How Jackie Tohn’s American Idol Exit Sparked a Life-Changing Breakthrough You Didn’t See Coming
Have you ever wondered what it takes to quietly carve out a lasting spot in the whirlwind world of Hollywood? Jackie Tohn’s journey might just surprise you. For nearly four decades, she’s been that magnetic force on screen—whether cracking you up, making you think, or simply stealing scenes with an effortless charm that makes you want to be her best mate. From New York theater roots to Netflix’s Emmy-winning glow, and even a surprising stint on American Idol’s grueling stage, Jackie’s story is anything but typical. This year, beyond the glitz, she faced a personal health battle with courage, honesty, and the kind of grit only she can muster—and turned it into a powerful platform for advocacy. So, what’s the secret sauce behind her resilience and wit? Dive into Jackie’s candid chat on sisterhood, showbiz highs and lows, and a life lived with heart and heaps of humor. Ready for some real talk sprinkled with sparkle? Let’s crack on. LEARN MORE
9 min readFor the better part of four decades, Jackie Tohn has been steadily chipping away at Hollywood, building a career that has taken her from New York stages to the big and small screens. She has a particular kind of onscreen magnetism. As Esther, the scene-stealing sister-in-law to Adam Brody’s Rabbi Noah and Kristen Bell’s Joanne Williams in Nobody Wants This, she brings a particular kind of onscreen magnetism. Even at her most withering, she radiates the kind of energy that makes you want to be her best friend.
The New York native got her start onstage before landing early television roles in shows including The Nanny, Angel, and Veronica Mars. In 2017, a standout role in Netflix’s Emmy-winning series GLOW cemented her place in the industry. And did we mention she competed on Season 8 of American Idol? Out of about 150,000 hopefuls, she made it to the top 36. (The girl can sing.)
This year, Tohn has made headlines for reasons beyond her acting, opening up about learning she carries a BRCA1 gene mutation, which led her to undergo a preventative double mastectomy and, soon after, take up advocacy work. She’s been refreshingly candid about the experience. (Really, just ask her.) And she’s approached it the way she seems to approach everything in life: with grace, with wit, and with a laugh, because sometimes that’s just how you gotta roll.
A few weeks before the third season of Nobody Wants This dropped, Tohn sat down with Harper’s Bazaar to chat about sisterhood (and spitting in test tubes), an encounter with her idol, Joan Rivers (who fell asleep during Tohn’s performance in Jewtopia), and her Hollywood origin story (which includes Jessica Biel). Read on for her answers to our “First, Now, Next” questionnaire.
What’s the first film that cracked something open in you?
Cracked something open in me? There are so many that come to mind. My favorite movies in my early 20s were the ones that really cracked something open. Like Election and Rushmore and Wet Hot American Summer. Oh! And Waking Life, which was this movie that was rotoscoped, where they filmed it and drew over it. Those were all movies where I was figuring out who I was, and each of those movies really influenced me in a lot of ways.
Who was your first true friend in the industry?
My first true friend was Lisa Molina. Our mothers were very good friends. We met going on auditions because we were both theater kids, singing. My first celebrity friend was Ben Salisbury, and then my first celebrity best friend was Jessica Biel, who I lived with and is the reason I moved to L.A.
I came out to California in between semesters because we had this two-month break. My agent at the time, Aggie Gold, of the Fresh Faces Agency out of Baldwin, Long Island, famously said, “It’s pilot season, let’s see what we can get.” So me and my agent and my mom came out to L.A., and I was Ben Salisbury’s date to the TV Guide Awards in 1998, and I met Jessie Biel and never left. I’m 18 years old, and because my mom was with me, she got to meet Jessie’s parents, so she didn’t feel like she was releasing me to the wolves of living alone in Los Angeles. I lived in a gated community in Calabasas with Jess and her family. Kim Biel taught me how to write a check.
There are worse Hollywood origin stories.
Honestly, I don’t know if there are better ones. Frankly, at the TV Guide Awards, the tables had polyester table skirts, and it was at a Marriott. It was delightful.
Jackie Tohn in Nobody Wants This
Have you had a failure that ended up changing the trajectory of your career?
I’d been acting since I was nine, and I hadn’t really gotten the thing that was going to hit. When I was 23, I finally got a series. They fired everyone from the pilot, then it was picked up for six episodes mid-season, and I booked the series.
On our first work week, my parents came out, because it was a live studio audience. The next day, I was going to work and the producers called. They wanted me to come to their cabana at CBS Radford. My parents were in the car, so I go to drop them off at my dressing room, and someone was painting my name off my parking space. I was like, “Oh! Maybe they’re moving me.” I didn’t drop my parents off because I had no dressing room anymore; the door was locked. I drove them over to the cabana, and I was like, “What is going on?” And the first words out of their mouths were “Jackie, please calm down.” I’m like, “No, I’m not doing anything. My parents are in the car. This is mortifying.” That’s when they told me that the network wanted to go another way. And that the girl who was in the pilot, who I replaced, was now re-replacing me. I got fired. I made six episodes of network money. I had enough money at 23 to sort of be a person.
I got more into theater and more into music at that point because I was like, I can’t be at the behest of this business. I can’t be sitting here waiting for the phone to ring. I was playing a lot more music and doing a lot more theater. And that totally changed my life, because after this series I did a play called Jewtopia and moved to New York, and we did it off-Broadway for a few years. That’s when I started making records and really touring the country.
The second failure was getting eliminated from American Idol. That felt devastating, but it was the biggest gift. I didn’t make it to the top 24, and that’s where they would have really owned me.
What was the first project that made you take yourself seriously, that made you think, “I can do this and have a real career in this world”?
Well, you never think it’s all going to be fine. As a person who started acting when she was nine and started getting real jobs at 36, those 27 years don’t go away when you finally get the thing you want. That said, the first time I had that feeling that I was part of something special, that mattered, was definitely the TV show GLOW. I remember being cognizant of it while it was happening. Me and Betty Gilpin would sit next to each other and be, like, “Just so you know, this is never going to happen to any of us ever again. This thing that we are doing right now and this sisterhood that we created and this female-powered camaraderie on this show, that’s tackling women’s issues, that’s written by, starring, directed by women? Executive produced, showrun, everything. This is a lightning-in-a-bottle situation.” You felt it when you were there.
Kristen Bell and Jackie Tohn in Nobody Wants This
How would you define success at 16, and how would you define it now?
I define career success as being financially stable in the career you want to have. There’s financial stability, but people are miserable. They have a lot of money, but they hate their job. For me, it was having enough money to get by in the arts and not have an additional 5–7 p.m. closet-cleaning, organizing job. When I was 16, it was to be a TV star. To be [Fran Fine in] The Nanny, specifically. The eye on the prize was, have that. Star in a half-hour multicam where I come down the stairs in various short sequined dresses.
Then, of course, the barometer by which I measure life success and personal success is so different. It’s having love in my life with my partner and my dogs, and having my health, having gone through what I have in this last year. Getting my genetic testing and doing whatever preventative surgeries I have to do.
Once you go through something like that, it must feel like a duty to share what you know.
The sisterhood is wild. I partnered with this genetic-testing company, Myriad. They discovered the BRCA mutation. I try to tell as many people as I can: Spit in a tube. It’s so easy.
What’s something that either your mother or father did that drove you crazy that you do now?
I am my mother, so the answer to that is everything. The way we look, our facial expressions, the way we speak. I was that really rogue teenager who was always obsessed with my mom. I was hyper-aware that she was funny and smart and cool, and all the kids wanted to come to our house because my parents were the cool, lenient ones who always had the snack foods. I didn’t have a curfew because my mom was like, “Everyone else has a curfew. What are you going to do, stay out alone? You’ll come home as late as the last person comes home.”
My dad always played the piano, and I always sang with him. I could look back and be like, “Was that embarrassing?” No. I was ready; I was a showman at four. That was maybe a little annoying, when my mother would always want me to sing. But it wasn’t even that annoying. I wanted to.
Jackie Tohn in Nobody Wants This
What’s the last thing you splurged on, and what’s something you still refuse to spend money on?
My boyfriend and I were just in France and Italy over the summer. Both of our first times.
What?
When I tell you it was grim until 36, now you believe. It’s crazy. Now that I’ve been, it’s even more unhinged. I bought Gucci bags in Florence, and they are proprietary to Gucci in Florence. They don’t go anywhere; they just stay there. I bought one for myself and one for my mom.
This is sort of a vague answer, but in general, I have trouble spending money on something I already have. If I’m out and I’m using a camera that has film, but I have three rolls of film in the fridge, it makes me insane to buy film because I have film. It used to be flying well, but it’s not anymore. Now that’s the number-one place it goes. Even hotels I don’t splurge on. When I’m doing comedy or speaking engagements around the country, I’m happy with a Hilton. I don’t need to be at a Ritz-Carlton for one night in the middle of Atlanta when I’m there for 18 hours. I’m this weird combination of … I wouldn’t say frugal, but I’m very mindful of how I spend my money. I am deeply not wasteful.
Nobody Wants This is coming back for season 3 this month. Are there any parallels between you and Esther?
We are nothing alike! I’m just kidding. I know the biggest parallel and the biggest difference. The biggest parallel is that we are both absolutely strong, capable, opinionated Jewish women. I think something that differentiates us … I am a very, very foolish fool. It’s my whole thing. I love silly and whimsy. The sillier the better, the goofier the better. Talking in stupid voices. I’ve just been truly a clown my entire life, and Esther is not that way. She’s very straitlaced; she wants to be taken seriously. As I get older, it’s a little more important for me to feel like I’m being taken seriously, both as an actor and as a woman with opinions. But Esther’s not goofy like me. Esther would never be eating chips right now.
What are you saying yes to, and what are you saying no to?
I’m saying yes to sisterhood. And no to people watching videos or FaceTiming on their phone in public without headphones.
If you were retiring from the industry today, what would you do in your next step?
Maybe I’d live on a ranch with a hundred dogs who need homes and need specialty care and are my very, very close friends who are dogs. I love dogs so much, I could fucking explode. It’s hard for me to walk down the street when I see dogs. Literally, I’m like, “How come that one’s not talking to me? How come that one is only with their own mom, and I get turned into a crazy person??
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