Emily Hampshire has no problem admitting she doesn’t always like what she’s in. “It’s weird for me to be in something I like so much,” she says of Self Reliance, Jake Johnson’s dark-web game show comedy. “Usually you never know—it could be great and not find its audience. Even Schitt’s Creek—nobody watched that first season. It only became popular once we were finished.”
That kind of hindsight makes her laugh at the whole business of promotion. “It feels fake to go around saying, ‘This movie is amazing,’ when half the time you’re crossing your fingers someone even sees it,” she says. “But with this, I watched it at South by Southwest, and it was the first time in years I’d been in a theater where everyone was laughing together. I thought, oh, right, this is what movies are supposed to feel like.”
The film, written, directed, and starring Johnson, finds his character Tommy offered a shot at a million dollars by Andy Samberg (as Andy Samberg) if he can survive assassins trying to kill him. Hampshire plays one of Tommy’s sisters, with Mary Holland as the other. “From my character’s point of view, this is the greatest thing that’s ever happened to the family—like, on a Wednesday,” she laughs. “So she’s mostly there to poke and stoke the fire of Tommy going bananas. Playing opposite Mary was perfect. I can’t believe we haven’t played sisters before. Honestly, it felt like we probably are sisters in some alternate universe.”
That alternate-universe vibe might explain why Hampshire thrives in projects that are never fully realistic. “People ask why I’m always drawn to heightened worlds,” she says. “It’s because you can tell the truth without being too earnest. Even Schitt’s Creek was like that. No one really lives in a town where every outfit Moira wears looks like it was stolen from a Vatican funeral, but the emotions were real.”
Of course, Hampshire’s character Stevie Budd has become one of the defining “relatable misanthropes” of the last decade, a sardonic motel manager who accidentally became the heart of the show. “That’s the funny thing—Schitt’s Creek wasn’t popular until it was basically over. First season, no one cared. Which, in retrospect, was great, because we had no pressure. We were free to make a show where Catherine O’Hara sings ‘Danny Boy’ at a wake and Eugene Levy just nods along like this is normal life.”
Comparisons between Schitt’s Creek and Self Reliance aren’t lost on her. “Both are written and led by actors who star in their own material. Both are ensemble comedies where half the fun is just watching everyone else steal scenes. The difference is that Schitt’s Creek had wigs and wine, while Self Reliance has assassins and Andy Samberg in a limo. Honestly, I’m good with either.”
Outside of laughing her way through dark comedies, Hampshire admits she’d rather be working than having “fun.” “I never want to go to the party,” she says. “But once I’m there, I realize I’ve made a friend and it’s fine. Really, I’d just rather stay home and work. That’s my fun.” She grins. “The irony is I want to be invited. I just don’t want to go.”
Comedy wasn’t always the obvious lane for Hampshire. Early in her career, casting directors literally told her she wasn’t funny. “My manager sent me to an acting class to fix the ‘not funny,’” she recalls. “The teacher watched me do a scene, paused, and then asked if I’d ever seen Mary Hartman, Mary Hartman. She told me, ‘That’s your kind of funny.’” Hampshire laughs. “So, yeah, being told I wasn’t funny ended up steering me toward the exact kind of comedy I’ve built my career on. Thanks, I guess?”
That kind of stubborn self-awareness explains her obsession with Mary Hartman, Mary Hartman, the long-in-development Norman Lear reboot she was working on before his death. “A teacher once told me back in 2008, ‘You should remake that show. That’s your kind of funny.’ And now it’s actually happening. Norman’s heart was in it until the end, which makes me want to do right by him.”
Until then, Hampshire will keep busy with season two of The Rig (“shocking and exciting”), a graphic novel (Amelia Awood: Basic Witch), and whatever else lets her turn existential dread into comedy. “Look,” she shrugs, “I never fixed the funny. But maybe that’s the point. You don’t change for the world. You let the world come to you. In the meantime, I’ll be in the corner not having fun having fun.”
Watch the interview above and then check out the trailer below.
