 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.

