Chasing Amy

Amy Sedaris has a blink-and-you-miss-her part in the new Diablo Cody–penned flick Jennifer’s Body, in which Megan Fox plays a vampiric, boy-eating teen. Despite all the isn’t-that-her? cameos (Dolly Parton’s “Better Get to Livin’?” video, an online Jewish parody of Mad Men called Meshugene Men), Sedaris made her name with a starring turn as the wackadoo Jerri Blank in Comedy Central’s Strangers with Candy, co-created by her old Second City cohorts Stephen Colbert and Paul Dinello. We called the author of the best-selling I Like You: Hospitality Under the Influence as she worked on a new book due out next year.

Time Out Chicago: You don’t get to eat any teen-boy flesh in Jennifer’s Body.
Amy Sedaris: I don’t. I worked a day on it, and I barely remember it. It’s the first time I was a mother in anything. They never give me kids.

TOC: They don’t usually entrust you with children?
AS: No! No! [Laughs]

TOC: Did it make you think about becoming a mom in your own life?
AS: No! [Laughs]

TOC: No maternal clock ticking.
AS: No, ever. I always knew I didn’t want kids, and I didn’t want to get married. When I see babies, I like what they have on without noticing the baby itself. I’m like, “Oh, my God! Look at the little turtles and bikinis on your shirt! Can I try this on?”

TOC: How’s the entertaining going?
AS: Since the book came out, I don’t entertain that much ’cause the expectations are too high. If you can do something for me, I’ll make dinner for you. But I’m working on a new book: crafts and projects—a birdhouse, potholders, stuff I make in real life. At 3am, you go with what you have: It’s gotta be in this house somewhere.

TOC: “If you can do something for me”?
AS: I’ve got a couple friends that are really handy with a saw, with shelving. I invite them over ’cause I’m like, “Will you make this curtain? Will you hem this?”

TOC: So not so much for their scintillating dinner conversation.
AS: They work, I feed them.

TOC: Any guests who don’t work for their supper?
AS: I have a couple freeloader friends, but it’s okay. I know they’re gonna come in with their arms flying in the air empty-handed. If you know I’m gonna feed you or give you a cocktail, you should have something in your hands, be it a stick of butter or some straight pins.

TOC: An offering.
AS: An offering, yeah. Some stamps.

TOC: What’s it like to have a sibling write about your childhood?
AS: It doesn’t bother me at all because David makes us all look good. It may not seem like it, but he does.

TOC: So it was even worse in real life?
AS: [Laughs] Yeah.

TOC: You saw his recent piece in The New Yorker?
AS: About my dad in his underpants. Everything he wrote about us singing “Kookaburra” and my father in his underpants, that’s all true.

TOC: And pissing your father off.
AS: Yeah. Getting smacked. My father hated more than anything to hear us laugh. We’d get on his nerves. Imagine: Six kids, you’ve worked all day, you come home, we’re drawing on the furniture. I don’t blame him.

TOC: Yet he produced some funny kids.
AS: I know, isn’t that funny? We had something to laugh at, right? My father.

TOC: How’s the cupcake business going?
AS: Everyone’s into cupcakes now, so I just got bored with it. I’ll do special orders. But butter is so expensive now. It’s $5.50 a pound here. And I had a cockroach problem after a while.

TOC: The roaches love your cupcakes.
AS: Oh, my God. I got the best reviews.

TOC: Pet peeves: I understand one of yours is somebody sitting on a rocking chair but not rocking.
AS: Uh! Drives me crazy.

TOC: Any others?
AS: Someone sends you a fan letter but not a stamp or envelope; they expect you just to give them everything. That bothers me. I get little fistfuls of fan mail, and I answer it all, but I’m, like, where’s the postage? Why should I do this?

TOC: How’s your bunny doing?
AS: She’s doing fantastic. Dusty. She’s a big communicator, this rabbit. When I’m getting ready to go to bed, she beats me to bed. When she wants a treat, she gets up on the couch to let me know.

TOC: No cage for Dusty, apparently.
AS: I live with her. This is her apartment.

TOC: It’s hard to find a place in Manhattan.
AS: It is. And I just really lucked out. [Laughs] I’m really fortunate.

Jennifer’s Body opens Friday 18.

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