When she’s not earning laughs as the flighty but metamorphosing Summer Dutkowsky, the self-proclaimed “hot one” of Girls5eva, the real Busy Philipps — beloved actor, internet personality, and podcaster — has spent the past seven years building a reputation as the brutally honest one.
Around 2017, Philipps started chronicling her daily life on the then-nascent Instagram Stories, speaking directly into the camera with a confessional “OK … You guys …,” followed by whatever might pop into her brain at any given moment. One story, for example, is an admission of keeping running shoes in her car in case there’s an earthquake and she has to find her children; another is a self-deprecating tale of an attempt at making a “Kirby”-themed cake for her youngest, 10-year-old Cricket. A vulnerable grid post from this month shows Philipps on the floor, bare-faced and teary-eyed: “ngl, i had a real moment in Chicago last night,” she captioned. “I ended up post bath on the floor, fairly overwhelmed by a myriad of emotions. But here’s the good news. I peeled myself off said floor and drank some water and went to bed. And the moment passed.”
Seated in her New York apartment, Philipps, 44, has evidently embraced Manhattan life, with her ceiling-high stacked bookshelves, vintage Greenwich Village T-shirt, and a giant print of Philip Glass in the background. Philipps’ move east from Los Angeles happened only four years ago — after she accepted the Girls5eva gig from executive producer Tina Fey.
Originally premiering on Peacock in 2021, the musical comedy series follows a reunited 1990s one-hit wonder girl group comprising Philipps as Summer, Sara Bareilles (Dawn, “the chill one”), Renée Elise Goldsberry (Wickie, “the fierce one”), and Paula Pell (Gloria, “the always working one”). The “5” in 5eva is played in flashbacks by Ashley Park, whose character died in 2004 after swimming off the edge of an infinity pool.
Like the series’ titular act, Girls5eva has rebounded. In 2022, the show was unceremoniously dropped from Peacock in 2022 despite rave reviews. Fey, series creator Meredith Scardino, and fellow executive producers Robert Carlock and Jeff Richmond were unwilling to let the project be lost to the streaming service graveyard, so they called Netflix, who not only ordered a third season of Girls5eva, but will be home to the show’s first two seasons.
Premiering March 14, Season 3 tracks the girls’ hilariously unplanned comeback tour (each episode is named for a different city) as the band “does their damnedest to promote their album and get back on top.” It’s all leading up to one huge show: Radio City in New York … on Thanksgiving, during the parade.
Though unexpected, the move is undeniably a step up in terms of reach and audience; as of this March, Netflix has more than 260 million total subscribers, while Peacock has just over 30 million. “I was so excited,” says Philipps. “I just felt like it was going to give the show [an] opportunity that maybe it didn’t quite have before to find its audience … I’ve talked to a lot of people and they’re like, ‘Wait, what show are you on?’ And I feel the same way about a lot of my friends on various streaming services, where I’m like, ‘I’m so sorry. Are you on a show?’ Honestly, unless it’s Netflix, maybe Hulu, I probably haven’t heard of it.”
Originally from Oak Park, Illinois, and raised in Scottsdale, Arizona, Philipps first broke out in 1999 as the surly Kim Kelly on the Judd Apatow-produced comedy-drama Freaks & Geeks; soon after, she stole the show for two seasons as Joey Potter’s (Katie Holmes) wacky college roommate on the WB touchstone Dawson’s Creek. Philipps followed up with a strong smattering of comedic roles — White Chicks (2004), Made of Honor (2008), He’s Just Not That Into You (2009). By the end of the aughts, Philipps was starring opposite Courteney Cox on ABC’s irreverent Cougar Town, which ran for six years, ending in 2015.
Not long after the end of Cougar Town, Philipps began her Instagram Stories takeover. Her complete forthrightness — both on the platform and off — offers a stark contrast from most celebrities. Her unabashed and candid nature was on full display in her 2018 memoir, This Will Only Hurt a Little, which revealed that she’d had an abortion at 15 and was subjected to a world of body-shaming on the set of Dawson’s Creek. It’s also the reason she got offered her own late-night talk show, Busy Tonight, which ran for one season on E! and was executive produced by none other than Tina Fey.
Philipps had been part of the Tina-verse since 2017, when she starred in a Fey-produced pilot called The Sackett Sisters. The show didn’t get picked up, but Philipps and Fey kept in close touch. Their most recent collaboration, in addition to Girls5eva, is the Mean Girls musical revival, where Philipps puts her spin on Amy Poehler’s “Cool” Mom to Reneé Rapp’s snarling Regina George.
“She never stops,” Philipps says of Fey. “She’s always working. Her brain works super fast, and she has lots of ideas. They’re annoyingly almost always great. She can identify where the joke lives or where the nuance of the performance is. I really want her to direct, because I think she’ll be an incredible director … She’s my hero.”
When Busy Tonight got scrapped after six months, Philipps pivoted to podcasting; her show Busy Philipps Is Doing Her Best is a stream-of-consciousness continuation of what the actor, writer, and activist does best: being herself, and encouraging fans to follow suit, even if it isn’t always pretty, successful, or in line with others’ expectations.
In May 2022, the podcast was where Philipps confirmed that she’d been separated from her husband of 15 years, Marc Silverstein, since February 2021. Today, Philipps and Silverstein co-parent in New York (with the slight exception of their oldest, 15-year-old Birdie, who attends boarding school in Sweden). They appear to be on such good terms, in fact, that in February they teamed up with Cure Thrift to hold an “emotional garage sale” (which longtime bestie Michelle Williams both attended and donated toward), where passersby could shop the couple’s clothes, shoes, housewares, jewelry, and more.
Philipps’ tell-all tendencies are not lost on her collaborators — in fact, it’s precisely why Hollywood wants to work with her. “[Busy’s] a powerhouse and an open book,” Scardino tells Rolling Stone. “She’s a joy to talk to because, honestly, it’s so easy. There’s no ‘How are you, what’s up?’ onramp, she’s already somehow 20 minutes into your conversation, ready to discuss the news, some dumb internet clip, something about life. She’s just always firing on all cylinders. She’s an incredibly curious person.”
Meanwhile, Philipps is all too aware of the Catch-22 around sharing everything. The only way Philipps knows how to navigate is to simply not to think about her celebrity profile too hard.
“It’s the same thing where people will say to me, ‘Do you notice how many people turn around when they see you walking by?’ And I’m like, ‘I don’t.’ After all this time, the self-preservation part of me has adapted to turning [my awareness] off,” Philipps says with a sharp laugh. “I don’t want to have how I’m perceived influence how I actually am.”
Coincidentally, in a form of life imitating art, Philipps’ experience lightly mirrors her Girls5eva character Summer, who leaves her husband (played by Andrew Rannells) by the end of Season One and spends much of Season Three trying to figure out who she is as an individual, whether it’s picking out her wardrobe minus her ex’s input or MLM-ing teeth-whitening gummies. While Philipps’ sense of self is much more concrete, both she and Summer are in an unplanned life stage — both are just figuring it out. “I do think that Summer’s intuitive drive is something that I relate to very deeply,” Philipps says. “You know, sometimes I don’t know why I’m even, like, running toward the thing. And then I’m like, oh, well, here we are at the thing. And this is exactly where I was supposed to be.”
In that moment of hindsight, Philipps looks back on where the past few years have brought her, geographically, maritally, and professionally. Regardless of intent, Philipps appears to be on the precipice — again. She’s a mid-40s It girl, hanging out in the front row of New York Fashion Week next to Melanie Lynskey, J. Smith-Cameron, Alicia Silverstone, Sophia Bush, and Ashlee Simpson. She’s even getting a second shot at late-night TV with the just-announced Busy This Week, which will stream on QVC‘s streamer, QVC+, starting in May. This begs the question: Is Philipps a believer in second chances? “I certainly believe in second acts,” she says. “That’s where all the good stuff happens.”
