Exclusive interview with Yvette Nicole Brown

Part 2

Foto: Yvette Nicole Brown - Copyright: Mitch Haaseth/Sony Pictures Television Photo
Yvette Nicole Brown
© Mitch Haaseth/Sony Pictures Television Photo

And which of the more down-to-earth storylines involving Shirley did you enjoy the most?

I really liked the foosball episode with Jeff because we get to see why Shirley is so afraid of going back to her rage filled past, he whole reason why she's trying to be so nice. And it's a healthy, respectable reason.

Music appears to play an important part in your life. Can you tell us a little bit more about your singing career? Did you appreciate the chance to sing in this year's season premiere and the Christmas episode?

I'd like to say thank you, first of all, for calling it a career because it surely was not a career! I was signed to Motown when I was a teenager. I was discovered by Michael Bivins, who discovered Boys II Men and New Creation and Bell Biv DeVoe. And I thought that I'd be a singer, I thought that's the way it would go. But the music business is a lot tougher than even acting has proven to be for me, and the rejection in music was harder than the rejection as an actor. So I just kind of shifted over to what wanted me more, if that makes sense. But I do absolutely love music so much, it's my first love and I'm grateful that I get to sing on "Community". I was on a kids show called "Drake and Josh" and I sang there, too. So throughout my acting career I've been allowed to sing different times and it is a great blessing every single time it happens. But yeah, music is my love, it's my absolute love.

Do you think it's harder to be rejected as a musician because you present your own words instead of someone else's like in a script?

Yeah, I think so. And even if you don't write your own songs, if you sing something and someone says "no, thank you", it feels like they don't like YOU. If you do an audition and they don't like you, it's like they don't like the character. They don't like the character, they don't like your characterization of this person. But when you sing and they go "Nah, I'm good", it's like they don't like me and it feels a lot more personal. If you really love it it's like putting your heart out there every single time and if it doesn't work out it's just devastating. At least it was for me. I don't know about other singers but it was really tough for me.

Last year you and Danny Pudi made a quick appearance as Buy More employees on "Chuck". How did that come about? Were you a big fan of the show?

I am a big fan of the show and I'm a big fan of Zach Levi. Zach is a really good friend of mine in real life, I've known him for about ten years. Danny got cast to be a guest star on the show and I happened to be off work at "Community" that day. Because I know Zach and he was directing the episode I wanted to go visit them to support Danny as a guest star. And so as the day went on, Zach asked me "Hey, you wanna pop up in a scene?" and I was like "YES!". He literally drew me to hair and make-up, drew me to wardrobe and they came up with this silly bit of me kind of being interested in Danny's character for two seconds. It totally wasn't planned and we worked really hard to keep it a secret, we wanted it to be a surprise. People knew that Danny was doing the show but no one knew that I was going to pop up for two seconds. It was a little fun thing to do as friends.

The outcry from fans following last year's announcement of the NBC mid-season schedule must have been somewhat overwhelming for you and your fellow castmates. Would you agree that with hindsight, the hiatus also had some positive side effects for the show, for instance in terms of fan mobilization?

Definitely! It was very shocking for me, because I found out on Twitter. I get most of my news from Twitter these days which is actually amazing. I found out on Twitter and didn't really know the context of what was happening. I just knew that the fans were very very upset. We never stopped filming, so we never really felt like anything in our lives hat changed. But the fans literally rose up like this mighty horde of fanatics and they really fought for the show to be put back on which I think was NBC's plan all along, it just hadn't happened yet, you know? So it was a great thing and then around the same time we won the TV guide fan favorite poll and we were on the cover of the magazine. It was like a perfect storm of wonderfulness that let NBC know that we had a bigger fanbase that maybe our ratings show and it let us know how far our fans would go for us which was wonderful. So I don't even know if the words exist for me to talk about how much I adore the people who watch the show and how much we appreciate that.

You also synchronized a character in the animation series "Pound Puppies". How is that different from your work as an actress? Did you prepare differently for the job?

Yeah, voice over is amazing because you don't have to do your hair or make-up! You can roll out of bed, brush your teeth, take a shower and throw on some clothes and go to work. You're there for maybe an hour and get a whole cartoon done. So for someone who tends to be a little lazy like me I enjoy voice over a great deal. And as for preparing: as an actor I'm very expressive with my face and you can't express anything with your face when you're just a voice. That was the one thing I had to learn to do differently, I had to put surprise or anger or whatever actually in my voice instead of expecting the camera to pick it up from my face. That's the one big difference.

myFanbase is a website that's devoted to American television shows. Do you have one or more favorite shows?

I don't know how many might be airing in Germany, but do you guys have "Revenge"?

You mean the show with Emily VanCamp?

Yes! It's amazing! And there's a new wonderful show with Julia Louis-Dreyfus called "Veep" that just started airing on HBO. I also love "Smash", I don't know if you guys have this show yet? I'll try to think of some older shows that you guys might have: "Cougar Town" is great, "True Blood" is amazing, "Law and Order SVU" is one of my favorites – I mean, I could go on forever, I‘m such a TV fan myself so that I ended up on a television show that people love the way that I love shows is just miraculous. What are your favorites?

Right now "Game of Thrones"...

Oh yeah, that's a good one!

...and "Community" of course!

Oh thank you! You obviously watch the show, this was one of the best interviews I had because you know so much about the characters and stuff which is really cool.

Thanks and thank you very much for taking the time to do have this little chat.

Thank you, I appreciate you calling all the way from over there, that's really sweet of you!

Lena Stadelmann & Willi S. - myFanbase