I recently interviewed Jeff Hiller via Zoom and, at the end of our conversation, flubbed his name. “Thanks, Joel,” I said, before catching myself and then stuttering, embarrassed, “Uh, I mean Jeff.”
For a week, I walked around ashamed of having referred to the comedian by his character’s name in the HBO show Somebody, Somewhere. It was my first interview with a Hollywood actor, and I assumed the faux pas would be the end of my short foray into entertainment writing.
Word would get out to Hiller’s famous friends that I was just a religious rube who didn’t know anything about “the industry,” and I’d be relegated to writing solely about how Christian nationalism is destroying the world. But when I eventually sat down with the transcript of our conversation, I discovered that he had done it too.
We were discussing a story arc that began early in the show’s first season. Joel, a lay leader in his congregation, received permission to use the church building one night a week for what he called “Choir Practice.”
It wasn’t a complete lie to call the weekly event “Choir Practice,” as there was singing. But the night was more akin to an open-mic cabaret show that attracted all the misfits of Manhattan, Kansas. (Bridget Everett, who stars in Somebody Somewhere and inspired the show, grew up in the “Little Apple” and is now a cabaret mainstay in the “Big Apple.”) There were gays, straights, drag queens and kings, the down-and-out, artists and dreamers, all gathered together for community and joy.
When the pastor learned about “Choir Practice,” Joel surrendered his key to the church and fled in shame before she could engage him in a conversation about it. Joel’s self-exile from the place of worship he loved was a source of pain and tension for his character throughout the show’s three-season run.
Watching the series, I couldn’t shake a suspicion: Would Joel’s pastor really have disapproved? I asked Hiller what he thought. Apparently, it wasn’t a novel suggestion.
“Yeah, in fact, one of the writers brought this up,” Hiller said. “They were thinking out loud, like, ‘I almost feel like…’ and I jumped in and said, ‘That Pastor Deb wouldn’t have minded, and it was all in Jeff’s mind?’ Uh—I mean Joel’s mind?”
And there it was, the conflation of Joel with Jeff, and Jeff with Joel.
It’s an honest mistake under any circumstance, but especially so for Hiller and his character, Joel. We spoke about the similarities between the two, and he has written about it in his new book, Actress of a Certain Age: My Twenty-Year Trail to Overnight Success.
The Theater of Liturgy
It all begins in church.
“I was born on a Sunday, so I didn’t go on that day,” Hiller told me when I asked about his earliest memories of church. “But I was there the next week. This isn’t a memory, but my parents loved to tell the story of how I had a complete blowout in my onesie on that first Sunday. And I went every Sunday after that.”
All of Hiller’s childhood memories were tied to church. His family was part of an Evangelical Lutheran Church of America (ELCA) congregation in San Antonio, where he grew up.
“I was so into it,” he told me. “I was in love with the mysticism and beauty of it all. I loved the music, singing hymns, and noticing when we were supposed to sit or stand.” Hiller’s voice grew even more excited at thinking about the drama of the liturgy.
He describes this in depth in his book. “Church was like theater,” he writes. This was compelling, as he had wanted to be a performer since seeing E.T., believing he could have played the part of Elliott with flair enough to “make Mr. Spielberg weep with pride.” But he didn’t know how to become the child star he wanted to be.
“Enter the Holy Spirit—aka that ol’ razzle-dazzle!” he writes in the book. “I didn’t know how to get work in theater, but church was theater!… Church had all the elements of a Las Vegas revue. The pastors put on robes, lit candles, and went from speaking right into singing. There is a very thin line between a Sunday service and a Liberace concert.”
This is probably as good a time as any—for those unfamiliar—to reveal that Hiller is a gay Christian.
Church as Safe Space
When he was growing up, the ELCA wasn’t as affirming of LGBTQ+ individuals as they are now, but he still felt at home there. “Don’t misunderstand me,” he writes, “we were still in Texas in the 1980s, so nobody was calling to defund the police, but it wasn’t nearly as conservative as many other local churches.”
In our conversation, he said, “You know, I didn’t really go to church out of fear of hell or some sense of shame. For me, it was so much more about the community and the ritual. As a kid, it was the only place I felt safe.”
Unlike Joel, Hiller’s life situation hasn’t led him back to the institutional church, although it still holds a special place in his heart. In reading his book, talking to him, and watching Somebody Somewhere, it’s hard to escape the impression that it is still, in many ways, his north star.
There is an especially moving scene in the first season of Somebody Somewhere when Joel is riding around in a party bus with his ragtag group of eccentric friends. In the midst of so much joy and merriment, he tells everyone, “This is church! This is church!”
He writes about the line in the book:
“That line wasn’t in the script. I improvised it. I tell you that because I want to brag that I improvised a line that made it into the final edit and also because I believe that deep in my core. I felt it in that moment, and that’s why I shouted it out. I felt safe with Bridget, the other actors, the crew, the director. In the same way that I reimagined God, I reimagined church. Community, friendship, showing love and compassion, helping people when they need help, laughing your ass off after three glasses of wine—that is church…[R]eclaiming church as a safe space is a wonderful gift in my life.”
Some in the press have accused Somebody Somewhere of creating a fantasy world with progressives, LGBTQ+ Christians, and affirming faith communities located in small, Midwest towns like Manhattan. Hiller told me they would say, “There’s no way this could happen. But you and I both know it can happen and does happen. I think the real fantasy of the show is finding a community in your late 40s and loving it.”
Sacred Journey
Actress of a Certain Age (Credit: Simon & Schuster)
Hiller’s book, Actress of a Certain Age, will be available on June 10 from Simon & Schuster. The memoir takes readers through a path that begins with the gay Lutheran kid in San Antonio, winds through his contemplation of ministry in college, his social justice work in Denver, and his long plod in the entertainment industry until he finally found wider notoriety with Somebody Somewhere. There are also detours through Namibia and his navigation of body image issues.
As I told him in our conversation, his book is right up there with those written by Anne Lamott and David Sedaris in its ability to make me laugh out loud in public. (I also confessed that one particular phrase made me blush when I looked it up—and I’m no prude when it comes to literature. That’s my way of communicating that the book is funny, inspiring, and PG-13.)
Our conversation concluded with me sharing Good Faith Media’s tagline, “There’s always more to tell,” and asking what his “more to tell” is.
“One of the big takeaways from the show is to not give up hope on yourself,” he said. “Or giving up hope in general, really. I’m not giving up on the idea that we can lead with compassion, especially as Christians who are taught to love thy neighbor, the Golden Rule, the 70 times seven, all that business. I’m going to fight like hell to keep that hope alive.”
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