Jessica Stevenson bounces into her chair. It’s a plush chair in the Dorchester Hotel, so you can get away with sort of thing without doing yourself a mischief. She smiles and shakes her head.
“I’m rubbish at interviews,” she charmingly declares. “I’m quite serious-natured and people are always disappointed that I’m an autistic pedant.”
Really?
“Oh yeah. It’s just me. I’m always morphing into something else. I read interviews where I say that I don’t eat wheat and I avoid caffeine and I think to myself – that was last month! I find it really difficult to nail myself in an interview. But I’ve had lots of practise lately, so I am getting better. See, I’ve done it again. I’ve just contradicted myself.”
Born in Lewisham and raised in Brighton, Ms. Stevenson took to the stage in her teens, later finding film work in Peter Greenaway’s The Baby Of Macon. Nominated for a Laurence Olivier Award in 2003, she has kept up with ‘proper acting’ over the years, but the comedy bug bit early, when she and Katy Carmichael formed double act, The Liz Hurleys. Since then, Jessica has written and starred in the cult series Spaced with Simon Pegg and clocked up appearances in Black Books and The Royle Family.
“I’ve no thespian background,” she tells me. “But I always enjoyed my mum mimicking friends and neighbours until we fell about the place. So I picked it up from her and after that, I took any opportunity to be a loud clown. Big brazen show-off, that’s me.”
Currently, you can catch Ms. Stevenson in Confetti, a delightful mockumentary aimed squarely at the big fat gauche wedding industry, with dialogue improvised by a veritable who’s who of British comedy.
“Well, I suppose the wedding industry is a bit less evil than the oil industry,” Jessica says. “I mean, I think most people feel that marriage is this personal, romantic moment destroyed by a big tacky commercial business. But if you want to spend money then go for it. It’s an honest thing to spend your cash on. Isn’t there some relationship between the amount of money you spend and the likelihood that you’ll stay together? If you’ve bankrupted yourself first time around, you’re not going to do it again.”
So I guess she hasn’t encountered the curse of the funny girl. For is it not cardinal to The Rules, that you don’t make jokes if you want to bag a husband? Isn’t there some guff about men not wanting to date David Letterman?
“Oh, that brilliant. It’s true, though. I totally duped my husband. We’ve been together since we were young. But he didn’t realise he was with a funny woman until several years into the relationship. I’d be laughing and joking with my friends, then I’d get to his doorstep and clam up. I kept that one very quiet. It was a couple of years after that revelation before I let it slip that I was actually quite clever too. It’s terrible that girls always feel the need to do that, but I demurred my way into his heart, then turned around and let him have it. Actually, I’m hilarious. Ha Ha.”
Not all that rubbish at interviews, is she?