Claire Danes Recalls ‘Improvising’ the Happy Dance Scene in My So-Called Life: ‘It’s Just What Came Out of Me’ (Exclusive)
The actress discusses working on several of the most memorable scenes from the iconic ’90s teen drama
Although only 19 episodes of My So-Called Life aired before its cancellation, the show was chock-full of memorable moments.
During a recent interview with PEOPLE to discuss the series’ 30th anniversary, Claire Danes recalls several scenes, crediting creator Winnie Holzman for her extraordinary ability to create a rich world of authentic teen characters.
One scene that stands out to Danes was from episode 7, entitled “Why Jordan Can’t Read.” After Angela Chase (Danes) and Jordan Catalano (Jared Leto) shared a kiss in his car, she watched as he drove away. Angela, lost in thought, palms to her lips, slowly walked up the sidewalk to her home. But as she did, Angela unexpectedly performed a happy dance — a brief moment that’s sweet, heartwarming and emblematic of the unadulterated joy teens experience with young love.
Danes, it turns out, improvised the moves. “I remember the happy dance really, really well, because it wasn’t written as that,” the actress says. “But I started as a dancer, and I worked with this woman, Ellen Robbins, for years, from like 4 to 14, when I moved to L.A. and did My So-Called Life.”
“She was a great teacher, I loved improvising, and I just riffed,” she says of the scene, adding, “But that’s why I did that, because that was my background and my training. It was loose, and it was very genuine, and it’s just what came out of me. That felt fantastic that [the producers] entrusted me in that way, that I could make a choice like that.”
Another highlight occurs in episode 17, “Betrayal.” After Rayanne (A.J. Langer) slept with Jordan, she and Angela shared a heart-wrenching moment rehearsing a scene from the 1938 play Our Town by Thornton Wilder. As Rayanne performed on Liberty High School’s stage, her lines in the scene — “Take me back,” she implored — stirred up emotions in her and in Angela, who understood their friendship was now broken by Rayanne’s actions.
“It was so smart, the premise too,” Danes says. “The play within the play, the Hamlet style of storytelling that Winnie achieves there to be communicating to each other tacitly through this other story. It’s a really imaginative way for them to communicate with each other indirectly and for us to understand where they’re at with each other and their relationship in that moment. And it’s also totally believable. Every high school puts on a play every year, so [it’s] very rooted in reality and also an artful way to go into their relationship, into their friendship.”
Danes is also particularly fond of episode 15, entitled “So-Called Angels,” centered around Rickie (Wilson Cruz) experiencing homelessness around the the holidays.
“I have such deep fondness for Wilson and such deep respect. He’s a really brave, smart, formidable, lovely and hilarious guy,” Danes says. “I think it was a big experience, because it was so reflective of a deeply personal, intimate reality for him, in the same way that Angela also felt like an immediate parallel for myself.”
“There’d never been a gay Latino character on a television screen, but there weren’t that many girls with rich interior lives on screen either,” she continues. “There weren’t really a whole lot of those, not with that level of dimensionality and complexity. Really to Winnie’s credit, but of course also to Wilson’s for sharing that with the world. It’s a lot of vulnerability.”
Danes, who won a Golden Globe in 1995 for her role, says she hears from moms her age who watch the show with their teenage daughters, and says many gay men also share with her what My So-Called Life meant to them growing up.
“There are a lot of gay men, actually, who talked about seeing themselves for the first time in Rickie,” she says. “I would say that’s the most consistent and most moving feedback I’ve gotten from people. I’m very touched.”
Now, when Danes reflects on the show’s legacy, she recalls the quote, “‘It doesn’t matter who does it first, it matters who does it second.’ I think My So-Called Life was a first, and I think that’s why it had such a limited lifespan. It was so new I think people didn’t immediately know how to register it.”
“[The characters] were all really specific, vivid, genuine characters that now feel iconic,” she continues. “I think it was just so surprising to really enter the inner world of a teenage girl who was so earnest and so curious and thoughtful and sensitive. … We didn’t spend so much time with girls, really intimate time in their company looking at the world through their lens.”
All 19 episodes of My So-Called Life are available to stream on Hulu.
