Actress Jen Lilley

Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:00):
Hello, Hello, Hello Jen Lily, Hello, how are you there?
Welcome to the Vinnie Penn Project.

Speaker 2 (00:07):
Thank you so much for having me on. I'm doing great.
How are you doing on this Wednesday morning?

Speaker 1 (00:11):
I'm doing I'm doing wonderful, I bet you.

Speaker 3 (00:13):
And when you read, you've read all the names, like
of the people you were doing radio interviews with, and
you would never think that when you saw Vinnie Penn,
that a Vinnie Penn could be a general hospital lifer.
I've been watching that show since the mid seventies.

Speaker 2 (00:32):
I love it. I absolutely will.

Speaker 3 (00:34):
Yeah, and I remember your stint as Maxie. Oh yeah, yeah,
I do, because you know, Maxie is a is a
tricky character to inhabit. She's quirky, and you know Kirsten
Storms in particular, who you took over for for.

Speaker 4 (00:50):
A good long while too. I remember my Yeah, I
remember my sister and I saying, you know, those are
tough shoes to fill because she's a character, she's a
little quirky and flaky.

Speaker 1 (01:00):
And you were fantastic, you seamless. That's hard to do
on a soap too. Yeah, that's hard to do on
a soap. O.

Speaker 2 (01:07):
My goodness, thank you so much.

Speaker 3 (01:08):
Yeah, so that must have been. Were you a fan
of the soap or your family a fan or just no.

Speaker 2 (01:15):
I've never grown up watching soap operas. I knew who
Kirsten Storms was because of you know, she was on Disney,
and I knew it was a big shoes to fill.
I mean I was scared to us.

Speaker 3 (01:25):
Yeah, but imagine to daily I have a lot of
I've had Sonny on the show before, Maurice Bernard, you know, so,
I mean that's a grind you do not A lot
of people realize like a soap, a daily soap opera
versus a movie. Got a great Christmas movie coming out.
I'm intrigued by Jimmy the biopic about Jimmy Stewart here. Yeah,

(01:46):
I can't wait to talk about that. But you get
take two. There's not really take two's in soaps unless
you really flub. So it's a pressure cooker, you know, absolutely.

Speaker 2 (01:55):
Not I And if you do flub, then you need
to take too, and it's your fault. You might get fired.
So they really didn't mess around. There's no teleprompter, which
I always grew up thinking.

Speaker 3 (02:04):
Yeah, oh yeah, I don't know if I didn't know,
this is no teleprompter.

Speaker 1 (02:08):
Good lord, could they make it harder on these people?

Speaker 2 (02:11):
That's cry no teleprompter, and they do expect you to
be word perfect?

Speaker 3 (02:15):
Yeah, all right, so let's talk. I'm stunned at this.
I'm a huge Jimmy Stewart fan. Uh, you know, I
grew up watching so many movies. I'm a big film buff.
I love old movies older myself. But I read his biography. Uh,
I did not know that Archie Andrews himself. I'm actually

(02:36):
a huge kJ Appa fan. But Jimmy Stewart's another tough one.
You gotta know, you gotta yo, yo, you gotta do
you got to do the voice. You got a last
hold them. I'm actually doing it pretty well right now.
How's it going with that?

Speaker 1 (02:51):
Is it done? Is that movie in the can?

Speaker 2 (02:53):
It's it's the movies in the Can? It was an
incredible experience, and kJ Appa did a phenomenal draw because
as you nailed it, I mean, the number one thing
you're going to expect is can he do the voice?
Can he do the voice? And you know, okay, you're
after the keywad. You're like, are you going to be
able to do? Not only just an American accent, but
like the most iconic, unique American accent you know there is.

(03:16):
And I'll tell you we did a zoom table read
because the cast lived all over the place. It's an
incredible cast. People should chuck it out. We're talking about
the movie Jimmy. It's the biopic of James Stewart from
It's a Wonderful Life but his true life story is
truly amazing and it's going to be a huge movie.
It's going to be out in movie theaters November sixth
of twenty twenty six. We have a year and awake. Yeah,

(03:38):
but we were. We were in the table read and
it was over to zoom and kJ had his camera
turned off and my character appears at the end of
the movie. I played his wife's Gloria Stewart, and I
just wept like a baby in the in the zoom
is because so many times it's the most out of
body the real strange experience, because it felt like I

(04:01):
was in a table read with Jimmy Store himself. He
did a phenomenal job and it's beautiful. You know his
life story than he I do. People do not. I
did not know that he served in World War Two.
I did not realize how much his life really parallels
George Bailey in its wonderful life. And she's an incredible human.
I'm so honored to be part of a story. And

(04:21):
I think that it's going to be a movie that
every audience member.

Speaker 1 (04:24):
Can relate to, you know, interestingly enough.

Speaker 3 (04:26):
I mean, like I said, I read that biography and
it was by Mark Elliott, who's a hell of a biographer,
and you know, reading about Jimmy Stewart like and his
plane went down I think it went down like a
couple times, and reading about so many different aspects of
his life. But Glorious Stewart, there's not too much known there.
So I'm looking forward to what you bring to the

(04:48):
table with I hesitated to say that character, this was
a real person, But I don't recall much about Glorias
Stewart from the biography.

Speaker 2 (04:56):
Yeah, she's amazing.

Speaker 3 (04:57):
Yeah, I mean, and they were married. I think that
was his only wife, right.

Speaker 2 (05:03):
That was his only wife. Yeah, everybody always assumed that
he would never get married. And her two boys, and
then they had two more girls together.

Speaker 3 (05:11):
Oh geez, isn't that interesting? Because November's National Adoption Month,
you and your husband have four children, two of whom
are adopted. That's that's eerie, almost jen I got kind
of gotoie.

Speaker 2 (05:25):
It was like putting on I mean, that's her glomp
spit me. And that was what the director was looking for.
Our director, Aaron Burn, kept hearing about me and he
really wanted someone that was grounded and relatable and a mom.
And everybody had me on their list, which was so funny.
It was well, unbeknownst to me, I was on all
these producers list, and he was like, well, what's the
what's the big deal about this girl? Why do people

(05:46):
like her so much? And so we had a zoom
and it was just really funny because we had a
zoom between me doing yard work and he just died laughing.
He was like, oh, you you're totally Gloria. Like she
would just definitely go be chopping down trees and then
like taking in the you know, she was an amazing woman.

Speaker 3 (06:02):
It's unbelievable. It's umb believable. And we of course have
to touch upon because I know you have a busy
press day today, but and you got to help me here.
A Christmastery, Christmastery.

Speaker 2 (06:14):
A Christmastery is my Christmas movie it's out right now.
It's kind of like a Napoleon dynamite in the Grinch
and a soap opera had a baby, it would be
a Christmastery. So it's very offbeat, kind of the Christmas
movie for people who hate Christmas movies. It's good, it's clean,
it's weird, it's quirky, it's funny, it's deep. So that's
available now on Amazon Prime. I got to watch it

(06:35):
like that.

Speaker 3 (06:35):
Yeah, I just watched the trailer. I think you described
it really well too. I expected, Look, I love Christmas movies,
so of course, but I expected it to be very
Hallmark and it had like kind of a Fargo quality
to me. Like you said, I think you described it.
It's quirky, and it was crazy to.

Speaker 2 (06:55):
Know that going in otherwise they are going to be like,
what is this?

Speaker 3 (06:58):
A Napoleon Dynamite is a great reference point too. Chris
Mystery starring Jen Lily. There's a lot starting off in
the artists, or at the very least having that Academy
Award winning film on your resume. Never mind Maxie Jones,
we expect big things. These are big things, Jen Lily,
enjoy the holidays, and thanks so much.

Speaker 1 (07:18):
For coming on