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And your take on our current society and culture? JE: Changing, and hopefully evolving… What do you think the upside would be if we needed to rebuild our society from the ground up, like in Fear? JE: There is always a greater opportunity for harmony and tolerance, and a broader and enlightened sense of each other, and respect. I would always hope that as a culture changes, it would improve in those ways so that we could [collectively] expand our culture in a way that is safer and more fun to live within. I first became aware of you years ago from your sitcom, Dharma and Greg. I remember seeing you in different settings, on red carpets, and thinking, “What’s the deal with this woman? Why is she so happy?” I don’t know if that is your 24/7 being, or if that is what you portrayed publicly. But there is a lightness to you. Where does that come from? JE: I love living life. I think life is fun and people are interesting, I have always been that way. I don’t know if it is my 24/7. I certainly move through all the human emotions like a normal person, but I do, as a general living condition, enjoy living life. Even the problems I tend to enjoy because I like to try to solve them. You feel so kickass when you solve problems, and that’s part of the adventure and I enjoy that. I also genuinely enjoy and love people. Did you want to take the role of June in Fear the Walking Dead to explore a darker, grittier side of yourself? Is that what attracted you to this show? JE: As an artist, I was craving a new opportunity to express myself in a different way. I love comedy! Comedy always comes from, to me, a sense of the tragic and the absurd. That comedy is a result of tragedy and exposing the humor of it. There is a certain kinetic rhythm to comedy which I love, but I was craving a change and I was craving a way to express myself as an artist, in a different way, and looking for that opportunity. Then Fear came along and offered me this great role, and it was exactly what I was craving. I also wanted to express myself in a more mature way than how I had been seen, previously. I felt the bulk of my career had been expressing myself kind of through a young ingenue’s viewpoint. Having aged a bit and lived life, and had so many experiences, I now wanted to express myself, artistically, through the viewpoint of a woman and bring that to my work. I get that. This show is heavy and intense at times. Do you bring parts of it home with you? JE: I do not bring parts of it home. It is not a very mushy psychological situation for me. When the cameras are rolling, I am June. All my preparation at home, spending hours working on the script, researching it, and working through the scenes prepares me for when the cameras are rolling so I can wholly and fully be that character. When they say cut, I’m back to Jenna. For me, the story lives in me, as just that, a story. I am always contemplating the story and how I want to play tomorrow’s scenes as far as understanding my character more deeply. But I don’t bring the character home. I have too many hats to wear at home as it is, and that would make things way too difficult (laughs). You and I are both boy moms… and your son is very handsome by the way. Aww, well, thank you. And your boys are so cute! JE: And you know they want their mama’s attention, so when I’m home I kind of have to take off one hat and do that. Is there a fellow actor who has given you great advise? JE: (Jenna’s castmates) Garret Dillahunt and Lennie James. When I first came on the show and I was in Lennie’s trailer, we were talking about this job on Fear and about the mythology of the storyline. He said, “What I’ve learned is you can’t play the whole thing all at once. You cannot play the whole of the apocalypse, the whole of the mythology. It’s always there, but you can’t play all of that at once.” As an actor, getting to know this mythology and this universe I was in, that advice was very helpful to me. When we were working on episode 5 of season 4, called “Laura,” where our characters meet and we were doing a scene on the back porch and he’s trying to get me to change my shoes and wear a more practical boot, my character is in a very self-protective zone and I said to him, “No, I’m fine.” Garret Dillahunt said, “Why don’t you just take your foot and slide that pair of shoes over and away from you?” I was like, “Oh my God, that is brilliant!” And