Q&A with Yvette Nicole Brown

Actress Yvette Nicole Brown, who plays Shirley Bennett on the NBC sitcom “Community,” appeared at Ackerman Grand Ballroom on Monday along with show creator Dan Harmon, castmates Donald Glover and Alison Brie, and four of the show’s executive producers, for a screening of an upcoming episode and a question-and-answer session. Brown talked to the Daily Bruin’s Alex Goodman after the event.

Daily Bruin: What is the atmosphere like working on the set of “Community”?
Yvette Nicole Brown: We have a lot of fun ““ it’s very naughty, very blue, very loud and crazy but in a good way. Everybody is super excited to have jobs, and I mean cast, crew, writers, everybody, so we just come together every day and are happy to be there and try to do the best job we can.

DB: Do you play the role your character Shirley plays on the show on the set?
SG: Totally … I’m the prude. I’m like what you saw today with Donald (Glover) doing his thing, and I was like, “Oh my god, Donald, people are watching!” I’m kind of the maternal one, so I do kind of play that role in real life as well.

DB: What’s it like working with Chevy Chase?
SG: Chevy’s an icon and a legend, so just about what you would imagine working with somebody from “Saturday Night Live,” he knows where all the bodies are buried. It’s a great experience.

DB: Is he anything like his crazy, eccentric character?
SG: There are facets of that in his acting style, but he’s really kind of quiet. He’s a silly man, he likes to laugh at things ““ I say silly in a good way ““ but he’s not coming in tossing bananas across the room or anything crazy like that. He’s a regular guy who likes to have fun.

DB: How involved are you in the writing process of the show?
SG: Not involved. We’re allowed to do improv at the end of scenes, we can add some lines or whatever, and sometimes that will make it in. A lot of what Donald (Glover) does on the show, little bits and things that he does, a lot of that is stuff he’s come up with, but really everything’s on the page when we get the script. The writers and executive producers are amazing, and we just say what they write.

DB: What was your college experience like?
SG: I went to the University of Akron in Ohio, and … in the summers of my high school years I went to community college and took some computer courses. Actually, UCLA was one of my dream schools, I wanted to go here or to Howard University … and my mom said that UCLA was too far away because I lived in Ohio. So I never applied, but when I first moved to L.A., I would come and drive up the street and look at the school and go, “I could have (gone) here.”

DB: On the show, community college is portrayed very much like high school, with cafeteria fights and cliques and everything. Was your school in any way like that?
SG: I wish I went to Greendale. No, my school was very professional, we didn’t have a dean like Dean Pelton, where anything goes. … It was a fun experience, but it was not a wacky experience.

DB: Where did you go after college?
SG: I actually came right to L.A., I started off as a singer. I came out here to be a singer and worked everywhere. I worked at Motown, I worked at MGM, didn’t pursue singing fully as an artist but worked behind the scenes in music, then became a legal secretary, started doing commercials. I feel like I’ve lived a thousand lifetimes.

DB: Any plans to get back into singing or to work it into the show?
SG: Shirley has sung now a couple of times on the show, and I think she’s singing again in the Christmas episode, and other shows that I’ve been on. I sang on “Drake & Josh,” I sang on “Boston Legal,” so whenever there’s an opportunity for me to sing I will do it, but as far as seriously pursuing a music career, I think that ship has sailed.

DB: The usual trajectory for a community college student is two years, and you guys are now in the second season. Do you have any insight into where Shirley or the rest of the characters are going to go?
SG: I don’t think there’s any danger of anybody graduating, because no one really studies. Annie might get out, but Annie is so dependent on all of us in a bad way that I don’t think, even if she could graduate in two years, I think she’d still stretch it out to four or however long we’re all going to be there. Shirley in particular never opens her books, I don’t know if anyone’s noticed. She never opens her books, so I don’t think Shirley’s getting out any time soon. I think we’re all going to be there a while.

DB: The group dynamic is integral to the show’s success. Did that happen quickly?
SG: It happened instantaneously. We did a week of rehearsal at Sony before we started shooting the pilot, and we all have the mental level of 3-year-olds, I think we’re all toddlers, so I think you get a bunch of toddlers together, and they start throwing stuff at each other and laughing and rolling around, and that’s kind of what we do, so it was really instantaneous. We all have different comedy styles, but they all are complementary I think, so it’s a good time, and it happened instantly.

DB: Do you have a sense of how the show is being received?
SG: No, that’s why I love coming to things like this. … We very rarely get to watch the audience watch the show, so it’s always interesting to see what they laugh at. Besides tonight, the other experience we’ve had is Comic-Con, and we’re like the little show that could, we’re like the underdog. We had no idea that anybody was watching at all, and we came out to Comic-Con, and there was this roar of humanity just screaming for us when we came out and a standing ovation and flashbulbs going off, and we were like, “Oh my God, people are really watching us.” They said each of our names, and they were screaming for us. … It’s times like this when we realize, okay, people are watching. It might be a small group right now, but they’re rabid ““ the people who like the show really like it. We just need them to get like 12 more friends a piece to tune in as well, and it will be a little better for us. But we’re overjoyed, and no, on a day-to-day basis, we’re at our study room set, making the show, and we have no idea that anybody’s watching. It’s always a nice surprise.

DB: Do you usually see the finished product of the episodes after they’ve been completed?
SG: We see it when the audience sees it … the night it airs. This was one of the first times ever I’ve seen an episode before it aired. I watch every week.

DB: Is it strange watching the episodes?
SG: No, I’m getting used to the way they edit it. We do so many takes, you pretty much have an idea of what they could put together, and you were there when they filmed it for most of it, so it’s like, OK, they used that one, that was when Alison (Brie) did something really funny right there, I understand why they used that one. It comes together in a way that you can expect.
E-mail Goodman at [email protected].