Buds Digest 012 / edible moments with…
Jeffery Self
Photographed by JASON RODGERS
Writer and actor JEFFERY SELF returns to Buds Digest to celebrate the release of his new book Self Sabotage, a memoir-in-essays collection about “chasing your dreams, making big messes, and finding yourself along the way.” The hilarious talent tells us about his favorite queer writers, his upcoming role action/thriller film Drop, and his favorite munchies. Check it out below.
Your new book Self Sabotage is described as a memoir-in-essays. What caused you to start writing these essays, and at what point did you realize it could make for a book?
I have always loved books and comedic queer essays and I had started to almost write this for fifteen years but it was never the right time until it was. So I soft pitched the idea to my editor, Rakesh Satyal, while I was filming the movie Spoiler Alert which is based on a wonderful book by Michael Ausiello that Rakesh had edited. I basically took him out to coffee and was like I wanna write a book of essays, I have a wild history of mentally unstable behavior, and I used to be a sex worker and he was like “write a proposal, girl!”
Are there any favorite memories in the book that stand out for you personally? Any that didn't make it in to the final collection?
All of it was uniquely bizarre to dig through and write about. It was all very therapeutic and consistently the eerie situation of sitting in my feelings and life choices but behind a laptop.
Favorite queer essayists or memoirs?
I mean, I literally totaled my first car changing the CD of a David Sedaris’s “Me Talk Pretty One Day” audiobook on I85 in a torrential downpour when I was seventeen so obviously him but that’s so on the nose. David Rakoff was essential, as was Augusten Burroughs and Quentin Crisp. Recently Edgar Gomez’s “Alligator Tears” blew me away. I reckon the reasoning for loving any these is because they’re all really fucking good at writing.
What comes next for you? When can audiences enjoy your acting again?
I am in this really fun action/thriller movie coming out in April from Universal and Blumhouse. It’s called Drop and stars Meghann Fahy and Brandon Sklenar (Google him but put down a tarp first). Chris Landon directed it (he did Happy Death Day, Freaky, and a bunch of other great movies). It’s such the type of fantastically fun suspense filled movie based on an original idea that you never get to go see in movie theaters anymore so hopefully people go. I haven’t watched it stoned yet but I’d pair with a hybrid (unless you’re afraid of heights).
Favorite munchies?
I am a pig slut for peanut butter M and Ms. It’s become a problem since I stopped kidding myself and started buying not the SHARE SIZE but like the full giant BAG. Like the kind you’re supposed to use to refill a candy bowl in your office over the course of a week or two. I can polish off one of those upsettingly fast like I have a gun to my head. I usually don’t a gun to my head though.
Joints or pipes?
I used to love a pipe. Even more so I used to love cleaning pipes while stoned. Jamming a paper clip up in there and scraping out all that tarry goo? Maybe rubbing the goo onto my finger tips for a kick? Heaven. But nowadays I’m a spliff kinda gal and I can’t fathom turning back. The ritual of rolling it is half the fun (admittedly my husband usually does this for me but I’m learning!)