Awkwardness gets real for Chelsea Peretti

Chelsea Peretti says she likes to make her Brooklyn Nine-Nine co-stars squirm.

Comedian makes awkward look effortless - and hilarious. Brooklyn Nine-Nine's breakout star talks to Chris Schulz.

She's the self-confessed queen of awkward, capable of wringing every ounce of sweaty-palmed tension from the most mundane of situations.

But for Chelsea Peretti, who plays the super-sarcastic police secretary Gina Linetti on TV2's returning comedy Brooklyn Nine-Nine, that's meant a few awkward encounters of her own - mostly when her own fans don't recognise her.

"People will approach me, and what they'll do is they'll say, 'Has anyone ever told you that you look like this actress off Brooklyn Nine- Nine?'" she says, laughing.

"And then I feel like it's on my shoulders to tell them. You never want to be marching out your own credits. It's very awkward."

It's lucky, then, that Peretti has turned awkwardness into a career. She's gone from the writing room on Amy Poehler's now-cancelled sitcom Parks and Recreation to Brooklyn Nine-Nine's breakout star, thanks to her capacity to embrace off-kilter weirdness and deliver an incredibly high ratio of zingers.

Entire websites are dedicated to documenting Gina's one-liners, her animal-themed outfits and accessories, her voicemail messages ("Gina's phone, leave a message, I won't check it because it's not 1993") and her best moments, like the time she called an office meeting by yelling, "Attention, skeezy nobodies".

Peretti admits her character gets many of the show's biggest laughs. "Sometimes I get a script and I'm like, 'Oh my God - people are going to think it's improvised', but it's just written that way. The writers definitely notice things about us as actors and start to funnel that into the characters, which is sometimes terrifying."

Also terrifying, apparently, is filming a scene with Peretti. Back in season one when Brooklyn Nine-Nine won two Golden Globe awards, the Herald chatted to Peretti's co-star Terry Crews, who plays Detective Sergeant Terry Jeffords. He admitted scenes with Peretti were the hardest to film because of her unpredictable nature. "You have no idea what's going to come out of her mouth or how she's going to say her lines. You'll see it written down, but then she'll say it and you're like, 'I had no idea you could say it like that'. Everything she says kills me. I go home quoting her lines," he said.

Peretti admits she likes to make her co-stars squirm.

"I think I tend to try different things and be playful with it and see if I can find a surprising way to say it. And it is funny to see the people you're in a scene with react in a real way to what you're doing. Sometimes it's just hard to keep it together."

Currently shooting the show's third season, Peretti says season two features "some romantic liaisons, intertwining personal lives, definitely more dancing, definitely more Captain Holt saying things when you can't tell what his emotional state is, and some cases solved along the way".

And there'll be plenty of moments to add to Gina's greatest hits. There are so many there's a lengthy pause while Peretti considers her favourites.

"Lately I've been thinking about this time [Detective] Scully is filing in the evidence room and I dance all around him, just because he's so uncomfortable and she's acting so whimsical in the workplace," she says. "She's literally dancing in an evidence room."

TV Profile

Who: Chelsea Peretti in season two of Brooklyn Nine-Nine
Where and when: TV2, Wednesday, 10pm
Also: Netflix stand-up special One of the Greats, streaming now.