A slayworthy ranking of Gillian Jacobs’s most standout roles
Ben Falcone’s Life of the Party brought us the comedic charms of Melissa McCarthy (The Heat) as a mom who starts attending college alongside her mortified daughter. Boasting a phenomenal cast of funny women including Maya Rudolph (The Way Way Back), Julie Bowen (Modern Family), and Shannon Purser (Stranger Things), the movie also featured Film Daily fave Gillian Jacobs.
Honestly, we wish to see Jacobs way more on both the big and small screens because the actor is easily one of the best in the industry. To spotlight that fact, here’s our ranking of Jacobs’s best roles in her eclectic career thus far.
10. Mitzi McNeil: Tiny Commando (2013)
With episodes less than four minutes long and characters less than four inches tall, Ed Helms’s Tiny Commando is an oddball comedy with a distinctly DIY vibe. As the sidekick of pint-sized crime fighter Chuck (Zachary Levi) Jacobs delivered perfect volumes of camp glamour and B-movie acting.
9. Blu-Ray: Regular Show (2009 – 17)
Playing a wild personification of the Blu-Ray format, Jacobs voiced this quirky character of the equally quirky (and enormously underrated) Cartoon Network series. Blu-Ray (who has a family full of obsolete formats like her HD-DVD brother and archivist father) is tasked with helping the gang record memories of their past adventures. At one point she also fights a character called Streaming because of course.
8. Nicky: Dean (2016)
Though her character borders on Manic Pixie Dream Girl territory, Jacobs adds enough fortitude and swagger to her character that she’s mercifully saved from being little more than a romantic crutch for Dean (Demetri Martin).
7. Supernova: Rick and Morty (2013 – )
Lending her voice to one of the best Rick and Morty episodes thus far (“Vindicators 3: The Return of Worldender”), Jacobs plays a dysfunctional superhero with absolutely no patience for Rick and Morty’s ludicrous partnership and plans.
6. Dana: The Box (2015)
Richard Kelly’s fantastical mystery is packed with paranoia, Lynchian madness, and provocative weirdness. Amid it all Jacobs provides a suitably steely performance opposite James Marsden (Enchanted), dropping lines like an icy noir heroine too cool to really care about the bloodshed unfurling around her.
5. Sarah: Bad Milo (2013)
This is a movie where a man (Ken Marino) bottles up his stress to such an extent that it becomes a literal beast inside him and erupts out of his ass to take revenge on everything that helped to create it. It’s nuts but also weirdly great. Jacobs plays the dude’s suffering other half who desperately wants kids with him but instead has to deal with the rage monster her man has birthed from his butthole.
4. Paige: Life Partners (2014)
Leighton Meester’s Sasha and Jacobs’s Paige share an incredibly convincing close friendship on screen in Susanna Fogel’s romcom about a codependent female friendship threatened by a new love interest. Jacobs’s depiction is as charming, bubbly, and multilayered as ever in what is easily one of her most understated and underrated performances.
3. Mimi-Rose Howard: Girls (2012 – 17)
Jacobs only appeared in Lena Dunham’s HBO Millennial drama for five episodes but she easily depicted one of the best characters of the entire show. Confident and artistically successful, Mimi-Rose is the foil to Hannah’s faltering failures. The role could have been played straight and shrill but instead Jacobs brings an underlying vulnerability to the character and layers of depth making her more than just a basic frenemy.
2. Britta Perry: Community (2009 – 15)
Overly righteous and full of good intentions for social justice (with poor payoffs), Britta is a delightful commentary on idealistic liberal politics. Jacobs’s portrayal of the outspoken community college feminist is warm, witty, and wonderfully tongue-in-cheek.
1. Mickey Dobbs: Love (2016 – 18)
Messy, fastidious, and flawed, Mickey is a rarely seen female character – a complex depiction of a difficult woman owning her weaknesses. Jacobs is savage and sweet in the role opposite Paul Rust (Inglourious Basterds). She’s also an absolute boss with a killer wardrobe and an incredible set of quick thinking quips, making her utterly irresistible as a character.
