Kristin Chenoweth makes exaggerated comic characters believable by taking their feelings seriously. We recommend starting with Olive Snook in Pushing Daisies, where her comic confidence holds up even when the programme becomes too sweet.
Fi1m perspective
Olive Snook can be as silly as Pushing Daisies (2007) requires, and Kristin Chenoweth never looks embarrassed to be playing her. She does not pause to reassure us that she knows how absurd it all is. We laughed because she lets Olive commit to the silliness without asking us to applaud the effort. She also finds the sadness beneath Olive’s eccentricity, so there is more to watch than a succession of comic turns. We rate her most when a role allows both that boldness and a reason for it.
Her stage work helps explain the size and precision of those performances. Sally Brown in You’re a Good Man, Charlie Brown (1999) and the original Glinda in Wicked (2003) established her in musical comedy. Her soprano can move from coloratura to nasal comedy, and she prepares alternative line readings and physical business alongside the singing. The recurring role of Annabeth Schott in The West Wing (2004) gave her room for dramatic work. By Pushing Daisies, television was making good use of her willingness to play a heightened character without apologising for it.
That series also gives her colleagues who know how to leave one another space. Chi McBride’s dry delivery as Emerson Cod is a welcome counterweight to the sweetness, while Jim Dale’s narration makes the strangeness sound ordinary. Chenoweth can be expansive without being responsible for supplying all the comedy. The programme can still become exhausting in its determination to charm, and her confidence cannot cure that. But she belongs to an ensemble that makes an impossible romance matter by taking the silliness seriously.
The limitation is the tendency to keep casting her in quirky supporting parts, where broad playing can slip into caricature. A distinctive voice and a supply of comic business are useful, but we want the character to have something to do beyond being distinctive. Stranger Than Fiction (2006), in which she plays the Book Channel Host, is worth an evening chiefly for Will Ferrell’s restraint and his warmth with Maggie Gyllenhaal. It is not where we would start with Chenoweth. Start with Olive, and allow for the possibility that the programme’s sweetness will wear you out before its cast does.
Biography
Kristin Chenoweth is an American actress and singer. She was born Kristi Dawn Chenoweth on 24 July 1968 in Broken Arrow, Oklahoma. She trained in musical theatre and opera before beginning her career on stage.
Chenoweth made her Broadway debut in Steel Pier (1997). She won the Tony Award for Best Featured Actress in a Musical for You're a Good Man, Charlie Brown (1999) and originated the role of Glinda in Wicked (2003), receiving a further Tony nomination. Her screen credits include the Book Channel Host in Stranger Than Fiction (2006), supporting roles in The Pink Panther (2006) and RV (2006), and voice work in animated films such as Rio 2 (2014). On television she has appeared in The West Wing and won a Primetime Emmy Award for Outstanding Supporting Actress in a Comedy Series for Pushing Daisies (2009).
