ZELLWEGER, RENÉE

Academy Award Winner, a Friendship Evolution, Bridget Jones

Lay off my pal Renée Zellweger! You heard me. Okay, you may know that in the past, I may have referred to her as a sweaty, puffy coke whore, and after that, she sent me flowers with a card that simply said, “Best Wishes.” But that doesn’t mean we aren’t friends now, you weirdo. Enough time has passed so that she actually laughs at my jokes, we talk on the phone, and she even lets me call her Bridget, even though I think her actual name is still Renée. Don’t you get it yet, people? In my act, I’m a celebrity flip-flopper. One day I’m making fun of the best and brightest, then I change my mind. This happens all the time.

I’ve always been a fan of Renée’s work, and when I saw a paparazzi photo of her sitting in an airport reading a Jimmy Carter book, I thought maybe I could fall in love with her. Another time she was on Oprah, blushing over a story Hugh Grant was telling about her and Jack White, and then a weird feeling in me emerged. Was I developing … protective feelings … for Zellweger?

Then, a few years ago, I was scheduled to participate in a children’s charity event in San Francisco—a great group called the Painted Turtle—and they told me, “You’re sharing a dressing room with Annette Bening, Amber Riley, and Renée Zellweger.”

I gulped back, “Um, what was that last name?”

I had ample time to prepare for our dressing room hello, and yet I was a little intrigued, since this was weeks after a super unflattering photo of Zellweger had gotten out that appeared to show a changed face. As someone who’s a bit of an expert at “changed faces,” I wanted to take a good, hard look at her. Well, the moment arrived, I walked in, looked right at her and thought, She’s gorgeous. In fact, she did not resemble that unflattering photo that had been making the rounds online at all. She didn’t just look beautiful (and you know I wouldn’t say this lightly), she actually looked like she hadn’t had any work done at all. Go figure.

After spending the day with her, I quickly realized she’s super smart and a great laugher, and she seemed to understand I’m just a comic doing my job. That was probably helped when I told her, “Look, I’m not guaranteeing you’ll ever be out of my act because we’re buds now, but you have to take it because I’m just a comic doing my job!” (Sometimes you have to be very literal with these A-listers.)

We’ve become texting buddies and talk on the phone occasionally. I’m proud of this because it’s rare that someone I have given a hard time to in my act gets beyond it. I was especially excited one night when in the middle of a live performance I happened to bring my real phone onstage with me for a bit, and during the show, I got a voice mail from my new bestie, Academy Award winner Renée Zellweger! Without even screening it, I put it on speaker, held the phone up to the microphone, and told the audience we should all listen to this voice mail from Bridget Jones together. This was my moment to prove to thousands of audience members that I am such a pro that I am able to walk the high wire to furiously make fun of whomever I like and yet still garner the love and friendship of those very people. God love Renée. Not only was her message to me hilarious but—and this is why she has awards—she even delivered it in a Meryl Streep–level thick Russian accent. The audience roared with laughter when they heard Renée playing a character saying, “Hello? Um … I know who are you. You keep text meee an then I theenk you got wronk number. PLEEZE don’t call diz number ’gain an don’t text me pleeze. Okay? Thank you, and God bless you. Bye.” Is she a riot or what? I must have played this voice mail for at least my next seven live shows in a row before I finally had a chance to get her on the phone and thank her.

Days later, my assistant, John, handed me his work phone and told me Renée was on the line. I congratulated her on figuring out a new and exciting way to get into my act without me making fun of her at all. She was giggling. I told her that was no small feat. I asked her what it felt like to be in my act, knowing that voice mail gets uproarious laughter show after show, and yet I don’t have to say one single negative thing about her. She laughed again. She then informed me that the voice mail was NOT from her.

Um, what?

This whole time I thought I had been texting and leaving messages for my new friend Bridget. It turns out my assistant had her proper number, and they had been communicating while I had been reaching out to some poor woman who probably just escaped the oppression of an Eastern Bloc dictatorship. I’m not kidding; I did my hilarious in-character voice mail from the supposedly real live Bridget Jones bit for thousands of people. Maybe tens of thousands. Naturally, I immediately blamed Zellweger. She laughed so hard I knew deep down inside she had realized there was a little karmic payback at work.

“I wish I was that committed, to come up with a character and call you like that,” she said. “But I think you should keep playing it, and I’ll even play along. I love it.” And so you should, Bridget.