Actress of a Certain Age: My Twenty-Year Trail to Overnight Success

by Jeff Hiller

And though I don’t go to church on Sunday mornings, I haven’t given up on it either. There is a scene in the last episode of the first season of Somebody Somewhere in which Sam, Joel, Fred, Irma, and Tiffani are driving around in Fred’s party bus, the Growler. Sam has just sung “You Brought Me Home,” a song about how Joel rescued Sam from the swirling waters of grief threatening to drown her. After that tender and heavy moment, they’re all blowing off steam by laughing, dancing, singing, and being a little dirty. In the chaos of the party, Joel screams, “This is church! This is church!” That line wasn’t in the script. I improvised it. I tell you that because I want to brag that I improvised a line that made it to the final edit and also because I believe that deep in my core. I felt it in that moment, and that’s why I shouted it out.