The GQ&A: Katie Aselton 

The League this year. And writing a new film. And directing it. And being a mom. And also, awesome

For most guys, but especially fantasy football aficionados, Jenny MacArthur—the character played by Katie Aselton on FX comedy

The League—is something of a dream woman. Not only is she attractive, smart, funny, and "one of the guys," but she can also help you choose who to pick up off the waiver wire when a bye-week decimates your receiver corps. Assuming she\'s not feeding you misinformation to better her own team, that is. But while a growing number of folks have watched Aselton hold her own for two seasons against comics like Nick Kroll and Paul Scheer, said folks might not realize that Aselton and League co-star/real-life husband Mark Duplass got their start as actors and filmmakers in the "mumblecore" movement, making micro-budget independent films like The Puffy Chair and The Freebie (Aselton\'s directorial debut) that focused more on relationship minutiae and interpersonal drama than on vaginal hubris and three penis wine. In anticipation of The League\'s Season 3 premiere this Thursday, GQ chatted with the hyper-charming, hyper-busy actress/writer/director/wife/mother about the NFL lockout, making stuff up, her fantasy football failings, and her decidedly non-mumblecore-like second feature film, the "Deliverance with girls" thriller Black Rock (co-starring Lake Bell and Kate Bosworth).

Katie Aselton: I\'m kinda doing a lot of stuff; we\'re in the middle of production of The League, I\'m sorta toward the end of cutting my latest feature, which is exciting, so my brain is a bit scattered, but I think it\'s all coming together. I\'ve got a couple of full-time jobs, since I\'m raising a kid, so it\'s a lot.

GQ: As far as The League goes, was there a contingency plan in case the NFL lockout affected the regular season?

Katie Aselton: There definitely was. The writers definitely had wrapped their heads around it. But they also had their ear to every football expert there was, and I feel like they had information before the rest of the world did. We held production as long as we could, and then conveniently went into production right after the lockout ended.

Katie Aselton: No, we kinda just go into it. I think it\'s lightly addressed, but not nearly to the degree of panic of the rest of America\'s hysteria.

Katie Aselton: Yeah, it\'s actually almost 100% improvised. They give us an outline of the scene, which basically gives us the full arc of the story and some massive story points in there, but then everything else gets to be filled in by us, which is really awesome. We\'re given too much responsibility as actors on the show; it\'s terrifying.

GQ: Do they even give you the lines they want you to say during the scene?

Katie Aselton: Yeah, they do. Jeff and Jackie [Schaffer, The League co-creators], who write the majority of the episodes, are really, really funny human beings, and they definitely have a sense of humor that is the heart of the show, so there\'s a lot of lines that they throw in there that we try not to butcher and hold onto. But the cast in general is so funny—Steve Rannazzisi, Nick Kroll, Paul Scheer, Jon Lajoie—and they\'re such funny guys that they bring their own sort of twist to it all. So it\'s nice; Jackie and Jeff are sort of smart to let them go whole hog.

GQ: Is it odd acting with your husband Mark, especially since he\'s not playing your husband on the show?

Katie Aselton: No! I love Mark. It\'s kind of great, I think it\'s amazing. It\'s funny that he\'s not playing my husband on the show, so that can get a little weird sometimes when I\'m being affectionate towards my TV husband. But it\'s all part of the job, you know? It\'s tough, but someone\'s gotta do it. Mark and I, I feel like we\'re incredibly lucky. I think a lot of times, when you\'re working in this business, and you\'re both actors or somehow involved in the industry, you can get torn in different directions and be on completely opposite schedules. So it\'s really nice, actually, that I get to go and see him at work.

GQ: I read that the folks in The League are in their own fantasy league.

Katie Aselton: That\'s right; we have a league of our own.

Katie Aselton: My team name is the Duchess of Douchecockery. [laughs] Yep, that\'s mine. [laughs] That was sort of a reference to a line from last year. But everyone\'s team name has something to do with something funny that happened in one of the plots or the show, or something funny someone said, so the team names, I think, are kinda awesome. But if I read them to you now, it wouldn\'t make any sense, because the season hasn\'t happened yet.

Katie Aselton: You know, I\'m sorta right in the middle of the pack. It\'s not one of my better years. I won the first season, which was so exciting, but I sorta had to live up to that? Last year, I did pretty good, I came in second or third. This year, I\'m just sorta mediocre. I had a horrible draft. You know, it was tough...

Katie Aselton: That\'s actually a really good question. One of the reasons why I had such a horrible draft is that I hosted an eight-hour pool party before the draft. and so I wasn\'t quite in my perfect drafting form. I don\'t even remember who I picked; that\'s how perfect my form was. It was not my best moment in fantasy football, but I\'m trying to come back. I\'m actually going up against Jeff Schaffer, the creator of the show this week, and I\'m hoping to take him down. Right now, I\'m projected to win.

Katie Aselton: He is...I wouldn\'t say he\'s particularly great at fantasy football, because I often find that the people that know the most about fantasy football tend to do the worst, you know what I mean?

GQ: Yeah, you mean they know too much, and it gets in the way?

Katie Aselton: Yeah, he\'s like a fount of knowledge. He\'s got so many statistics, and fact and figures in his head, and knows every single player, where they were three years [ago]... I mean, it\'s crazy. I don\'t even know how he holds all that information in one head. And yet he has not won. So we\'ll see how I do this week.

GQ: You mentioned wrapping up work on a feature film—that\'s Black Rock, right?

Katie Aselton: Yeah, it\'s my girl-driven thriller.

GQ: I was going to say, it\'s a total 180 from what The Freebie was...

Katie Aselton: It\'s very, very different. It\'s so funny. I finished The Freebie, which was a small relationship "talky" movie, and I was like, "I just want to get out of the house! And I want there to be some action, and I want some tension in there!" So [Black Rock] was all outside on the coast of Maine, three girls put into an extreme situation, sort of having to fight for their life. And then once I was doing that, I was like, "Oh my god, I just want to be talking about a relationship right now," [laughs] because running for your life for a month is really exhausting! It is so exhausting, and stressful and crazy. But I\'m really, really proud of it. I think it\'s gonna be a really fun movie. You know, it\'s Deliverance with girls, essentially.

GQ: So you\'re working with different folks in front of the camera, but behind the scenes, it\'s a lot of the same folks you worked with previously...

Katie Aselton: Yep. You know, Mark wrote the script—it was a story I came up with, and then he wrote the script. And then I worked with the same producer from The Freebie, my cinematographer was one of my shooters from The Freebie. I was really aiming to tackle a genre, but sorta tackle it in my own way, and put my stamp on it, and the way that I like to see movies made. So we\'ll see if I can pull that one off.

GQ: Did having that sort of support group behind the scenes help with the transition into making this kind of film you\'d never made before?

Katie Aselton: Absolutely. I mean, the thriller genre in general, it\'s total foreign ground for me, and really for all of us. Mark did Baghead, but that still stayed in the relationship realm, the mumblecore realm. And this was really like, "Let\'s go balls to the wall in the thriller genre, but still maintain the integrity of what we hope to do in our movies." So to do it with the safety net with the people that I had done a relationship type movie was a good start. And then it was like we all held hands and jumped off the cliff, and went for it.

GQ: I was actually thinking about asking you about mumblecore, since some folks get defensive if they\'re tied to a "movement" that they didn\'t name themselves. But since you used the term, I assume you\'re OK with it...

Katie Aselton: Look, I\'m totally fine. If people want to talk about anything I do, they can give it any name they want. As long as they\'re talking about it, I think it\'s great. And I think what\'s great about everyone that\'s been associated with that movement is that everyone is growing and changing. The movement has so much momentum to it. That whole class of filmmakers, they\'re all graduating to a new level of filmmaking, which I think is awesome.

GQ: Recently, you and Mark started a Kickstarter project to help fund the making of Black Rock, and you both talked about establishing a "middle class" of filmmaking. Could you go into more detail about that?

Katie Aselton: So, with the mumblecore movies...The Freebie cost virtually nothing. We funded the movie ourselves, people got paid, but were mostly paid in the back end, we used one of the cheaper cameras we could get. The movies have a look to them, you can sorta point out the really low-budget movie. So even if the heart of the movie and the story are really, really great, they always sorta feel a little cheap. So the idea of trying to up the ante a little bit, move to the next level, and get a better camera, make it look really great. There\'s no reason why we can\'t. The Arri Alexa, which is the camera we ended up getting [with the Kickstarter funds], just shoots beautifully. The movie looks fantastic, it looks like a much larger budget than what it was. Granted, our budget was much large than what The Freebie was, but it\'s still... like, Drive was shot on the Arri Alexa. So we\'re sorta moving into an arena that we share with larger movies, which I think is going to be beneficial to our movies as well.

Katie Aselton: Certainly not, I love the studio system. [laughs] Love that studio system and all their money. [laughs] They\'re great; I think they\'re fabulous [laughs]. You know, what it is right now is I feel like I\'m still learning as a filmmaker, I\'m still starting out. I\'d like to make mistakes on my own dime, and not have a herd of people tell me what I\'m doing wrong. and I\'m also still trying to find and develop my voice as a filmmaker, and I think that\'s easier to do on your own terms, than trying to satisfy a bunch of people that are paying for the movie. That being said, I\'m certainly open to moving into that world.

GQ: Could you see yourself following a path similar to Jon Favreau, who went from low-budget films like Swingers and Made to directing Iron Man?

Katie Aselton: I don\'t think I\'m going to go into Iron Man. I mean, I can\'t say that I won\'t go into something like an Iron Man franchise. But people do it; the director of 500 Days of Summer is doing the Spider-Man movie. That\'s not necessarily the movies I want to make, but it\'s all about the story, and if you connect to the story, and you feel you can tell that story better than anyone else, then great. Jon Favreau killed Iron Man, I loved it. And he did what I believe what filmmakers do, which is let their own voice come out. That wasn\'t your standard action director\'s movie. Iron Man had a ton of heart to it, which was fun.

GQ: According to your Kickstarter page, you ended up with $10,000 more than your goal amount. Did you do anything special with the money, or did it just go back into making the film?

Katie Aselton: Here\'s the deal: When you start using more expensive cameras, everything around it gets more expensive, which is something we hadn\'t necessarily taken into account beforehand. Your lighting package gets way more expensive, and then coloring it is going to be more expensive. So I think all of that will essentially be cushioning our camera package. Budgets beget budgets, and expenses beget expenses.

GQ: Yeah, I talked to a musician named Marissa Nadler that funded the making of her album through Kickstarter, and while she also ended up with more money than she originally requested, there were also certain expenses that they didn\'t take into account as well.

Katie Aselton: Yeah. You know, when you\'re generating your own stuff, you can never have too much money around, because you\'ve already sacrificed so much and cut your budget so much that everything\'s taking a hit. So if you can throw $5 back in the crafty, we\'ll take it, because it just means another meal, which is nice. But yeah, our lighting package was infinitely more expensive than what we had budgeted for with our cheaper cameras.

GQ: So with things winding down with this season of The League and Black Rock, are you thinking ahead of what you\'ll do next?

Katie Aselton: I am...I sort\'ve...Yes, I am. I don\'t know what\'s wrong with me, but like the second I stop working, I have a panic attack, so it\'s good for me to be thinking of projects ahead of time and lining things up. I\'d like to get something small and self-generated in before Black Rock has whatever life that it has, so maybe something in the spring. I\'d also take any acting job...well, not any acting job, that\'s not true. I\'d take a cool acting job...

GQ: Now that you\'ve gotten a slightly higher profile, have you seen more offers coming your way?

Katie Aselton: Yeah, it\'s exciting. It\'s cool to get some more energy going and more interest. It\'s definitely more than it was, still not as much as I\'d love it to be, but things are picking up and interesting projects are coming my way, and I love that.

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