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Sabrina Jalees on “Portrait of a Serial Monogamist” and writing queer storylines on NBC’s “Crowded”

Sabrina Jalees is an out Canadian comedian, long loved in her native country. After a few years of living in New York City and then moving to Los Angeles, 2014 and 2015 were breakthrough years for Sabrina where she joined VH1ÔÇ?s Best Week Ever and Comedy Central’s The Nightly Show with Larry Wilmore and appeared in the film Portrait of a Serial Monogamist, opening in select theaters this weekend. Sabrina did a heck of a lot more during that time, and 2016 promises to be an even bigger year now that she’s a writer on the upcoming NBC sitcom Crowded! (premiering Sunday March 20 at 9:30/8:30c) and developing her own shows.

We recently spoke with Sabrina about her start in comedy, the struggles she had with coming out, her acting career, being a “queer Muslim role model” and more. Like lesbian storylines on Crowded! kind of more.

Sabrina in “Portrait of a Serial Monogamist”

AfterEllen.com: You started your comedy career at 16, is that right?

Sabrina Jalees: Correct. That was the first time that I ever did stand-up.

AE: What motivates a 16-year-old to put herself out there like that?

SJ: I just remember thinking like, “This isn’t much different than when I go up and tell jokes at high school assemblies.” Except the stakes are much lower. Like if I bombed at my high school, then the next day all the hot girls that I have a crush on that I don’t know that I have a crush on are going to be like, “Uh, she wasn’t funny.”

AE: You were doing stand-up at your high school?

SJ: Kind of. Like a form of stand-up: trying to be funny at assemblies.

AE: Was it authorized?

SJ: I did unauthorized stand-up. You know me too well. My unauthorized, attention-grabby stand-up moments were in middle school when like I Know What You Did Last Summer or Scream came out, and all the kids were going to be at the theater on that Friday night. I would go up before the previews, before the trivia, before the everything, and I would pretend that I worked there and talk about the movie and like lie about facts. “You know when Jennifer Love Hewitt was shooting this scene she actually wasn’t laying in a tanning bed at all!” And just like try to get people laughing. I did cartwheels. Like I was desperate. I would be such a nightmare if I never found stand-up.

Usually, stand-up is just like this big struggle in the beginning, and then you get better, and you break through the struggle, and then you find your voice, and then things start coming to you. Whereas for me, I was so different and young and I had kind of an advanced understanding of like—for some reason I was able to make people laugh early on. So I developed really fast, and I was at Just For Laughs two years in when I was 18. My progression was different. Because when I moved from Toronto to New York I never really had that struggle that you need to go through as a stand-up to push yourself. And it took me about a year or two into living in New York to realize that I had to throw out my material and start from the bottom. And part of that was also start by being honest on stage in terms of my sexuality.

AE: Let’s talk about that a bit more. I had read that you had a difficult time coming out. What was that about for you?

SJ: I was a good child of two immigrants, and being gay, to me, would’ve been a bad thing. I think that everybody goes through that. The time that we were raised in, and hopefully that’s changing now, but you’re raised to believe you are straight and straight is normal. And being gay is a difficult path. Being queer is choosing a difficult path. Which, who would want to choose a difficult path?

The other thing is I think something that’s going to shift, as we get more familiar with and more honest about who we are as people, is that sexuality is not binary. And I think most gay people know this, because it’s a right of passage in coming out to realize, “Oh I wasn’t lying when I said I had a crush on Scott Wolf.” But I mostly wanted to be Scott Wolf when he was having sex with Jennifer Love Hewitt on Party of Five.

AE: You are obsessed with Jennifer Love Hewitt.

SJ: But it wouldn’t be a horrible day in Sabrina Jalees’ life if Scott Wolf showed up at my high school on a Vespa, picked me up, we ate frozen yogurt and made out. I mean I would never be mad at that. And fantasizing about that, there were no lies in that. The truth though was I would spend the rest of my life with Jennifer Love Hewitt, never thinking about Scott Wolf. And that’s where I lie on the spectrum of Scott Wolf to Jennifer Love Hewitt, which I believe we should change the Kinsey scale to.

AE: Did the Canadian context change anything for you?

SJ: I think being Canadian helped me because Canada legalized gay marriage way before America did.

AE: Well I was going to say, we’re somewhat similar in age and my parents are also immigrants. I just know that when I found out about myself, I never had to worry about, “This means I can’t get married.”

SJ: That’s an interesting thing too because, especially for immigrant parents, that’s like a huge thing to have the government saying that gay marriage is legal or not. Because you move to a new country, and there’s these new rules, and you usually left a country because the rules there were like crappy. So we never had to come out in a time where we couldn’t visualize being married.

AE: Back to your hesitance to come out. Did it have to do with your audience as well?

SJ: It was everything. On one level it was the idea of I come out and then all of a sudden all these roles that I auditioned for where the reality of these characters is that they’re straight, or an aspect of the character is that they’re straight—in general I thought that it would pigeonhole me. I also got advice from some comics that were older. Like one, in particular, I remember sitting down and talking to them, and they were like, “Yeah, don’t come out. It’ll be bad.” And based on their era and how they came up, that was the right advice for them to give based on their life experience. But something that I’ve realized since coming out is that it’s like this universal lesson that nothing good comes from being completely risk averse. You’ve got to take risks, and you’ve got to get closer to your truth.

Photo by Joe Scarnici/Getty Images for IMG

AE: How would you say your career has grown since coming out?

SJ: When I came out on stage it opened the floodgates for all of these real things that I was blocking myself from talking about. Whether they had to do with me being gay or not. I just sort of duct tape closed this creative passageway, and then ripped the duct tape open and all of these little chunky monkeys came out. And that’s when people started paying more attention to me in New York City and where I started to feel like I fit in there. Because New York has a very competitive stand-up scene and I think for the first couple of years there was a denial for me, where I was like, “Well, I have made it in Canada, so I don’t really need to try hard here. Everyone’s going to flock to me.” And in humbling myself and dropping the material I had and starting over, that was going to be the only way to get good enough to contend.

I still had to polish my set. It’s not like I all of a sudden came out and everything came to me, but I came out and the world opened up for me, in terms of I was moving in the right direction. There was no world in which I could go to New York City and keep talking vaguely about my life and doing an impression of my father and get the kind of opportunities that are now open to me.

AE: Since you brought him up, how proud are you of your dad? We got to know more about your family life when you spoke about acceptance on Ishrad Manji’s Moral Courage channel.

SJ: I’m so happy that they were able to capture that time with my father and I, because when these really crappy things happen in your life, like at the time, obviously since you watched the video you know that I came out, and my extended Muslim family was very not having it and not interested in having me. Time has brought people back down to earth and sort of the reality is we’re family and they obviously, obviously they want me around. I don’t mean to show off. But there was over a year of pain and it was tragic, and I’m so proud of the way my father handled all of that. And my mother. They were both in a position where they could’ve easily—it would’ve been easier for them to like make peace with everyone and wait it out. Wait until they wanted to come around and talk to me. In standing by my side and basically saying, “If you don’t want her in your life, you’re not going to get me,” they put pressure on my extended family to really think about the decision they were making. And I don’t think one of those people, in terms of my extended family that have reached out and we’ve made amends, I don’t think any of them are doing it solely because they want a relationship with my father. I think that pressure forced them to really realize that they were making a mistake. You know, looking back, I think, despite how hurtful everything was, I have a lot of understanding for the way that they acted.

AE: Do you feel in any way that you’re a queer Muslim role model?

SJ: It’s interesting because the Muslim thing—my mother’s white, my dad’s brown. His family is Muslim. He can be identified as Muslim because the whole family is quite anchored in Islam. But personally, I think it would be silly for me to identify as Muslim. But then at the same time, I grew up immersed in that culture.

I guess so the answer is no and yes. No in the way of like I’m not this Muslim poster girl by any means, just ask my family. But in terms of being a role model, I do like that. As a person, I do like that role.

AE: I want to talk about acting now. It seemed like you did have fun shooting Portrait of a Serial Monogamist. Do you want to do more acting?

SJ: Of course, yeah. I just signed with WME, which is William Morris, which is like a huge agency.

AE: Yeah!

SJ: As soon as I signed with that agency was when I got the writing gig for the NBC sitcom, which is called Crowded! And that’s going to premiere probably in March sometime. But it also means that I’ve got this great new agent who looks out for me for acting roles. And I recently auditioned for this movie that I really thought the script was funny. All of a sudden it’s like kind of this thing where when I was talking about that period in time where I moved from Toronto to New York and I sort of fantasized about all these opportunities at that time I felt entitled to, it’s like there’s been a seven, eight year delay and all of a sudden—and I couldn’t be happier for the timing. Because we’re so impatient as people. Especially when you’re ambitious and in this field, you have this idea of like, “Well I’ve got to get this now! And I want to do this now!” And what I’ve realized in moving here and then rebuilding my act in New York and then coming to LA is that the timing aspect of it, you put that on the backburner and focus on getting better. So for the acting thing, in terms of these opportunities coming now, I’m so excited. Because I am more ready now. Working on Portrait of a Serial Monogamist was really cool, and that was like a cool step into having scenes in a movie where it was so supportive. Like everyone on set was either a friend of mine for like almost a decade or they felt like a friend of mine. There was a very warm, comfortable set environment. And what I’m realizing too, as I get better as a stand-up comic, is it’s the same sorts of things that make you great on stage that make you great as an actor. But different.

When I am cast, it’s when I am being me. I’m never going to be like a Meryl Streep-type actress that you’re like, “Oh my god, is that Sabrina Jalees, or a real dragon?” Meryl Streep doesn’t play dragons. “Is that Sabrina Jalees or—” Anyway, I don’t want to go there. We don’t have that much time. I don’t want to riff on roles that Meryl Streep plays. What’s a role that Meryl Streep plays? I’m desperate.

AE: Margaret Thatcher in The Iron Lady.

SJ: Yes. Thank you so much. No one’s ever going to be like, “Is that Sabrina Jalees, or the real Margaret Thatcher?”

AE: Speaking of roles that are more maybe in line with you, your character in Portrait of a Serial Monogamist, she’s pretty smooth, and she has these amazing instincts. Are you “that kind of lesbian”?

SJ: I think I am, but I think that something you need to know about Sarah is like she does talk like she’s pretty smooth, but she also fucks up. My perception of her was—just actually going back to what we were talking about of like being a role model, I like talking as if I know everything. I like talking in absolutes like, “No, no, no, no. This is the bar where you meet the hot girls.” And then in walks just a bunch of weird looking construction workers. But I think that Sarah thinks she knows everything about picking up women, but by the end of the movie, and I don’t want to spoil anything because there are a lot of Sarah-heads out there that would not want me to give anything away, but she’s not the player that she thought she was.

AE: So one of the things I really liked about Portrait of a Serial Monogamist is that it pays tribute to Toronto. How accurate of a depiction of Toronto’s queer lady scene do you think the movie presents? If you can remember it. I know it’s been a while.

SJ: Let me get out my memory book. I think it’s pretty accurate. I mean, if not for the fact that it was made by and stars a lot of people in the queer community in Toronto. And I love that part.

AE: Can you tell us more about your work on Crowded!? The premise of the show, and also if there’s any possibility for a lesbian storyline on the show.

SJ: Guess what?

AE: What?!

SJ: The character Stella, one of the daughters, is sexually fluid. And yeah, she makes out with a girl in the first episode that I was writing on. We got to play with that kind of storyline, which was really refreshing and indicative too of-like this is an NBC sitcom, so the fact that everyone was game to be casual about sexuality the way someone that age—Stella’s in her early 20s—would be, is really cool.

AE: It kind of sounds like it won’t be a one-off. This is one of the main characters, right? That itself is great. But also, if she’s sexually fluid, this is probably something that will be revisited again?

SJ: Yeah, for sure. Totally. This is part of her identity and she in the first season, I mean not to blow anything, but I think she’s very much open to dating more women in the second season. The show, Crowded!, the premise is that two daughters move back in with their parents, who were just about to enjoy having the empty nest and all of a sudden everything’s crowded. But also the grandparents were going to move away because of the kids were gone, but then the grandparents don’t move away.

AE: And potentially it gets more crowded if their daughter’s maybe future girlfriend moves in.

SJ: I mean, yeah.

AE: Are there any other projects you’re working on right now?

SJ: Yeah. My friend Liza Treyger and I are developing a show that we’re hopefully going to sell in the next couple of months. I don’t want to say too much about it, but it’s a travel show, and I’m really excited about that. I also have a pilot, an original pilot, called Sun-in-Law that’s kind of based on if my wife and I moved in with my in-laws.

Portrait of a Serial Monogamist begins its theater run in Los Angeles at the Arena Cinema on Jan. 29 and in Toronto on Feb. 12 at the Carlton Cinema. Wolfe Video is releasing the movie on DVD and VOD on Feb. 9.

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