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" Everyone has a thing for Rashida Jones. She&amp;#039;s beautiful but unfussy, smart (she went to Harvard). She stars on Parks and Recreation and almost saved Jim and Pam from themselves on The Office. And now she&amp;#039;s generating material so good that it makes a post-SNL Andy Samberg career seem viable, co-writing the sweet and funny Celeste &amp;amp;amp; Jesse Forever (out on Blu-ray and DVD today), which she stars in with Samberg, about the difficulty of remaining close to your ex. We spoke to the lovely Jones on Monday about her writing career and the dangers of low blood sugar. ESQUIRE.COM: Congratulations on your Independent Spirit Award nomination. RASHIDA JONES: Thank you so much. I&amp;#039;m excited. ESQ: The red carpet always seems like it would be a little bit awkward, because there are all these forced &amp;quot;Hey, Rashida Jones, say hi to Amy Adams.&amp;quot; Is it weird? RJ: Like forced interactions, forced pictures? I feel like such an old pro now. I&amp;#039;ve been in the business for fifteen years. You work this long in the business and between TV shows and pilots and different movies and general meetings and parties and dinners, you end up kind of knowing everybody. Like I&amp;#039;ve known Amy Adams for twelve years, from just around town, auditions, whatever. So it&amp;#039;s actually sort of nice. It&amp;#039;s one of those times where it&amp;#039;s like, &amp;quot;Look, we&amp;#039;ve all known each other for a long time, and we&amp;#039;re all still alive and nobody has a drug habit.&amp;quot; ESQ: Nobody has a drug habit? RJ: Well, some people have drug habits. But it&amp;#039;s not a drug habit that&amp;#039;s not allowing them to go to award shows. Which is the most important thing in the world. ESQ: So Celeste &amp;amp;amp; Jesse Forever is amazing. I can&amp;#039;t believe that&amp;#039;s your first screenplay. RJ: Thank you. Hopefully not my last.  ESQ: You wrote Celeste &amp;amp;amp; Jesse before Parks and Recreation even started, which is crazy. RJ: Yeah, I know. I wrote it because Parks and Recreation hadn&amp;#039;t started. I was on hold for this mystery show. They hadn&amp;#039;t written it, Amy wasn&amp;#039;t attached, nothing. I had nothing to do, so I wrote it with Will [McCormack]. ESQ: Are people more receptive to you now that it&amp;#039;s been a success? RJ: Actors? We&amp;#039;re a dime a dozen, let&amp;#039;s be honest. People are very nice to me, and they&amp;#039;ve been nice as my career has gotten better and I&amp;#039;ve gotten more jobs. But the reality is that if I decided tomorrow that I didn&amp;#039;t want to act anymore, it&amp;#039;s not like people are going to be like, &amp;quot;Please, come back!&amp;quot; There are so many actors, and there are so many people who are hungry and good and want to do it. But if you write, and you have a very specific voice, and Will and I have a specific voice, people tend to respect you more because they want that voice. And yeah, it&amp;#039;s so competitive, but it&amp;#039;s nowhere near as competitive as acting. ESQ: It&amp;#039;s so great that you&amp;#039;re generating your own material. You and Will just signed a two-year deal with Warner Bros. RJ: Yes, it&amp;#039;s for TV. ESQ: Do you have any idea what you want to work on? RJ: Oh my goodness, I don&amp;#039;t know. It&amp;#039;s just really exciting that people want us to make things and develop things. It just happened, so I have no idea what&amp;#039;s going on.  ESQ: What kind of TV do you watch? RJ: I love The Americans.  ESQ: I loved that they kept playing &amp;quot;Tusk&amp;quot; in the pilot. It&amp;#039;s so sexy, right? RJ: It was very sexy.  ESQ: Even though the clothing is borderline repellant and Matthew Rhys&amp;#039;s hair is awful.  RJ: It&amp;#039;s so hideous that it&amp;#039;s sexy. Also Keri Russell is so pretty. She can wear anything. She&amp;#039;s the prettiest. She&amp;#039;s amazing. I love her. ESQ: She&amp;#039;s so gorgeous. And she just had a kid, right before she started filming.  RJ: I know, and she&amp;#039;s wearing mom jeans and rocking it. ESQ: Let&amp;#039;s talk about Parks and Recreation. Do you find that sometimes the dynamic that your characters have with each other on screen bleed into your offscreen relationships, or vice versa? RJ: Absolutely. I think a show is only good if it happens. I think when it really started to find its groove was when little parts of people bled into the character. Like Nick Offerman as Ron Swanson \u2014 being an indifferent, anarchist libertarian \u2014 really only became the Ron Swanson that we know and love when Nick&amp;#039;s little sensitive awesome personality traits leaked into the character. You know? When Chris Pratt auditioned for that character, he was supposed to be a lanky, selfish, indie-band guy, but he brought the whole Andy thing to it. And April \u2014 you really love her because she seems to not care, but the truth is she does care. The writers saw this episode when Andy and April were stuck together, and the chemistry worked, so they wrote to their strengths, and they got married. I think it can only work if that&amp;#039;s the case. ESQ: I love how Amy started doing those, &amp;quot;Oh, Ann, you sweet beautiful flower.&amp;quot;  RJ: Yeah. &amp;quot;You beautiful sexy moth,&amp;quot; or whatever. That was definitely a writer&amp;#039;s-room thing that came about.  ESQ: Your onscreen presence is so amiable, and you&amp;#039;ve been very nice so far in our conversation \u2014 RJ: Oh, you haven&amp;#039;t seen anything \u2014 wait five minutes. My blood sugar is going to drop, and I&amp;#039;m going to attack you.  ESQ: You need to carry snacks! RJ: I just started eating, by the way.  ESQ: Thank God. My favorite thing is when your character is mean to Tom, or when April is mean to you. I don&amp;#039;t know why, but I like seeing Ann in conflict. RJ: Really? That&amp;#039;s so funny. Maybe because I&amp;#039;m so nice to everybody, it&amp;#039;s nice that I have a negative side.  ESQ: Do you think there&amp;#039;s going to be a sixth season? RJ: Oh my God, I can&amp;#039;t believe it would be the sixth season. I hope so. I mean, we&amp;#039;ve been on the bubble since we&amp;#039;ve got on TV, so everything feels like borrowed time to us in the best way possible, where we&amp;#039;re like, &amp;quot;I can&amp;#039;t believe we&amp;#039;re still on the air. I can&amp;#039;t believe we can still go to work.&amp;quot; Because they&amp;#039;ve never let us feel comfortable with our standing at the network. ESQ: I feel like it would make you tense at the beginning, but after a while it must be freeing because you don&amp;#039;t have to uphold a status quo to keep your ratings. You can just do whatever you want. RJ: Ultimately, our ratings are not great, but I&amp;#039;m sure the network has opinions of what we should be or should not be. But for the most part it allowed us to kind of do whatever we wanted. Because people at first had all this expectation about it and were mad that we weren&amp;#039;t The Office. Then we became the show that we are now, which was nice. ESQ: I feel like popular opinion on The Office has changed. People have kind of turned on it a little bit, whereas with Parks and Recreation every year it feels like people love it more. RJ: That&amp;#039;s true, but we&amp;#039;re also in season five, and when The Office was in season five people felt the same way. I think that is just the inherent trajectory of a TV show \u2014 it&amp;#039;s really hard to be on the air for nine years and have the quality stay the same, and make sure that everybody is happy. I just watched the season finale of 30 Rock, and that show is such an anomaly. ESQ: I feel like your show is built for longevity more than most. It&amp;#039;s such a kind-spirited show that when things go well for the characters, the way the audience wants, it doesn&amp;#039;t change the tone, the way it did when Jim and Pam got together. RJ: Right, and The Office is also limited by being in an office. The writers struggle to get them outside the office. Us, we&amp;#039;re kind of always out and about because we have an exterior location in our title. Also, the conflict of the show most of the time doesn&amp;#039;t come from the characters in our office. It comes from external enemies. We have Jam and Councilman Houser and Councilman Milton and Shauna Malwae-Tweep. A lot of these shows are built on sexual tension of two people not getting together, and we don&amp;#039;t necessarily have that, so there is a part of it that is built for longevity, for sure. ESQ: Speaking of Jon Glaser, who plays Councilman Jam \u2014 how amazing was he on Girls? RJ: Ah-mazing. I just saw him yesterday \u2014 him and his family visited set on Friday, and he was so good and so different on Girls. So cool. ESQ: Is he sticking around as an adversary? RJ: Oh yeah. Jam is all up in it.  ESQ: So obviously you&amp;#039;re a beautiful TV and movie star, but you play a lot of \u2014 RJ: [Laughs.] ESQ: Come on, get real. RJ: That&amp;#039;s so not how I see myself. Okay, thanks. ESQ: But you play a lot of relatably awkward characters, but I would imagine a lot of people feel really comfortable coming up to you.  RJ: They do, yeah. It&amp;#039;s close to who I am. I was not \u2014 I know everybody says this, but I really wasn&amp;#039;t \u2014 I was likable, but I was not an object of affection for guys. In early high school years, I was pretty chubby, and I spent a lot of time on my computer, before it was cool to have a computer \u2014 because there was a time that was true. So that&amp;#039;s where I developed my personality. For the most part, it is really nice when people come up to me, because I do think that people who are awkward relate to me, and that&amp;#039;s really nice. It&amp;#039;s generally good. But when people whisper and point at you, it&amp;#039;s never fun, because it reminds you of high school, you know? "^^<http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema#string>
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