Interview: Jennifer Tilly on Loneliness, Dark Humor, and Humanity in THE ADDING MACHINE

For decades, Jennifer Tilly has captivated audiences across film, television, and stage with performances that balance razor-sharp wit and emotional vulnerability. Now, the Oscar-nominated actor returns to Off-Broadway with The New Group’s revival of THE ADDING MACHINE, directed by Scott Elliott. In the production, Tilly takes on the complex role of Mrs. Zero opposite a dynamic ensemble that includes Daphne Rubin-Vega, Michael Cyril Creighton, and Sarita Choudhury.

Originally written in the 1920s, THE ADDING MACHINE explores themes of work, identity, ambition, and alienation. Ideas that feel startlingly contemporary in a world increasingly shaped by automation and artificial intelligence. For Tilly, the opportunity to explore such a strange and emotionally resonant story alongside longtime collaborator Elliott made the project irresistible.

“First of all, I've known Scott Elliott, who is the Artistic Director of The New Group, for, I don't know, 30 years,” Tilly explains. “The New Group is such a prestigious theater, and they put on very important work and really interesting plays. It's just a very creative environment. I was really excited when he asked if I wanted to do something there.”

Her interest deepened once she read the script itself.

“I was very drawn to the material. It's very strange. It's very dark, but it's also very optimistic,” she says. “The characters are all so lonely and struggling to survive emotionally and financially. Then it veers off into this very fantastical category. I think people are going to be very intrigued by it or love it.”

While many audiences know Tilly for her iconic screen roles, from Tiffany Valentine in the Chucky franchise to Bonnie Swanson on Family Guy, the actor has long maintained a deep connection to live theater. For her, the immediacy of a stage performance remains unmatched.

“I love doing live theater,” she states. “I always said that the last character in a play is the audience because the audience dictates your performance. The audience tells you what they want.”

That dynamic interaction creates a uniquely evolving artistic experience.

“When I'm doing a play, I never ever get bored because every single night you're aiming for that perfect performance,” she reveals. “The perfect performance, by the way, never arrives. But it's just a wonderful artistic experience to be up on a stage doing live theater.”

In contrast, film and television performances are fixed once they are captured on camera.

“Theater is more of a dialogue. It's a dialogue with the audience,” Tilly says. “When you do a movie or television, it's up there, and the audience is allowed to come in and see it, but you're not interacting with the audience.”

Although THE ADDING MACHINE was written more than a century ago, its story about a worker replaced by technology feels eerily familiar today.

“When I go to the airport now there's all these kiosks, and there's nobody there to take your ticket,” Tilly points out. “When you go into the stores, there is nobody checking you out. You check yourself out. I'm thinking, ‘What happened to all these people?’”

The play imagines the human consequences of that technological shift.

“This is a story of what happened to one such person that was replaced by a machine,” she says. “It's really astonishing how relevant it is today.”

At the center of the production is Tilly’s character Mrs. Zero. The character is both sharp-tongued and deeply wounded, playing into acting strengths that her fans adore her for. Unsurprisingly, the role immediately intrigued Tilly, even if it also presented a formidable challenge.

“The play starts where I have a lengthy monologue,” she says.

Yet the real complexity lies beneath the character’s bitterness.

“The thing that's interesting about her is that she's very bitter, but she's so deeply lonely, and she's so lonely within a relationship,” Tilly divulges. “You think she hates Mr. Zero, but she actually loves him ferociously. But she doesn't get what she wants from him.”

That emotional contradiction of love and resentment existing simultaneously is exactly what makes this character so compelling.

“It's about the implications of a wasted life and how she never managed to fulfill her potential,” she continues. “The character’s just very beautifully lyrical, but she's very harsh too.”

For an actor known for playing charming or comedic characters, stepping into someone so abrasive required a shift in perspective.

“To play this character that is so complicated and has so many negative qualities, it's quite a challenge,” she admits.

Despite its bleak themes, THE ADDING MACHINE contains moments of dark humor, which is something Elliott has encouraged the cast to embrace naturally.

“Scott Elliott is a brilliant director,” Tilly says. “He's saying that you don't have to push it, the comedy, because it's there. The most important thing is to find the humanity and the vulnerability behind these really harsh words.”

One of Elliott’s most surprising choices involved casting Daphne Rubin-Vega as Mr. Zero, a decision that initially puzzled Tilly.

“He said to me, ‘Jennifer, the character of Mr. Zero is so misogynistic.’ He said, ‘I really feel like it would be better if he's played by a woman,’” she recalls. “But now I've seen in rehearsal that it is really working.”

Like many actors, Tilly finds that the emotional lives of her characters sometimes show up in her own.

“My sister, also an actress, said this is bleedover,” she states. “When I play a character that's very hard-edged, for the next month I'm wearing leather jackets and combat boots in real life.”

In that vein, working on THE ADDING MACHINE has prompted Tilly to have deeper reflections about life’s purpose and the passage of time.

“I am feeling the loneliness, the aloneness, and the dreariness and how little time I have left on this Earth, which is what my character is feeling,” she explains.

If audiences are looking for light escapism, Tilly warns that THE ADDING MACHINE will not be that kind of evening at the theater.

“This is a play that will challenge people,” she says. “It's a play that will make people think. They're going to go to dinner, and they're going to argue about it.”

But that, she believes, is precisely the point.

“I think that that is the job of theater, to provoke people and move them outside of their comfort zone and make them examine their own life,” Tilly posits.

Still, she promises the evening won’t be entirely grim.

“People will go out into the night—they probably won't be laughing, they might be a little shook—but you can still have spaghetti after the play.”

And for Tilly, performing the piece in the company’s newly renovated theater space adds another layer of meaning.

“It's the first play they're doing in the new theater,” she emphasizes. “It's literally a church, which I think is so apropos because I believe going to the theater is like going to church of sorts.”

As audiences gather for this haunting and surreal revival, Tilly hopes they leave not only entertained but also deeply reflective. Audiences will be questioning the paths they’ve taken and the dreams they may still have time to pursue.

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