Rachel Dratch talks to The Advocate

I saw the musical Minsky’s at LA’s Ahmanson Theatre a few months back and lemme tell you, every time Rachel Dratch was onstage, people were laughing their heads off. The seven-year veteran of Saturday Night Live is such a wonderful comic presence and if the show does make it to Broadway – which is the plan I believe – I hope she’ll go with it.

Anyway, one of my very favorite interviewers, Brandon Voss, chatted with Rachel for The Advocate. She co-stars with Nia Vardalos in the film My Life In Ruins opening in theaters today and also has a new movie out on DVD: Spring Breakdown. The latter film screened at Sundance and co-stars Amy Poehler and Parker Posey but some studio boneheads decided to skip theaters and release it straight to DVD.

Brandon talks to Rachel about that and much more. Here’s a taste:

Well, you’ve certainly played your fair share of lesbians, like Loretta in SNL’s “Gays in Space” sketches.
Yeah, it’s like a joke between my friends. Every time my agent calls with an audition, I get all excited. Then I open up the script, and it’s always like, “A 50-year-old lesbian walks in … ” [Laughs] I’m straight, so I don’t understand why I always get offered lesbian parts. If it’s funny, I’ll do it, but I’ve turned a bunch down. I have to sift through them so I don’t get too typecast.

What’s the key to creating a funny lesbian character?
For me it usually involves a mullet. That’s the problem: I think they’re all starting to run together. When you’re on SNL, you want to go big and broad, but one of my favorites — this is like Rachel’s Hall of Lesbians — was the cat wrangler I got to play on 30 Rock. That woman had the longest mullet in history.

You played frumpy nerd Beula in the recent Los Angeles production of Minsky’s, a musical that’s reportedly expected to come to Broadway. Is she a lesbian too?
No, but she does have a questionable bowl cut. Not to stereotype! It’s so funny because when you’re in comedy you’re sort of allowed to make fun of stuff like that, but I can just imagine this in print on Advocate.com and having a lesbian mob angry at me for stereotyping lesbian hairstyles.