Christine Friar will be reading at The Difficult to Name Reading Series on May 14 at Study Hall
You’ve recently become something of a staple on different podcasts like Who Weekly and A Good Podcast. Do you have any plans to start a podcast of your own?
I don't have any plans to start a podcast of my own, but I also don't have many plans period. Like, maybe I'll wake up tomorrow and want to do a podcast. Who among us could possibly know?
You do this thing where you make like the “ok” emoji in photos. It’s sort of your trademark, where did you come up with that?
I very obviously and definitely did not invent the "ok" hand, but it's nice to have something to do in a photo when smiling isn't quite right. I honestly think it started because of this one time I livetweeted my dad watching the Emmys and then ended it with a pic of him. I told him he could wave to his fans, and instead he did a number one finger, and I thought that was cool as fuck. Think I spent a little while afterward being like, "What is my number one finger?"
At your last difficult to name appearance, you read a piece about your interactions with John Mayer. Have you had any compelling celebrity situations lately?
Ha! Not really, but let me tell you about my favorite celebrity encounter: The year is 2009 and I am walking down the sidewalk in Morningside Heights where I am living in a Columbia dorm they've set aside for kids with internships. I am dressed full business casual and sweating through my makeup because it is July and the humidity is 100%. There's this very nice restaurant that exists solely for parents to take their Columbia students to or for Upper West Siders to visit when they are feeling wild and insane, and it has a patio. I have to walk by it every time I go to the grocery store, which means I also then trudge back past it afterward with my body weighed down with cans of Beefaroni. One evening during magic hour I am walking down the sidewalk and make eye contact with — I shit you not — Stanley Tucci. He looks beautiful. His eyes glimmer with post-masculine joie de vivre IRL just like they do on camera. I either gasp or smile when I realize who it is, and again — I shit you not — he SMILES KNOWINGLY AT ME AS THOUGH WE ARE TWO FRIENDS WHO ARE IN ON A VERY FUN SECRET. When I walked by with my groceries thirty minutes later, he was gone.
What can people expect from your reading?
One to two chuckles if we're lucky.