
(Via The Daily Beast)
