Funny Business, by Eve MacSweeney, was originally published in the March 2012 issue of Vogue.
I had never seen anything like it.
And it wasn’t that people liked her because they knew who she was.
Photographed by Annie Leibovitz.Vogue, March 2012.
It was just something that connected from the first line out of her mouth.
Wiig’s universe has tilted on its axis since then.
Not that the preternaturally modest Wiig would ever willingly concede as much.
People assume your life changes more than it does, she says.
Then, when pushed, If anything, people see me differently, and yes, there are opportunities.
They bond over the fact they both have holes, she says.
The thread is the way she pulls mumbling, underconfident women to the center of her comedy.
She plays small, awkward moments so well.
She has the kind of mystery you generally associate with an actress and not so much with a comedienne.
I have a go at make up my own version of a person, she says.
She was immediately great at it, and it’s a very hard job to be great at.
Her characters were broad but built out of incredibly subtle observations.
I answered phones in a law office, she remembers.
Someone explained it to me.
She lasted a day.
This year I’ve been an after-after sort of girl.
Sometimes I need to blow off steam and go dance really hard.
I’m going to need a lot of under-eye work, she deadpans.
Lately it’s been a seventies vibe with high-waisted pants and the blouses tucked in.
Now I’m much more of a sneakers, sweatshirt, leather jacket.
As for the Globes, she hasn’t decided what to wear yet.
I always say I want to look haunted.
(She ends up wearing a suitably spectral floaty and flesh-colored Bill Blass dress.)
She would like to direct.
And she’s feeling less afraid these days to take creative risks.
When you go out of your comfort zone and it works there’s nothing more satisfying.
Expectations of her are infinite.
I don’t go to a dinner party where peopledon’trefer to her as a genius, says Penn.
She’s a writer, she can invent characters and stories, and she has a touch that translates.
It’s her game to play.
