Praise be to the candle gods: Perhaps the most underrated Scream Queens character — wax-lovin' oddball Jennifer, played by Breezy Eslin — is surviving nicely even while her fellow pledges and comparatively minor characters are dying all around her. May her good luck continue as long as a 40-hour wick candle promises. While, for obvious (i.e. contractual) reasons she couldn't promise us Jennifer does live forever, Breezy spoke with Cosmopolitan.com about all things candles IRL, choking on set, her love for Keke Palmer, and her best guess as to those homicidal Red Devils.

How did you come to land a big-stakes TV show character as special as Jennifer? Dream role, right?

I actually got called in for Keke Palmer's role first — the script said that they were looking for a darker skin character, big-boned, funny, and outgoing. I didn't get it but I got to audition again for Jennifer, though her name was originally Holly. When I first auditioned for Zayday, [the character] was exactly the same as it is in the show, but Jennifer, or Holly, was completely different. The audition script gave me a lot of her backstory, and that really helped during filming.



What was that backstory?

Well, Jennifer is originally from Antarctica and in Antarctica there are, like, solid weeks of darkness each year; it's very cold and, well, fire is her best friend. So then somehow the Bath & Body Works catalog came to her house and she started reading and she realized she could have the warm, comforting feeling of fire and also these scents of spring and summer and flowers, and all sorts of things without being in those places, but as [a means of escapism] from her barren, icy homeland.



Did the script explain exactly how she got from Antarctica to a college in the United States?

No, but I made up my own story that she ended up getting a scholarship based on an essay about her passions — she wrote a wonderful essay about her candles and how, in coming to America, she would get a completely different environment and be able to smell stuff in real life rather than just through her candles.

You mentioned the Bath & Body Works catalog inspiring Jennifer. There's an Internet famous candle vlog/video rant that went viral last year featuring a lady complaining about Bath & Body Works candles, and Scream Queens is constantly referencing memes and Millennial Internet culture. Do you know if that at all inspired your character also?

I actually had no idea [about the video] during filming! I had to look up what a candle vlogger was when I first got the role. I saw a couple videos, but not that one until about a week ago when someone linked it to my Twitter.

Are you a candle expert now?

I wouldn't say I'm an expert. I've definitely learned a lot though, and funnily enough, my uncle was actually a candle maker for years. He used to make these giant, 5-foot candles, and they had five or six wicks around them, beautiful candles.

Speaking of beautiful candles, did you get to keep all the nearly new Diptyque candles Chanel throws away after lighting them just the one time?

I got to keep a couple — the Diptyque candles actually weren't real Diptyque candles though, so that was a little bit of a disappointment! When I lit them, they all just smelled like vanilla.

Stop, that's awful. Have you at least been sent any freebies since the show started airing?

No, not so much yet. I hope so soon though, that would be nice.

Let's put good vibes out to the candle brand PR community: What are your favorite candle scents?

I like fruity-smelling candles; pear bellini candles are one of my favorites. Apple martini is a good scent too, and at It's Sugar, the candy store, they have those giant Jolly Rancher candles — I have about a million of those littering my room. I mean, if I see a pretty-looking candle, I'm going to buy it.

Candles and all, Jennifer is portrayed as the ultimate outsider on the show — the pledge Dean Munsch brings to Kappa Kappa Tau basically just to fuck with Chanel. How do you get into that kind of character when everyone else gets to be the cool kids?

I was an outsider a lot of my life just in general. I was a little weird, sort of strange. In elementary school I was the one sitting back, reading a book all the time. In middle school, I had a couple of friends, but I was also the girl who'd meow at someone for taking my pencil. So playing an oddball really feels natural.

Via Twitter / @screamqueensfun

When you watch my character, I do some pretty weird stuff. Everything that Jennifer does in the background I don't really get direction on — it's just me taking it upon myself to make it even stranger each scene. At one point during the dinner scene [Editor's note: in episode two, "Hell Week"] where they announce that Boone is dead and Chad comes running in, I'm balancing a spoon on my nose the entire time. I sit upside down lots; I'm just all over the place. I must have thought of four or five different ways to eat candle wax — in the latest episode, you see me sitting there with one of those candelabra sticks and I'm just gnawing on it the whole scene.

What does wax taste like — is it actually wax?!

Have you ever heard of Nicolet candies? They're covered in wax and shaped like a soda bottle. [The props team] take the candy out of those and they just give me the wax, I chew on it, and I'll mold it around a candle and then I'll chew on that. One time, though, I chewed on a singular piece for too long and a little bit got lodged in my throat. I've learned at every take I need to get a new piece of wax otherwise it's going to dissolve in my mouth and [I could choke].

I'm concerned that that might have been some Red Devil sabotage. Is there a lot of improv happening during filming?

There's a lot of improvising in the show. At the [end of] scenes especially, people just keep going and go for about another minute or so, purely with improv, and some of it is just the funniest. The best people are probably Keke Palmer, Niecy Nash, and Glen Powell. They are hilarious on and off set, and they have that energy you can feed off. They'll do the first couple takes rote and after that, we'll start to play around, ad-lib a couple lines, throw a couple different movements. We'll just play off each other and it's the most fun.

Even though you're all bitchy and, you know, potentially killing each other onscreen, is there a sisterhood among you all when filming stops?

I've gotten close with several of my cast mates. I'm close with Billie Lourd and Keke Palmer — Keke is just the most amazing person, especially knowing that a lot of actors, once they get to that standard, you know, it seems like sometimes it goes to their head. She was very open, nice, and welcoming to a new person. Other cast members sort of cliqued together; there were these two-best-friend cliques here, two-best-friend cliques there, [for example] Emma Roberts and Lea Michele were best friends the entire time. From the moment they met, they were together by the hip. But as a group, everyone got along really well.

OK, here's a quick lightning round — I'll name a co-star and you pick the candle scent that best embodies them. Keke Palmer?

Vanilla, because she's the sweetest.

Emma Roberts?

Honey-rose. She's very sweet; it's a subtle scent that you don't notice so much — Emma was reading her script a lot of the time, practicing her lines. She tries to really focus and involve herself in her work, and that's what I view as more of a professional smell.

Glen Powell?

Some type of Axe body spray; a really masculine-scented candle.



Lea Michele?

Cinnamon. She has that sweet, sweet attitude, but then she can also have a spicy kick.

Billie Lourd?

Lilac.

Niecy Nash?



Something outrageous, like bubblegum.

Gratuitous Nick Jonas photo.

I feel like we have to discuss the Scream Queens hotties — Nick, Diego, Lucian. Are they all that breathtaking in real life? Do you get inhalers when you run scenes with them?

I wish I had gotten to meet Nick Jonas. I never got the pleasure! Everyone says he's so sweet, so nice, and I've heard so many great things about him, but he was never was on set when I was.

Lucian is pretty damn fine, yes, and he's so nice. He is one of the sweetest guys, always hugging you and he does that British thing where every single time he's hugging you, he'll give you a kiss on the cheek too. [Editor's note: This is not a British thing at all.] I love Lucian. He planned a whole dinner once where we all went to a really nice restaurant and it was one of the best times I had hanging out with the castmates.

Diego also had so much life off camera and was very funny; he's very intense and takes [acting] really seriously; sometimes it's just amusing how serious he'll get.

Have you experienced any sorority-themed horror stories IRL?

I tried to go to trade school for a while, doing cosmetology. There weren't really sororities, but there was a clique of girls who were just total witches and did not want to include me in anything. It was a small class of, like, 10 people, so seven of them were together, and two [of us] were the outcasts, and the other girl just disappeared halfway through [the course].

Is cosmetology another big passion of yours then?

I've wanted to act my whole life. I've been on stage since I can remember. I was waddling on stage as a toddler to go onto my mom's stage with her and play the tambourine as she was playing the guitar.

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My dad used to take me on auditions with him; I used to do plays in the church as a kid, plays in high school, musicals in high school, all sorts of things. But it isn't always the most steady career, [whereas] no matter how great the depression gets, though, women are always going to get their hair cut. Cosmetology is more of just a fallback plan.

Was your musical theater background a real bonding opportunity for you and Lea Michele then?

I think by the time Glee ended, she might have been a little sick of musical theater, so every time I started bursting out in a song, she would sing along, but more quietly, down-key, like, "Yeah, I know the song, I know what she's talking about, but oh my goodness, have I heard this song so many times."

Were there any songs in particular that you felt maybe grated on her?

There was one — I can't remember the exact song, but [when I started] she automatically just turned her head and was like, "Oh, god no, not that one." You know what, I think it was a Journey song [Editor's note: We can only hope it's "Don't Stop Believin.'"] It might have been something from Hairspray too.

via Twitter / @screamqueensfun

OK, so Lea Michele maybe wanted to kill you, no biggie. On the subject of death, was it a mad rush to see whether you had/hadn't died each time you got an episode's script?

Oh, yes. Every single time I got a script the first thing I did was scan through the pages and ask myself, "Am I dead yet?" And every time I wasn't I was like, "OK, great, I survived. I have another week of work."

We were all sitting around trying to figure out who the killer was every time a new script came out too. We'd have more clues and more suspicions [each week]. I wasn't able to read all of the scripts when they came out — my scripts only had pages I was in. So I'm sitting here basically watching like any other viewer! Now I'm putting together why I'm in those scenes, what happened before those scenes, what's happening after. I know one or two more spoilers than the viewers do at this point, and that's not much.

Who are your best guesses for the Red Devils?

Right now, I'm going to guess the Red Devils are Hester and Chad. That's not even considering anything like the secrets that I know — just on the episodes [so far].

Is there anyone left alive that you've ruled out totally?

I've pretty much ruled out Zayday. I don't want to be racist, but it's because she's black and I think the killer is the baby and the baby is white.



So you think the killer is the baby in the bathtub?

Yes! I think it's either Chad or Hester because I don't think it divulged, as far as I'm remembering right now, that the baby was a girl or a boy. [Editor's note: It's actually revealed in episode four that the baby is a girl, so here's looking at you, Hester, suspiciously.]

Everybody else is pretty suspect though?

Yeah, everyone else. That second killer helping out, though, maybe that could be Zayday, great. But the theory that I'm trying to stick to is that it's Chad and Hester.

Follow Breezy on Twitter; Follow Alex on Twitter.

Alex Rees Deputy Editor of News I’m the news director here at Cosmopolitan.com, and I could really use a cup of tea right now.

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