MARCH 19 • 2020 | 39

Detroit, Hodges absorbed the community’
s
love of singing. This, alongside her family’
s
predilections, led to her associating Judaism
primarily with art and education — and to
her identification with those pieces.
“I feel very Jewish culturally, and that
means a lot to me,
” Hodges said.

JEWISH-INSPIRED HUMOR
Hodges also inherited a Jewish sense of
humor.
“My mom’
s sense of humor came from
Mel Brooks, Jackie Mason, Lenny Bruce.
That made a big impression on me,
” she
said. She recounts a family favorite joke:
“
A group of Jewish women are sitting in a
restaurant, and the waiter approaches and
asks: ‘
Ladies, is anything OK?’
”
Such humor fits right in on Indebted.
The show is about two baby boomer par-
ents (played by Fran Drescher and Steven
Weber) who’
ve mismanaged their finances
and must move in with their adult son and
his wife (Adam Pally and Abby Elliot). Jessy
plays their other child, Joanna. The family is
Jewish — and so are the actors in the nucle-
ar family, as is series creator Dan Levy..
“I think our show makes an effort to
be modern and specific,
” Hodges wrote.
“Hence the representation of a Jewish fam-
ily on a sitcom. Hence the representation of
a gay character.
”
That’
d be Joanna. Not that her sexuality
necessarily stands out.
“The truth of her homosexuality is no
more a detail than the truth of anyone else’
s
heterosexuality or otherwise. Joanna just
happens to be gay,
” Hodges said.
“(As an actress), of course it informs my
understanding of Joanna, just like all the
other elements that make up who she is.
”
Each episode of Indebted was performed
in front of a live audience (season one has
already been recorded). “So, it’
s like you’
re
making a new play every week,
” Hodges
said. “Everyone’
s there every day. You start
to feel like a family.
”
Does the Jewish connection play a role?
“
Absolutely. There is such a shared lan-
guage,
” Hodges said. “One day we were
trying to come up with a Yiddish word for
something and everyone was like, ‘
This?’

‘
This?’
‘
This?’
It was very familial and very,

very comfortable.
”
It helped, too, that Fran Drescher — cre-
ator and star of The Nanny — who’
s “so tal-
ented,
” would bring in homemade chopped
liver, always organic, for all to enjoy. “She’
s a
health nut,
” Hodges said.

CAREER PATH
To reach this point, Hodges has had what
she calls a “slow and steady” career trajec-
tory. After attending New York University,
she tussled with New York City, looking for
theater roles. It was 2008. “I couldn’
t even
get a restaurant job,
” she recalled.
Eventually, she landed a role in a one-act
play that was part of a set of six, collectively
entitled The Great Recession. This led to
work with Pulitzer-nominated playwright
Adam Rapp and union membership. In
2011, she moved to Los Angeles, where she
kept climbing. Getting cast as a lead for an
NBC pilot — one that, ultimately, wasn’
t
made into a series — was a big milestone.
“Someone saying I could be a lead of a
network TV show was a big deal for me,
”
she said.
Along the way, she met her husband,
Beck Bennett (now of Saturday Night Live),
while shooting a comedy sketch. Describing
how performance plays a role in their
everyday lives, Hodges says, “So much of
what my husband and I are doing is, ‘
I had
this day; it was like this.
’
”
Although half the year the relationship
is long-distance, she describes it as “happy,
”
“fun” and “impossible to describe.
”
Hodges has gone on to book roles on
several popular shows. In 2019, she had a
big part in an episode of It’
s Always Sunny
in Philadelphia, where she played the mod-

erator of a focus group that the show’
s nutty
main characters participate in to win Red
Lobster gift certificates.
“I had a ton of dialogue,
” she said, “and I
was cast three days before shooting. They
(the cast, who also are the producers) are
so smart and they move so quickly. It was
intimidating.
”
Also in 2019, she was cast as a regular on
the second season of HBO’
s acclaimed dark
comedy Barry, where she plays an agent
for an aspiring actor. She is excited to begin
shooting season three.
Recently, Hodges has also begun creating
her own material. Sundowners, a short film
she wrote and produced based on a friend’
s
family navigating a mother’
s neurological
disease, was accepted into the Sundance
Film Festival last year. And she’
s currently
working on a coming-of-age feature-length
film based on her own high school experi-
ence grappling with the resurgence of Evil
Dead and facing the reality of her mother’
s
past.
“I think we all forget that our parents had
whole human lives before we were alive,
”
she said.
One thing Hodges doesn’
t forget is her
roots. “I feel like where I grew up, we had
an interesting combination of Midwestern
Jewish intellectuals who get mistaken for
being from New York all the time,
” she said.
“It was a somewhat cosmopolitan place to
grow up, but in the Midwest, which I think
is a really good combination.
”
Although she expects to remain out West,
the Detroit Tigers shirt she still occasion-
ally wears hints at a loyalty that she puts to
words: “Being a Jew from Michigan is very
fundamental to who I am.
”

The Indebted cast
— Adam Pally, Abby
Elliot, Jessy Hodges,
Steven Weber and
Fran Drescher —
greet the audience
and take bows after
a live show.