Yevette Nicole Brown stars as Shirley in the NBC sitcom, “Community.” Brown has had many different acting jobs working in anything from movies to family television shows. You may recognize her from her guest appearances in movies such as “The Ugly Truth” and “Little Black Book,” and television shows including “Entourage,” or her role as manager of The Premiere movie theater in “Drake and Josh.”
Once I saw her name, I was super excited to talk to her. As a television reporter, you can imagine that I have seen her in countless numbers of episodes of different shows.
Today we talked about her past roles as well as her experience working on “Community.”
Q: I am also a big fan of Drake and Josh, and Josh as well as yourself was the reason my first job was in a movie theater. What is the transition like, from a kids show to Community?
A: I am shocked because [Helen] is kind of crazy.
A: Moving from Drake and Josh to Community was an easy transition because both are comedy and I get to work with funny people. Coming from a set from where everything is PG to a more naughty set, was a little of a shock, but I can roll with the punches.
Q: How does working on this show compare to others you have been on in the past?
A: Every set is pretty much the same work with different people. The environment is the same. We still have trailers, make-up and the food station. The only difference between Community and other shows I’ve worked on is the style of sitcom.
The actual shoot day is different because Community is a one camera production; other shows have multi-cameras on set. The day is a lot longer because the shooting is slow and meticulous. We have to read our lines perfectly and get the angles right; while multi-camera productions shoot the scene from various angles all at the same time. Those sitcoms do the whole show like a play.
The good thing is that we don’t have to know all our lines at once, we only have to learn one or two scenes a day, which makes a longer day work wise.
I like to rate jobs based on how long the work day.
Q: Are there any characteristics that you have given Shirley to make her so hilarious?
A: The only thing that I have given to Shirley personally is calling people, ‘pumpkin’ or ‘sweetie.’
The stuff that makes Shirley, Shirley I take from my mom. The feeling of being a single mom, I took from my mother.
All high voices and low voices that Shirley speaks in, I just think is funny.
Q: What are the progressions the audience can expect to see from Shirley, from the first season to now?
A: Shirley was maybe not as involved in things last year. This season we are going to find out more about what makes her tick. The writers are getting her more involved so we can find out what is inside of Shirley.
We are going to see a big difference in Shirley between last season and this one.
Q: You went to the University of Akron. Are there any similarities between your experience there and what the cast participates in on Community?
A: Of course. Most college campuses are the same no matter if they are 4 year colleges or 2 years. Students still agonize over tests and normal things. I went to a community college over the summer while I was in high school. I got to see the mixture of races and ages and kind of got to experience that melting pot of people.
I think that what sets Community apart from other shows is the fact that all of the characters are hilarious and that all of these people can be found in a community college.
Q: What do you think sets it apart from other sitcoms?
A: I think that is the draw of people to the characters. You can see yourself or someone you know in each of the characters. They are accessible to everybody.
Then again it is not that much different than other sitcoms. Seinfeld had different people that all met in Jerry’s apartment or the coffee shop; the same thing as in Friends and the coffee shop. I think the only difference is that we have different races and people from different walks of life.
I think that what sitcoms are about are different types of people bumping heads and trying to figure out how to deal with it and each others differences.
Community airs at 8 p.m. Thursdays on NBC.