Frangela

By Alicia in Other on May 7, 2009

Best Friends Share Their Happiness With People Through Comedy

Real life best friends Frances Callier and Angela Shelton were neighbors in Chicago when they met at the world famous Second City Theatre, where they developed their talents in writing and comedy satire. Since that time, they have appeared on numerous television shows, radio programs and had their feature film debut in 'He’s Just Not That Into You'.

For more information on this dynamic duo, please visit Frangela.com and check them out on MySpace.

You two met while attending the Second City Theatre, what made you guys decide that being a team was going to work better than being solo performers?

F: We just really enjoyed each other’s comedy. I loved watching Angela on stage. We were always together as best friends so it made perfect sense to turn this into an act.

Why did you decide to combine your names, Frances and Angela to be known as Frangela?

A: People for some reason can’t tell us apart. I’m like a foot taller than Francis.

F: Oh yeah!

A: Which you don’t know from this phone conversation obviously, and we have a radio show. I don’t want to blame people out in the world for that. In person, for some reason, I think we look different enough so it isn’t that confusing, height difference aside. Literally, because we are always together, people would start going ‘Frangie, Ang’ and you sick of seeing people struggle. So we were like just call us Frangela…Ances sounds like a foot fungus.

F: And we did it way before there was a Brangelina or TomKat.

So you were the first to start the combined names.

F: ABSOLUTELY!

What is the best and worst part of working professionally with a close friend?

F: The best part is that I don’t have to call her at the end of the day, to be like ‘Girl, you will not believe what happened’, she literally was right there next to me.

A: Exactly. The worst part is that sometimes we forget that other people are there.

F: Yes!

A: Since we spend so much time together, we have had a couple people say that we have a version of twin speak. We shorthand things. We played a charades game at a game night recently and people thought they went to great measures to make sure we wouldn’t be on the same team. But somehow we ended up on the same team. It is just not fair to other people because literally we can do stuff like…If the answer was Martin Sheen, I can say to Frances, he is not that guy Steve. And she goes Martin Sheen. She knows what I am talking about.

F: Exactly.

A: This is what we said about this woman last week and she goes ‘Oh, shoplifter’ She just knows.

Are you guys always funny or do you have moments when you just want to kick back and not feel the pressure to make people laugh?

F: Sometimes, but even in those moments, those are sometimes are funniest moments. When we are extremely tired, when we start coining phrases and making things up. That is where the shorthand comes in. We came up with this word called Pre-tired. Which is when you are tired before you have even done the thing.

A: Just thinking about the thing next week makes you tired. I am so pre-tired about Thanksgiving. You are nowhere near it yet but you just know it is going to be tiring. Because we are friends, we don’t sit down and create an act. We don’t sit down and write an act, we are writing our act all the time. Because we are just talking and literally all day long one of us will be ‘write that down’ because one of us just said something that was funny or interesting, something we can do more with.

That leads into my next question, what type of process do you go through to get your material. I guess it is just an all day, every day thing?

F: It really is and it is our experiences. We call from everything, the news, TV, everything is an inspiration for us. Because we are experiencing a lot of things together, like going to see a movie and how we felt about it or how we felt about an actor. We will come up with a bit about it.

What type of preparations do you take before your performances?

F: A gin and tonic..Ha Ha Ha

A: Ha Ha Ha, Happy Funny Booze Juice..no. It depends on the gig. We are doing a charity show for an organization. That is a show that is for a kid’s organization, so it needs to be a clean show. We make decisions about what things we want to talk about. We are improvisers; we are not stuck to a script so if something starts working on stage we will just have fun with it and see where it goes. We are able to create material while we are doing material. For instance we will say, I think these puppets will work well, we will get there and talk about them and if something even feels better we will go off on a tangent for a minute and explore it.

F: Also, if something majorly is going on in the world on that day, we like to talk about it.

A: We can’t ignore it. We aren’t like a lot of comedians who spend 10 years doing the same set. I know why they do it, they are very good. They perfect the joke and it is a great joke. Our goal is to always make each other laugh. And in order to do that we have to say something that the other doesn’t expect.

If you can make one another laugh, you know you can make everyone else laugh?

A: Exactly.

F: Exactly.

A: And that is our goal. In every performance our goal is to surprise the other one. I am like ‘let me see if I can get Frances to laugh when she isn’t expecting it.

You made your film debut as a duo in the movie He’s Just Not That Into You, did you read the book before filming to help prepare yourselves?

A: We were big fans of Sex and the City. By that point the book had gotten passed around. So we had already read it and knew what it was about. In that way we didn’t have to do it again because we were already really big fans of it. When we went to the audition, there was a monologue, the part was actually for one person but we were able to talk them into letting us read it together. So we improvised it based on the monologue. Which was great and then they gave us the part. Then they allowed us to use our name so we were ourselves. We weren’t wearing clothes that we would wear though!

You have been involved by writing, producing, staring or a combination of all those on numerous TV pilots, where do you get the ideas for your scripts?

F: Sometimes it comes from our material for our live shows. Other times, something that we would love to see. It is half and half.

You are very busy ladies as you find time to host your own radio show, star in TV and movies, develop pilots, etc. So which one of your talents do you prefer most and why?

A: I think we both like performing.

F: Yes we do.

A: We love doing our pilot. An incredible opportunity, such an honor to work with people like Garret Morris, and Michael Boltman, Mul Collins. But there is nothing that replaces performing in front a live audience. My favorite night of filming our pilot was when it was in front of a live audience.

F: Yes.

A: That interaction is just amazing, it energizes you.

You co-authored the book, "The Girl Friend Handbook." Can you tell us a little about it and where you got your inspiration?

A: Well I think we are going to change the title. It is about friendship. It is weird, we will go to meetings for projects and in about 90% or more of them eventually someone will say ‘Are you guys really friends, or are you like a boy band’? Yeah, we are really best friends..’really’..yeah really. They will say ‘don’t you ever get jealous’? You know Frances plays ‘Roxie’ on Hannah Montana or you were just on this film don’t you guys ever get jealous. They are looking for some sort of crack..

F: ..in the relationship. The reality is that we really, truly are best friends. Her successes are my successes. If she is going to make a million dollars, I am going to get some of it. Ha Ha

A: Exactly! We always tell people, you don’t have to hire both of us but #1 it will be so much more fun, #2 we are both going to be there anyways. I will come with Frances and she will come with me so you might as well give us something to do. I think that Frances and I are both amazingly talented actors separately, but together I would say that we are more than double. We have a lot of fun. We like to think of it as the Frangela party train ‘You either get on it or you get run over’.

F: And we would really prefer if you got on.

A: It is fun for everybody, all aboard.

So you just took all your knowledge as best friends and bundled it up into a book.

F: Exactly. Because a lot of people don’t know how to make friends, don’t know how to maintain friends. People make a lot of mistakes in terms of their relationships. Saying things, doing things that aren’t helpful.

A: So many people ask ‘how can I have a friend like that or can I be your friend, they want to be in Frangela. I can hear how many people try to fit their name in Frangela! A lot of times we make the mistake of not realizing that friendships are relationships just like your romantic relationships and that they require maintenance and care. The problems we talk about in the book, part of the reason we even wrote it was this 8 year old little girl we know, she was telling us she had this little friend problem. When we got done talking to her we realized we had heard the same problem from a girlfriend of ours who is 40.

F: Yes, the same stuff over and over.

A: It doesn’t go away. People ask us all the time how do you deal with if you annoy each other. Something we actually do is try to annoy each other and it is a game. I’ll try to figure out what will bug her to death.

F: I feel myself almost getting angry but then I laugh because I realize that she is doing it on purpose.

A: I think people miss out on a lot of opportunities to ‘turn their frown upside down’.

What were you thinking of changing the title too?

A: Right now, Frances has voted for Frangela Friendship guide. But I don’t think that is sexy enough.

F: It’s not sexy enough; I know it isn’t sexy enough.

A: I really do feel like this isn’t just for women, so we don’t want to give the impression that it is just for woman. I have a very close male friend who recently moved to LA, and he is trying to make friends. One of the things we talk about, as an adult it is much harder to make friends because you aren’t in school with these people all day.

F: And men have to have man dates.

A: And those are awkward. The first time you hang out with anybody it is awkward but that is how you make friends.

Confidence is an important part of any type of performing, how are you able to maintain confidence?

F: It is very interesting because I think there is a point where you just hit it. Confidence is about having fun. We have a really great time. It is about enjoying what you do and you can feel more and more confident. That we are entertaining each other and we have done the research. I can’t tell you how much research, on so many things we do, we read the newspapers, we are on the internet, and we see film and television. Putting all that information in so that you can get a good product out is always really important too.

Are there any other interests that you both wish to pursue?

F: I would love to be a chef.

A: We have this joke that Francis is writing this book called Cleaning and Cooking Whimsically. She will call me in the middle of cleaning with some new insight into cleaning. She will use cleaning as an insight into life.

F: and philosophy.

A: You know what I have learned about doing dishes? Doing dishes is a lot like how you approach life. If I could do anything I would be pursuing a host of class action lawsuits. I don’t’ think it is fair that banks can charge you, they can figure out at the beginning of the day that you won’t have enough money at the end of the day so they will put their charges first. Then you really don’t have enough money. If you are parked legally I don’t think it is fair that the parking violation people can run your plate to see if you are eligible for a boot. I think that is a violation of your civil rights and privacy. They should only be able to run your plates if you are illegally parked. This has happened to me!

We all know the importance of mentors and people whose greatness inspires us. Who were your great motivators?

F. In terms of comedy we love Richard Pryor, we loved Ab Fab. That was a great inspiration for us, those characters.

A: I like Bob Newhart.

F: Yes, Eddie Murphy.

A: Bill Cosby.

F: Bill Cosby, yeah.

A: And all the great duos. Whenever someone tries to separate us, because people always try. Hey, don’t you think it would be interesting if Angela did this segment and Francis did that segment? And we always go No!

F: No!

A: You couldn’t go to Abbott and say, hey why don’t we try this one without Costello. Come on, you wouldn’t say to Laverne, hey what is it like without Shirley. Although it did happen.

F: It did happen and you know what, it wasn’t good.

A: It didn’t work well. I think we are a great duo. For some reason it is interesting, there have been the Smothers Brothers, George Burns. There are duos today, a lot of them are related like the Farr Brothers, but to my knowledge there hasn’t been, outside of Kathy and Mo and they do more sketch, not really standup. I know that we have inspired, we get emails all the time from people who have decided they are going to be Frangela.

What would you say is your main career goal for the rest of 2009?

F: To get a television show on the air and a 5 day a week radio show. We are writing screen plays too and we would love to sell one of those.

A: We have had development deals for kid’s shows and things like that. But primarily for ourselves we would like to get a show similar to our radio show. We would really like to be on 5 days a week for our radio show.

What advice would you have for aspiring entertainers?

F: I would say you should definitely take some classes and also you need to be in a place where entertainment happens. So if you are in the middle of the country where there is no place for you to perform you need to get to a place where you can perform. Try out all the places that are around you first, get your sea legs as it were, and get to performing and expand out from there.

A: The reason that Francis is saying that is because we get a lot of emails, we answer all of our emails personally. We get a lot of people, this is a real person she emails us a lot. She is 15 or 16 and lives in Morocco, she says ‘I love you guys, I think you are amazing, I want to be an actor, how can I get into Hollywood auditions?’ From Morocco, I am going to say that is going to be really hard, I am not going to say it is impossible. What I do know is, I bet you there are acting schools somewhere in your country or city, I bet you there are commercials and films that get made in your country. That is the place you should start. You should study it if you have the opportunity to. Dustin Hoffman says it in ‘Tootsie’, there is no work, you have to make your own work, you have to create your own opportunities. All of us, of course, would rather have the quick, easy, buy the lottery ticket win.

F: Walk down the street and be discovered for being an amazing actor and performer.

A: But that isn’t how it works, you are going to have to put yourself out there to risk rejection. You can’t do it from your small town in Morocco. I had a guy once who wanted to do standup but he had never actually done it. I was telling him what I thought, he was in Michigan, there are comedy clubs there, probably open mic nights, coffee house. Go do those, try it out and watch people. You should watch every stand up show that is on TV. You should go to blockbuster and rent every standup show. You should read autobiographies and biographies about stand-ups. Be as versed as you can in the news and that takes time. He sent me his jokes written out and he was like ‘can you just give these to an agent and get me an agent?’ I was like, ‘no, that is not how it works’. Even if I had it like that, there is no agent on this planet that is going to take a stack of paper and say ‘yes!’ You are going to have to get on the stage, you can’t skip that and get to the part where you are signing autographs.

F: At the end of the day it is all about risk. To be a performer you have to risk something, every time to be good at what you do.

A: You may not be able to get a new couch for a long time. I have talked to people who quit because they said I decided I wanted to get a new car and that being an actor is hard and takes a long time. It can be a lot of years, if ever, before you are consistently making a living at it. We always say if there is anything else you want to do more.

F: You should do that.

A: Or that you could be just as happy with, do that. This is really hard. Not that other things aren’t. I don’t know if there is much more difficult things than standing in a room and performing for people and they literally have the right and sometimes feel like they absolutely should, look at you and say something like ‘you just aren’t attractive enough’. Or something like that. This industry is like that. So if you can’t take that, this is not a good place for you. It can be mean and stupid sometimes.