When I was at BlogHer ’11 a few weeks ago, I had the opportunity to meet and interview Wendi McLendon-Covey. You might recognize her as one of the co-stars of Bridesmaids or as the star of the latest round of Hillshire Farm commercials that have been all over the airwaves lately. Wendi is also co-starring in the upcoming movie What to Expect with Jennifer Lopez.

In other words, she’s famous.

Very, very famous.

And I was going to interview her!

By their nature, interviews can be awkward. I mean, you’re thrown into a situation where you have ten seconds to introduce yourself and then boom! A camera is in your face and you’re supposed to engage this (very, very famous) person for the next ten minutes with well-thought-out questions and witty repartee.

So I did a little advance research on Wendi (five minutes) before I interviewed her (Thanks, Wikipedia! THANKS, IPHONE.) and saw she was once a member of the Groundling Theater in LA, and that her breakout role was playing Deputy Clementine Johnson on Comedy Central’s Reno 911! With that kind of comedic background, it made perfect sense to me that Wendi probably knew my high school classmates, Ed Helms and Brian Baumgartner, who both co-star on The Office.

And thus I had my interview icebreaker.

“So I went to high school with Ed Helms and Brian Baumgartner,” I told her after we’d been introduced and the makeup and camera people were fussing around her. “I thought you might know them.”

“Why yes,” she said nicely. “I do know them.”

“I was in a few plays with them,” I said, “and we sang in this little school group together.” She smiled politely and said something along the lines of “Neat.” Truthfully, my ‘icebreaker’ was already feeling awkward and braggy. I needed to act fast before she thought I was a total freak. So I pulled out my standard party joke about the whole thing.

“Yeah, so Brian was on The Office and then the next thing you know, Ed was on it, too. I figure that since there were only, like, 16 people in our singing group, I now have a one in 14 chance of being the new Michael Scott.”

Cue raucous laughter.

Except that she was kind of… silent.

She smiled and said dryly, “Yes, you are destined to be the next cast member of The Office,” and I realized with horror that as far as she knew, I was just some crazy mom from the suburbs with a blob, who was under the highly delusional impression that she going to replace Steve Carrell on The Office.

Because comedic acting is, you know, SO EASY.

I was all set to explain myself when the camera man said “We’re rolling,” and well, there we were. Take a look for yourself:

Clearly Wendi is trying to be nice, but I think I also detect a glint of “Is this woman completely off her rocker?” in her eyes, too.

Just sayin.’

So Wendi, FOR THE RECORD, I do not actually think that being First Alto in Frank Boggs’s Westminster Ensemble alongside Brian Baumgartner and Ed Helms guarantees me a starring role on The Office.

It just makes it INCREDIBLY LIKELY.

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