If you watch the trailer for Bad Words, Jason Bateman's directorial debut about a 40-year-old spelling bee participant (and asshat), you'll get plenty of off-color jokes and a cute kid. And, sure, that's enough to sell a legitimately entertaining movie. But what you won't get is a good taste of the movie's secret sauce—and that comes courtesy of comic actress extraordinaire Kathryn Hahn.
You might not know Hahn's name, but you know her work. Parks and Recreation's high-powered, high-libido political strategist Jennifer Barkley? That's her. Alice, Derek's miserable wife (and Dale's confusing lover) in Step Brothers? Yup. She's also the colleague who pointed out Ron's teleprompter problems in Anchorman: The Legend of Ron Burgundy. She's even stolen scenes on The Newsroom and Girls. Now she's the secret weapon in Bad Words, where she plays a reporter trying to get the scoop on Bateman's character's quest to win a national spelling bee at 40 years old. (She also maybe sleeps with him—repeatedly—screaming "don't look at me!" the entire time.)
And she's just getting started. The actress has four more films slated to come out this year alone, with more in 2015, including Brad Bird's sci-fi mystery movie Tomorrowland. Here's everything you need to know about comedy's stealth maestro, and why you need to get familiar with her.
Name: Kathryn Hahn
Known For: Parks and Recreation, Step Brothers, Anchorman: The Legend of Ron Burgundy, We're the Millers, and now Bad Words.
Fact 1: She's been a friend of Bateman's for a while, and when they had to fake-bone for Bad Words, they put pillows between them to keep from laughing.
"It was like the princess and the pea," Hahn says, adding that it was hard to keep a straight face while filming the movie's sex scene in a janitor's closet. "We were all giggling," she says. "It made it perfect. Perfectly surreal. And as un-erotic as a sex scene could be, which is exactly what it was on camera."
Fact 2: She steals every Parks and Rec scene she's in, but gives all the credit to everyone else.
Next to Jean-Ralphio and Mona-Lisa, Hahn's character Jennifer Barkley on Parks is one of the love-to-hate-to-love-iest people on the show. Who else could hold Leslie Knope's face in her hands and say that she's telling her the truth because "I don't care enough about you to lie"? However, she knows how lucky she is to be able to drop in on such a great ensemble. "I just think they have such an unbelievable chemistry, all of them," she says. "Every performer is so talented and the writers write so perfectly to their strengths. And I think Amy Poehler is just the tops. She's one of my favorite human beings on the planet and she creates such a gorgeous, generous, playful, safe vibe."
Fact 3: Hahn is as much a fan of ensembles as she is good at appearing in them.
She's excellent at being a player in a big game (see the [slightly NSFW] Step Brothers supercut above), and she counts Parenthood, Almost Famous, and The Big Chill among her favorite ensemble flicks. "I love the scale of [The Big Chill], I love the scope of it. Just the chemistry. I love that kind of ensemble."
Fact 4: In fact, her next movie used The Big Chill as a template.
In the ensemble dramedy This Is Where I Leave You, out in September, Hahn plays part of a Jewish family that has to confront its problems while fulfilling their father's final wish that they sit Shiva together after his passing. "We always talked about the template as The Big Chill. It feels similar. [It's got] that kind of tricky tone," she says. "It's this really functional family that is in a room trapped together to face each other for seven days."
Fact 5: She once thought Sean Lennon was a stage manager she worked with in college.
Ask Hahn if she gets recognized on the street, and it turns into a conversation about how some famous people are familiar in that "did we go to high school together?" way. "I did that with Sean Lennon once in New York; I literally saw him at a coffee shop and was like, 'I think he stage-managed a play at Northwestern,' which is where I went to undergrad," she says. "As I was walking up I was like, 'Oh, that's Sean Lennon.' So glad I didn't say anything."
Bonus: She's funny onscreen, and she's no slouch IRL either.
When WIRED hung out with Hahn at South By Southwest, the whole "Keep Austin Weird" thing came up and we asked if she'd seen anything particularly noteworthy. Her response: "I saw a pedicab and there was a woman who was riding it and she had on amazing high tube socks with stripes and the shortest shorts that you have ever seen. I was very excited for her future passengers; the view was probably incredible."
Bad Words is now in select theaters and opens wide on Friday.
