Parker Posey ‘didn’t get’ her jokes on ‘Will & Grace’

Parker Posey can make anyone laugh, but she can’t always explain why.

Recalling her two-episode arc on Will & Grace as Dorleen, Jack McFarland’s (Sean Hayes) love-hungry floor manager at Barney’s, the indie queen said figuring out how to fit into the manic pace of sitcom shooting was “like tap dancing.”

Posey told Lisa Kudrow in a recent episode of Variety‘s Actors on Actors series that “really having to make that step” into the regimented sitcom mold wasn’t only challenging, but confusing.

“I would say stuff like on Will & Grace and people would laugh, and I’d be like, ‘I don’t get it,'” the Party Girl star admitted.

“What, you mean like, what are they laughing at?” the Friends star asked Posey, who explained, “I didn’t think it was funny. Yeah, like, ‘What are you laughing at?'”

Kudrow playfully ribbed, “Was it a joke that they had written?” Because “that happens sometimes.” But Posey managed to elaborate on her initial misgivings about Dorleen, who continues to be a fan-favorite side character.

“I take it seriously, and then you go, ‘Oh, well, that was kind of funny,’ and then they throw jokes at you as you’re doing it, because everyone else has been doing it for a few years,” she explained. “Then you’re called in, and you’re like, ‘Hey, Megan Mullally’… and Sean Hayes, and you’re just watching this whole other vaudeville, you know?”

Posey was an established independent film star by the time the role of Dorleen came across her desk in 2001. She’d gained significant notice for her offbeat approach to line delivery and idiosyncratic acting style in films by indie luminaries like Richard Linklater, Hal Hartley, Gregg Araki, and Jill Sprecher, the latter of whom directed Posey and Kudrow together in the 1997 ode to workplace ennui, Clockwatchers.

But Posey had very little experience acting for the small screen. Still, her deadpan banter with Hayes and escalating comedy of errors opposite Eric McCormack across two episodes of the show’s fourth season rank among the series’ most memorable guest appearances, alongside Cher, Madonna, and fellow indie queen Chloë Sevigny.

Sign up for Entertainment Weekly’s free daily newsletter to get breaking TV news, exclusive first looks, recaps, reviews, interviews with your favorite stars, and more.

The Baltimore-born actress has lately gained some of the best notices of her career for her performance in another TV series: Mike White’s drama anthology The White Lotus. Posey played Victoria Ratliff, the barbiturate-ridden, endlessly meme-able matriarch of a wealthy North Carolina family on the recently-concluded third season.

When asked who she’d bring back for a theoretical White Lotus: All Stars season, Posey told Entertainment Weekly in May, “All of us. But [Jennifer Coolidge’s] Tanya, of course.”

Watch Posey’s full conversation with Kudrow above.