How Community Prepared Gillian Jacobs For Different Genres Like Horror Movies

Gillian Jacobs' latest film is a straight-up, edge-of-your-seat horror flick called Come Play. In the new release, the actress plays the mother to an autistic child, who is being taunted by a terrifying creature and subject of an e-storybook on his tablet, Larry. Fans of Community will not be surprised to see the actress can branch out thanks to her time on the comedy series.

When recently speaking to Gillian Jacobs and John Gallagher Jr for Come Play, I asked the actress how her time on Community may have empowered her to dive into all sorts of roles she has since found herself in. Here’s what she told CinemaBlend:

Yeah, so I’ve done action movies, but for one week. Or I’ve been in Goodfellas, but in one week. It was really fun for us as a cast, it kept it so exciting and fresh because we never truly knew what we were going to do week to week. I think yeah, it gave me a little taste of working in many different genres, and you know I’d love to do a full paintball action film now.

That’s right, Gillian Jacobs has totally filmed a paintball-western trilogy thanks to the Community’s fan favorite episodes “Modern Warfare” in Season 1, and Season 2’s “A Fistful of Paintballs” and “For a Few Paintballs More,” She’s ready to keep it rolling with a full-on paintball movie, and just about anything it seems, after her time as Britta Perry. Hopefully, we’ll see the paintball saga continue with the movie that’s been teased for some time.

Community saw a resurgence when the series dropped on Netflix in April and became everyone’s obsession. Like many, I took the opportunity to revisit the series for the first time since it aired. In retrospect, it’s quite jaw-dropping to see how much the show, which was created by Rick & Morty’s Dan Harmon, played around and commented on genre. The cast does everything from star in their own video game to play in their own Muppets episode to explore time paradoxes. There's a lot to take in!

No wonder each member of the cast can take on everything, from Allison Brie’s female wrestling drama GLOW to Donald Glover’s surrealist socially-relevant comedy Atlanta. The cast reunited virtually in May to share stories with fans about their time on the epic TV show. Gillian Jacobs stars as the heart of Come Play in a lot of ways, as a struggling mother who discovers the existence of an unseen monster with her son.

Come Play is currently playing in select theaters. Check out CinemaBlend’s review of Jacob Chase’s debut horror film and check out what other horror movies are coming out through 2021 with our handy list.

Sarah El-Mahmoud
Staff Writer

Sarah El-Mahmoud has been with CinemaBlend since 2018 after graduating from Cal State Fullerton with a degree in Journalism. In college, she was the Managing Editor of the award-winning college paper, The Daily Titan, where she specialized in writing/editing long-form features, profiles and arts & entertainment coverage, including her first run-in with movie reporting, with a phone interview with Guillermo del Toro for Best Picture winner, The Shape of Water. Now she's into covering YA television and movies, and plenty of horror. Word webslinger. All her writing should be read in Sarah Connor’s Terminator 2 voice over.