Kristen Wiig is one of the most daring actresses today. Not content to be pigeon-holed as simply an SNL-alum “comedienne,” she has taken her absurd comic talent into territory that starts to feel downright serious.
Wiig baffled onlookers when she and Will Ferrell starred in a Lifetime movie recently called A Deadly Adoption that almost everyone was sure was a spoof of the usual Lifetime fare. Wiig denies that it was.
“No, it wasn’t a parody at all. I think people assumed it was [a comedy] because Will and I were in it, but it wasn’t. Well, I guess you can call it a mislabeling. I thought it was great, I was very happy with it and we had a lot of fun making it, but the goal was never to make a parody.”
Kristen wiig and Will Ferrell in a lifetime movie…. This can't be real.
— meg fink (@meggyswaggy) July 8, 2015
Kristen Wiig stars in the currently-airing IFC mini-series The Spoils Before Dying. The show is the brainchild of Matt Piedmont and Andrew Steele, who also brought us The Spoils of Babylon, its IFC predecessor.
In The Spoils Before Dying, Michael Kenneth Williams (“Here comes Omar!) stars as Rock Banyon, a 1950’s jazz pianist-turned-private eye. Kristen Wiig is Delores O’Dell, a music hall chanteuse. Will Ferrell narrates as the “author” of the show.
But the shock of the series so far came when Kristen Wiig was called upon to sing a number called “Booze and Pills” in a smoky club.
Splitsider asked the show’s creators about Wiig’s performance.
I’ve gotta be honest,” Andrew Steele said, “it shocked us too. And by the way, that song was hardly worked out. She hardly had any time to rehearse it. She walked into a booth, sang it, and improv’d the end of it, in key, in front of us. We were literally blown away.”
Literally?
Kristen Wiig singing jazz is everything.
— Isa (@onh4ndig) July 10, 2015
Matt Piedmont teased more to come from Wiig, “And she sings another song in a later episode that I think is even a better song, and she’s even more skilled at it. And I won’t spoil it, but she has another skill as well you’ll be maybe shocked to know that she has. But she’s a brilliant singer and she nailed two songs in an afternoon, and it’s like a revelation. Like Steele said, we both knew that she couldn’t be more talented, but the fact that she literally came in there and nailed a very complicated jazzy song right away was a miracle.”