“I’ve been trained how to act, but it’s the most stressful thing in the world to me. I would rather get arrested,” Chappell Roan tells Bowen Yang in a new interview
Chappell Roan is booked out until next year. The Midwest Princess has been filling out concert venues and teasing out a new song—“The Subway,” which she has performed numerous times live. And while she’s done different personas on tour—a butterfly, Lady Liberty, a taxi cab(!), a swan, a sk8r boi, French aristocracy, a Lucha libre wrestler, a sexy nun, and a band leader—what she’s not doing anytime soon is acting, she told actor and comedian Bowen Yang in a new interview.
READ: 5 Chappell Roan songs to get into her campy, queer, glittery, pink pony world
Yang asked Roan if she’d ever consider acting if her newfound fame “does hit a level that’s not tenable.” The singer, always frank and sincere, told the “Saturday Night Live” star, “I say this with peace, and love, and blessings. Actors are fucking crazy.”
Apparently, film people freak her out, so much that when asked a couple of weeks ago if she wants to be the lead on something, she said, “No.”
“I appreciate it, but literally, no. I originally started doing music because I wanted to get my foot in the door for acting, and then I moved to Los Angeles, and I was like, ‘Fuck that.’ The industry is legitimately so scary, and it is so out of my control. I can put out music whenever I want. I don’t have to wait for a casting director to be like, ‘It would be great if we cast you, and then we’ll decide your schedule for the next three months.’”
She added though as a disclaimer that she’s not closing all doors on acting. It just has to be really specific and really silly. “I would maybe do a cameo.”
READ: Chappell Roan performs ‘Hot to Go!’ with Sasha Colby, the drag queen who inspired her iconic line
Almost a decade ago, Roan moved to Los Angeles after signing with Atlantic Records, a deal that soon fell through. “I’ve been trained how to act, but it’s the most stressful thing in the world to me,” she told Yang. “I would rather get arrested.”
Yang said he only asked if she’d ever act because he saw the music video for “Casual,” where Roan acts opposite a mermaid, and thought she “had the goods if she ever wanted to do it.”
To this, Roan simply replied, “It would really have to be the right thing and the right timing.”