Blowjob Girl

I'm going to make it so dry for you...

It didn't take long for Ellie Kemper to become one of this site's major favourites. As Erin Hannon, Dunder-Mifflin’s sunny new secretary, she is easily the best thing to happen to The Office in a while. Her character is sweetly naïve and enabling to all its weirdos, and her budding romance with Ed Helms’ Andy Bernard is fast becoming a central plot point.

The role couldn’t have come at a better time for Kemper, a comic actress who arrived on set by way of New York. She has an extensive background in live improv and sketch, continues to appear in countless web videos, and crops up on Important Things With Demetri Martin and the recent Derrick Comedy film Mystery Team. (She’s also an occasional contributor to The Onion.) Kemper has become comedy’s go-to utility player, and The Office was smart to snatch her up, upgrading her from a guest-starring role last season to the full-time cast this year. In the midst of shooting the sixth season’s final episodes, Kemper talked to The A.V. Club about why she’s sick of being "the girl from that blowjob video."


AVC: You’re in a bunch of web videos for a bunch of comedy groups. What does it usually take to get you involved?

EK: Them asking me. That’s all. Certainly when I lived in New York. People were shooting web videos all the time. You know, I don’t know if you’ve seen "Blowjob Girl." Do you know what I’m talking about?

AVC: Yeah, I’ve seen it.

EK: Suddenly I was like, "Oh great, he hasn’t heard of it," and then I didn’t want to bring it up. I really don’t like that video, and I wish that I hadn’t done it, even though I know that it’s a joke. I hate that it got sort of big, because I don’t think that it’s that funny and I don’t want that to be the epitome of my work. It’s just one video in a sea of many, but it has made me conscious of not wanting to do a video like that again. That would be my only criteria.

AVC: At the Just For Laughs festival last year in Montreal, they mentioned you at the Variety’s '10 Comics To Watch' panel as "Ellie Kemper, who you may know from that blowjob video…" It was strange, saying it like that.

EK: Right! Okay. Thank you. I’m so happy you said that. It does make me mad, because even the title of that video—if it had been "Bad Job," or something that wasn’t as explicit… My parents are not amused. My mom was like, "Ellie, not everyone in your family is a comedian..."