Interview Impress These Apes champion Jo Scott

A game show where eight contestants perform assigned challenges judged by apes from the future over the course of eight weeks may seem too weird to be true, but over the last six years, Impress These Apes has grown to be one of Chicago’s funniest comedic offerings. The show’s sixth season—in which the challenges included performing stand-up as another comedian, a full four-act play, and a magic act—recently wrapped up, and Jo Scott was left standing as the season’s champion, otherwise known as the Least Pitiful Human. With a healthy background in improv, Scott was prepped for some aspects of the season, but she faced different challenges in other aspects. There’s no better way to recap Scott’s run to the top than by discussing it week-by-week, so The A.V. Club went over each performance with Scott. We learned about being a vegetarian, Maria Bamford, and that one time Scott’s uncle caught her accidentally looking at porn.

The A.V. Club: First up is your callback audition, where you sang a song about how you say something mean sweetly. Can you really play the guitar?

Jo Scott: No, I can’t. I learned that G chord, and I don’t know when you move your finger what that makes it, but I learned that chord three days before.

AVC: It’s mainly singing instead of actually guitar playing. I thought that made it a lot funnier, in its own way.

JS: [Laughs.] Yeah. I think they had 12 people called back, maybe 16; four people do singing, four people do dancing, four people do comedy. And I got singing. And I knew that I had wanted to do a song like this for a long time. So I was like, “Yeah, let’s do this.” And my friend said, “I’ve got a guitar. I can show you how to play the G chord.” And I was like, “Okay.” [Laughs.] 

AVC: When you wrote the song, was there anything that you cut out because it was too crude or too mean? 

JS: Yeah. I can’t remember off the top of my head, but there were too-crude things. I can’t remember what it was. It was pretty mean already, but it was just a really fun thing to write. The two minutes is really quick, so my husband said, “We gotta cut some of these.” Maybe it was just comparably mean, but there was a lot more, three or four verses.

AVC: Was it just like, “Write down these mean things that I can say quickly,” and that’s it? How much thought process went into that challenge? Because it’s your callback, it’s your chance to be on the show.

JS: Yeah, it’s probably the challenge I spent the most time on. 

AVC: Really?

JS: I think so. I was very, very nervous to do it. And also I had to learn how to do the guitar. I’m an improviser, so I don’t perform very much solo stuff. This was a totally different world. It took probably a couple of weekends: one weekend procrastinating, and another weekend working. [Laughs.]

AVC: Week 1’s challenge was a song to introduce yourself. Was the concept of banging on a bucket inspired by the (in)famous Bucket Boys? Did you take notes and observe them?

JS: Yeah, I was trying to really, really watch them. Every time you pass them, I think most people are like, “That’s cool. They’re playing really well.” So when the challenge included playing an instrument, I was like, “This is a good opportunity.” I don’t know how to play any instrument so—

AVC: You learned the G chord on guitar.

JS: Yes, I know the G chord. [Laughs.] So I thought, “Okay, if I’m going to learn an instrument, I’m going to learn one that I really want to.” I contacted someone who gives drum lessons and asked, “Look, I’m in a competition. Can you teach me how to play a drum like this?” It’s just like Million Dollar Baby: “I’ll work as hard as you want me to.” We had two weeks, because of the Fourth Of July weekend, and I’m telling myself, “I’m practicing every day; I’m gonna get this.” But it was so frickin’ loud. And my neighbor upstairs was going crazy, like, hitting pots himself. So I ended up having to go to the park and practice there, which was kind of embarrassing.

AVC: So there’s this big field with kids running around and you drumming on a bucket?

JS: Yeah, and when you’re learning something, you want to be doing it privately. [Laughs.] I kept moving, and I eventually wound up behind a football field, trying to hide back there. But people would still cross me on the path, and some cops passed me one night and yelled, “Hey, doin’ some bucket!” So finally, I said, “Fuck it. I’m just going to work on the song.” So it just pretty much amounts to me doing this. [Taps single beats.] But I wanted it to be awesome. I just couldn’t rehearse as much as I was ready for.

AVC: Is that where your improv background helped?

JS: I guess. I still wrote the song way ahead of time and still practiced it. But I really wanted to master this fuckin’ drum. [Laughs.]

AVC: What inspired you to include the confessional to your uncle?

JS: I just think it’s a really funny story that I tell my friends. And my aunt and uncle are really supportive, so I had a feeling that they would see it eventually. I decided, “I should say this.” It is something that, every time I see my uncle, I think about it, and I think about how he’s thinking about it. I think it’s a shared secret between us.

AVC: Did you hear from him?

JS: Yeah. My husband posts video of all my performances on his Facebook page, and after this happened, my 16-year-old cousin and my aunt both “liked” it. I thought, “Goddamn it, I know my uncle has seen it, or heard about it.” He calls me a week and a half later and says, “Jojo, I saw your video and I loved it. And I gotta tell you, I don’t remember that happening at all.” He said, “I’ll concede that it’s something I would do,” because he’s a total straight shooter. He’s like, “I barely have any recollection.” I’m telling you, I’ll never forget that moment. It’s been weighing on me. I’m glad it came out this way, because I think it would’ve been more weird if the next time I go visit him, it’s late at night, and I’m like, “So, I looked at porn that one time.” [Laughs.]

AVC: Accidentally.

JS: Yeah. Actually, this is really funny because from that point on, he’s been so much more my friend than my uncle. Because before—he’s my uncle, you know? But since then, he’ll be like, “Fuckin’ great performance!”

AVC: Week 2 was performing stand-up of another comedian. How did you do Maria Bamford? You had a blog post about it, but for someone who doesn’t know the show, this was difficult for you.

JS: Yeah, I was really nervous to do this. I didn’t know who Maria Bamford was, and I really loved her after this, actually. I think she’s brilliant. So, I was really nervous to do this.

AVC: Besides the vocal acrobatics she does, what else about her mannerisms were you trying to target?

JS: This was hard for me because in Week 1, I kind of touched on my family, and my family is very sensitive. And she does a lot of family jokes. My family, there’s plenty of stuff. Most people have lots of family stories, right? There’s plenty of stuff to mine, but after that first week, my mom e-mailed me one line: “Sorry I bought Peter underwear the first time I met him.” That’s all she wrote. I had to call and tell her, “No, don’t apologize. It was a funny story to tell; it’s always a funny story to tell. It doesn’t bother me.” But Maria Bamford seems very, very honest. She does a lot of voice work, and she’s very self-deprecating. That was also one of my favorite weeks, because the research that it entailed was just watching hours of her. Every other week is obsessing over material and second-guessing yourself. If you don’t have an idea right away—say Tuesday or Wednesday—if you don’t have an idea until Thursday, Friday, or Saturday, you’re just freaking out about not having an idea. And if you have an idea right away, you’re second-guessing yourself. Like, “Fuck. This might not be right.” But I liked that week.

AVC: Really?

JS: Yeah, ultimately. It was hard, but I just thought she was so cool. I wish I had maybe done more of an impression of her, even though that was absolutely what they did not want you to do. But I thought that people who did an impression of their assigned comic did better, score-wise. So I was like, “Oh ... ” That’s probably the first time that I thought, “Fuck the rules, baby.” [Laughs.]

AVC: Week 3 was unusual because it was a play all eight contestants had to collaborate on but perform in pairs. How complicated was it doing a collaboration with another person, and beyond that, having to also collaborate with everyone—six other people—because it had to flow from one act to the next? [The whole performance can be viewed here.]

JS: Yeah, that was a really hard week, because there’s so many people, and it’s a competition, and we don’t know each other, and everyone wants to be nice. So it was weird. We all get the assignment: You’re paired up, and you have to work together because it has to make sense. So the first day after that, there was just nonstop e-mails, like, “What do you think of this? What do you think of that?” So finally, I said, “Okay, can we just meet at my place tomorrow?” Everyone was on board immediately—I think one person couldn’t come—but then we get there, and everyone wants to be on the same page, yet it’s eight very strong personalities. It was very cordial, but that might have been a problem. It almost felt like nothing was getting done. But, ultimately, it was a really, really great challenge to have at the top of the competition, because you get to know people. And I don’t know if we would’ve known each other that well if that didn’t happen. And Steve [Lyons, partner] was so great. I don’t know if they’d do it again in the future ... I don’t think any of us thought we were getting scored separately. I think we all thought we were getting scored together. So we worked really, really well together. I don’t know if that would’ve changed how anyone would’ve worked. I have no idea. I don’t think it would’ve affected how I operate, or Steve.

AVC: You guys got to strangle a guy together in homage to Ghost. How fun was that?

JS: Oh, God, that was really fun. My favorites ones—again, I’m an improviser; I just really thrive off those people. That was a really fun week preparing, so you got to know people, and e-mail with people, and feel like the burden isn’t just on you.

AVC: Week 4: The Magic Week. First of all, obviously, the wardrobe choice. It felt like a magician you would see at a church talent show.

JS: [Laughs.] Yeah.

AVC: Where did you get the inspiration for that character?

JS: I was going to sleep one night and thought, “I really want to dance in my magic show.” And I knew that my friend, Tim Reardon, would be perfect. This was, by far, my favorite week, because a good friend of mine was my partner, and it was super fun, and he’s very supportive. Almost every idea I had, he was on board. This was just basically me going to the thrift store and seeing what was there, and finding these awful pants and awful shirt, and texting Tim, “Are you willing to wear white pants? And are you okay wearing a woman’s shirt with shoulder pads?” [Laughs.] And he was like, “As long as you give me plenty of scarves.” It was just like, “Let’s make the most happy”… The idea was supposed to have been that terrible things—like grotesque, really awful things—happen to Tim, but that just got too morbid. I was like, “You pull it out, and it’ll be a dead baby…”

AVC: Wow.

JS: [Laughs.] But then, we were like, “Let’s make it just more happy.”

AVC: An act filled with dichotomy. It’s a church talent show, but then you guys dance to Unk’s “Walk It Out,” which is not a song you associate with something that’s very clearly supposed to be bland, family-friendly entertainment.

JS: Yeah. Well, I had e-mailed a huge group of girlfriends, and I was like, “What’s a song that you always wanna get up and dance to?” This was a group of girlfriends that had been e-mailing about the royal wedding. So it was 12 girls, and I got tons of responses. That was the song that I picked. And someone responded, “This might not fall in the category of dancing, but I really like ‘Defying Gravity.’ [From Wicked.]” I was like, “Oh, fuck yeah, that’s going in. This is for sure.” [Laughs.]

AVC: So the next week, the video week—are you a vegetarian?

JS: Yeah. I am. It was awful. Well, it wasn’t awful. It was kind of good to eat, but I got sick the next morning.

AVC: Because you’re not used to—

JS: Yeah, it was like my body was not ready for all that grease.

AVC: But you were willing to put yourself through this.

JS: I was a vegetarian all through high school and college. [My husband] Peter and I, when we were in the Peace Corps, I ate meat, because the people in the village, when they offer you food, it’s such a nice gesture. But I had been a vegetarian for a long time, just because in eighth grade I thought it was cool. I don’t really love the way meat tastes, so when I came back, I was just like, “I don’t really need it.” I don’t have this really strong, hardcore vegetarian belief. I just don’t love the way meat tastes, so I prefer not to eat it. And then for this, I was going to just not eat it. We were going to glaze over it. And then, it was one of these things, down to the wire, I’m like, “Fuck it, I’m putting it in my mouth. I’m licking it. We don’t have time to figure out the camera.”

AVC: It has better comedic effect, too, I think.

JS: I’m really proud of this video. I thought it was really funny. A lot of our friends are making videos and getting what improvisers would consider celebrities to cameo in their videos. I’m really proud of this one because it’s all my friends, and we’re all at the same level. I think it’s pretty funny; I like it.

AVC: As an improviser doing these live performances every week, was it something where you liked the aspect of having a bit more control in presenting this finished product, it’s as polished as you’re going to get, there was nothing that could go wrong, like a gaffe in a live performance? Was there something comforting about that, or do you prefer just, “Whatever the hell happens, happens during a show,” and the chaos of performing live?

JS: I like the chaos of performing live. Just sitting there this week was really hard. When you’re performing, you can adjust. As an improviser especially, you can adjust. I’m sure some actors also adjust based on the audience. Now, sometimes just because you adjust doesn’t mean you’re going to win the audience over, but it’s always that last attempt. If you put together a piece, and it’s not going right, you can tweak it a little bit as you go along. Sometimes you can save it, sometimes you can’t. But once it’s on video, you can’t save it. This is it.

AVC: So Week 6 was the infamous dance week with guest judge Jodi Kurtze Wickersheimer, who gave some harsh scores. You had to have been unprepared for how tough she was going to be.

JS: Oh yeah. The first person who went up was Matt [Ulrich, fellow contestant], and his show was awesome. It was real fun.

AVC: And she gave it a four.

JS: I turned to Amber [Gerencher, fellow contestant] and I said, “Jodi don’t joke.” I just was like, “We’re fucked.” She made me so nervous. But yeah, afterwards she was so nice. She came up to all of us and was like, “I’m such a fan of the show. I love it.” Because afterwards, I was like, “Maybe she just doesn’t know how the show operates, because no one gets below a six. Maybe she just has no idea.” But then she came back and was like, “I’m such a fan.”

AVC: This is the one you’re most embarrassed of?

JS: Yeah. I just felt like I didn’t want to blow it, and I knew in my head, I was like, “I could do a bit, I could do a bit and this dance and make it fun. Or I could follow the instructions,” because the instructions are “We just want to see you dance, it’s all about dance. It’s a dance,” like four different times. And all I could hear was the judges saying, over and over, “We just want to see magic.” So I was like, “This week I’m just fucking going to try to dance.”

AVC: You got pretty good scores.

JS: Yeah, but I’m embarrassed of this week because, first of all, I’m not a dancer, but I try to be like a fly girl. Almost everyone else had a more enjoyable performance, because they all had bits.

AVC: It’s a balance.

JS: It’s a balance. I think had I done a fine bit, I’d have gotten a judge saying, “I wish you hadn’t done the bit,” because that’s what I felt like they told everyone. But I wanted to be like, “But you enjoyed it.”

AVC: Week 7 was the redo week. Do you think it was a fair decision to make you do the stand-up over?

JS: I guess. I don’t know. I didn’t even look over my scores. I think it was my lowest scoring week. So they said they were giving everyone their lowest scoring week.

AVC: It was about the same as your magic.

JS: Yeah, I guess honestly they should have made me redo a song, because I kind of talked my song. I was not excited to do it. It’s funny, for this week, I was like, “Uh, stand-up is hard as Maria Bamford.” And then I was like, “Stand-up is hard as myself.”

AVC: Is there really a cake farting fetish group?

JS: Have you ever heard of the website CakeFart?

AVC: No. I’m scared to look that up on the Internet.

JS: CakeFart is this girl, I don’t know if there’s several sites—my friend made me watch it, I swear. It’s this girl who says, “You know what I like? Cake farts.” And it’s just this cake on this counter. She walks around the counter. I think she’s probably nude, I don’t know if she takes her pants off. She sits on the cake on the counter, and she farts into the camera. Over and over again. It is devastating.

AVC: The final week was what won it for you. Besides the humor, it’s actually got an edge of sweetness to it. It’s a fine line to walk. Did that enter your mind? Were you worried when you went into preparing it, or were you like, “This is going to be funny”?

JS: Oh my God, no. I was like, “This is going to be straight.” This was another one of the hardest challenges, not having any challenge, not having any rules, pretty much. You couldn’t do anything except be yourself, I guess. You couldn’t rely on people or video. Just thinking of an idea, I didn’t know if I wanted to do a standalone. Maybe if you didn’t see the show you’d understand it. I kept wavering between those two things. But then I was like, “I definitely want to do a scene between Toby and Monica.”

AVC: A callback to characters mentioned earlier in the show’s run.

JS: When I was brainstorming, I e-mailed a director friend of mine who’s on a Second City boat. I was like, “I really want to do a scene. I want to map it over just people in life not knowing what they want to do, not just kids not knowing what they want to do.” That never really happened. I knew that I wanted to have a serious sweetness to it. ... That audience was very easy to feed off of. I did it in my apartment tens of twenties of times. It’s not funny to me anymore, and I’m just trying to memorize it.

AVC: Was it harder knowing even though you were in first place, you had another contestant [Thea Lux] who was close enough to win if you didn’t do well?

JS: I kept saying, “I don’t want to win,” but my friends said, “Of course you do.” I was definitely jealous of the position Chris [Condren] was in [last place]. It was just fun, “I can do whatever I want.” Like the dance week, my thought process was, “Okay, I just don’t want to get bad scores.” And that’s when I had realized, “I care about this; I want to stay.” To me, that’s when I started losing my edge a little bit, because I was catering more. I say in one of my stand-ups, “I’m not competitive with things I’m good at, and I am competitive with things I’m bad at.” That’s totally true for me. So the more I could feel myself getting competitive, the more I was like, “I bet this sucks. I bet this sucks because I care now.” Week 7, I thought, “Okay, I just want to win this week. I don’t care if I win the competition or not; I just don’t want to lose it in this last week.” Then Week 8. Thea’s so good, and she’s such a big part of this, and going into it my friends were like, “You’d be good at it. It was a lot to do with talent, but it has a lot to do with preparation, and time, and dedication.” And I think I’m a pretty good worker. Thea is an extremely hard worker. I think it shows. I think everybody in the show worked hard.

AVC: You can’t just get up there and half-ass it. It’s going to show, no matter what you’re doing.

JS: I think if you work on something hard and you really care about it, it’s going to come out, it’s going to read, for this stage, especially.

AVC: Did the show consume your whole life for these months?

JS: Oh yeah, every waking moment. I’ve been thinking about it a lot, because it just ended. For me, the creative process was not as hard as being judged afterwards. The score, the competition, people love that. But that was probably the hardest part on me, just being scored. The one thing I will say is I feel like this competition kind of made me feel sick of myself. I think, most improvisers, all their dreams are to be on SNL. They all want to succeed and do well, but Tuesday and Wednesday I was like, “God, what do I want to do with my life?” Because I definitely don’t want to see myself on video every week.

AVC: So you’re saying that this show triggered all these bigger-picture questions. Going into this contest, did you even foresee that?

JS: No way.

AVC: You just wanted to do something cool and fun, and you came out of it going, “What do I want to do with the rest of my life?”

JS: Honestly, yes. I was like, “Oh this would be cool to do solo work.” And I actually found out I don’t love solo work. It’s very intimidating. When I did the magic show challenge and when I did the play challenge with Steve, those were the easiest times to get scored. Steve and I got tens, granted, but I think that even if we got different scores we still would have been like, “Oh, we could have done this, we could have done that.” But when I did stuff alone, I would get my score and think, “Oh my God, why? Why?” So I definitely feel like I was, “Okay, I work better in packs. I miss that aspect.” I think I might have been being dramatic, but all of a sudden I have time on my hands to think.