A new memoir by Arden Myrintraces the actress andcomedian’s East Bay roots.
Fred Albert| Newport Life magazine
Little Compton native Arden Myrin has been a fixture on stage and screen and in comedy clubs for nearly 25 years. Best known for her TV roles on Insatiable, Shameless, Working and Mad TV, the actress and comedian has also logged numerous guest appearances on Chelsea Lately, and has guested on such shows as Friends, Gilmore Girls, Two Broke Girls and Orange is the New Black. Myrin (pronounced MARINE) has appeared in more than two dozen films, is a popular performer on the nation’s comedy circuit, and has acted in plays regionally and at New York’s Public Theatre. She recently published a memoir called Little Miss Little Compton, recounting her childhood in Newport County and her experiences forging a career in show business. Myrin, 47, chatted with Newport Life editor Fred Albert by phone from Los Angeles, where she lives with her husband, Dan Martin, and a very disgruntled cat.
FRED ALBERT: How do you think growing up in Little Compton shaped your comic sensibility?
ARDEN MYRIN: It completely shaped my comic sensibility. My parents moved to Little Compton from Manhattan when they had kids, because my mom wanted us to be able to entertain ourselves. She didn’t want us to be overprogrammed; she wanted us to be able to use our imaginations. We would have to make our own fun and make each other laugh, because there weren’t movies to go to. I think that was a real gift.
FA: When you were around five years old, you liked to shimmy around and strip off your clothes. Do you think that lack of inhibition ended up being a good foundation for a career in comedy?
AM: I’ve always thought you can’t be self-conscious and truly a funny performer at the same time. You have to be all in. You have to leave vanity or self-consciousness at the door if you want to be truly hilarious.
FA: You’ve talked about Molly Shannon and Steve Martin as influences. Did you ever get to meet them?
AM: I did! Molly is my friend. And Steve Martin — I did the pre-Broadway run of his play [Meteor Shower] at the Long Wharf Theatre in New Haven.
My favorite performers have a real humanity or empathy to them. It’s so easy to make fun of something, and I think it’s much more fun to embrace it and celebrate it.
FA: That’s sort of what you do in your book: embrace and celebrate the quirky characters in Little Compton.
AM: What was so great about Little Compton is that everyone’s allowed to indulge in their quirks and people just accept it. My dad ate cookies with a hammer, you know what I mean? We were just as quirky — if not quirkier — than all the residents in town. But there’s something about New England’s ‘oh, that’s just how so and so is’ that I think is so great.
[LOUD CATERWAULING IN THE BACKGROUND.]
Wait — my cat is screaming at me. I have this cold, angry cat, Elaine. She’s 18, and she’s named after Elaine Stritch. She’s smoking cigarettes and wearing black tights and a shirt. She’s intense.
The drama teacher was like a stern, surly theater grand dame who was having none of my shenanigans. I didn’t understand why she didn’t like me, but she didn’t. They had this one-act play festival. I was looking around for a one-act and they all seemed kind of been-there-done-that. I felt like, ‘Wouldn’t it be fun to make my own play?’ I started writing plays every year that I would direct, and I was in most of them. It was very satisfying, because in the end, I won the Trustee Prize — which I think enraged her!
No, because it had nothing to do with her.
FA: You met comedian Zach Galifianakis when you were doing standup in New York, then slept in his closet in Los Angeles during pilot season before booking a sitcom and moving there at age 22. Do you think your small-town background helped or hurt you as you navigated your Hollywood career?
AM: I think it sort of helped me. It made me scrappy, willing to work, and knowing that if I wanted to make it happen, I had to keep throwing spaghetti at the wall, making things and not resting on my laurels, because I didn’t know anybody.
I go back once a year for a week or two. I love being in Little Compton. It’s the one place on Earth I can truly relax.
I think there’s something about the air there — and the terrible cell phone service — which I love. It’s actually getting a little better, but I still act like I can’t get calls!
Whenever I talk about my family or Little Compton on stage, or even with friends of mine, people always seemed to be really interested and couldn’t believe that it was real. I thought everybody had experiences like this growing up, and the more I would talk about them, the more people were fascinated.
I didn’t want to hurt anybody’s feelings. That was the hardest part for me: trying to figure out how to tell the truth about the harder stuff without throwing people under the bus.
FA: Have you gotten any feedbackfrom people in Little Compton?
AM: I was nervous! Thankfully, everybody seems to have gotten a kick out of it. You never know if somebody’s going to be upset, so it was nice. Everyone I know who has read it now wants to go to Little Compton. Which I am sure will upset Little Compton. Nobody wants to be discovered.
FA: Did you use a pseudonym for anybody?
AM: I used a pseudonym for most people, just to be kind and safe.
Launching the book. I’ve done a bunch of talk shows and interviews and podcasts, and then recording the audio book. That was like three solid months of all-day work. I have a podcast that I’ve been doing during the pandemic, and that’s been fun. I had an offer to do a movie in England, but they weren’t COVID testing. I just had to say no, because it made me too nervous.
I never watched The Bachelor until the year before that. Then I saw all my comedian friends tweeting about it, and I thought, ‘Wouldn’t it be fun to have a forum where I could talk to my funny friends about it?’ My husband wasn’t going to talk to me about it. So I started it, and it sort of evolved from there.
I would like to create my own show like Phoebe Waller-Bridge or Issa Rae. I’ve sold a few pilots that didn’t get filmed. I sold one that did get filmed, but didn’t get picked up. So the next hurdle is sell one, get it filmed, and get the show picked up.
If I didn’t have the book coming out, I think I would have just moved to Little Compton for the pandemic. I’ve learned to like LA, but I am through and through a New England Viking.
