Why Hollywood Won't Cast Jane Lynch Anymore

In 2017, Lynch landed a starring role in the NBC pilot for Relatively Happy, playing divorce attorney Bobbi Martin, the boss and mentor of Jon Rudnitsky's character, Henry.

"She defies labels. Max Mutchnick wrote it for a guy: a womanizing, Scotch-drinking guy. And then he cast me instead, and we decided to make her kind of a Marlene Dietrich in drag," the actress told NBC News of the unique part. "She's very come-hither with both men and women. She loves to drink, she loves to smoke cigars, she wears men's suits — but she's also very sexy in a feminine way."

She added, "She's never tried to be one thing or another — she's always been purely an original. She's just herself."

Despite Lynch's history of playing roles originally written for men, she was particularly thrilled about this gender-switching casting, as it's still a rarity in television. "I think people write authoritarian parts, sort of knee-jerk, as male," the actress explained, adding, "And if you ask if it can be a woman, it's thinking outside the box. It's off the beaten path."

Unfortunately, Lynch's excitement about the multi-cam project just didn't catch on with the right people, and the network opted not to pick it up to series.

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