Many fans of the recently revived TV show “24” only know actress Mary Lynn Rajskub as Chloe O’Brian, loyal counterpart to Kiefer Sutherland’s Jack Bauer. They might have been shocked, then, had they seen Rajskub on an LA stage in the early 1990s, furiously placing tape over her breasts and genitals.
“It was one of my bits. It was just strange,” says Rajskub, who has spent most of her performing life in comedy, first gaining exposure on HBO’s “Mr. Show” in the ’90s.
“I stood there asking the audience what they were looking at, and I would tape up my breasts and my vagina and be like, ‘These are not for you! You can’t have these!’ ”
Rajskub, who headlines four nights of stand-up at Carolines July 24 to 27, began performing in the early ’90s in San Francisco, doing what she classifies as performance art based on her own neuroses.
“Originally, it was therapy for me,” she says. “I was doing performance art, and people were laughing at me, and I didn’t know why they were laughing. So I decided to go for the laughs on purpose.”
Rajskub’s real-life social awkwardness drove the otherworldly quality of her characters.
“I used to wait tables, and I would scare people just by my inability to have simple exchanges, like asking, ‘Hi. How are you? Can I take your drink order?’ Tables would think I was mad at them,” she recalls. “I was very nervous socially, and that translated to my personality onstage.”
She moved to Los Angeles from San Fran around ’94, and performed in clubs alongside the likes of Patton Oswalt, Kathy Griffin, Jack Black, David Cross and Bob Odenkirk.
The latter pair cast her in “Mr. Show,” and the awkwardness that had made her too weird to wait tables became an asset.
“There was a scene in a doughnut shop with Bob, who played this really gross guy whose ear was bleeding,” she recalls. “He would say, ‘Ummmmm,’ for a really long time, and make gross noises with the spit in his mouth, and I would just stand there with this burning, evil look on my face, like I wanted to bore holes through him. It was almost like [we put] the person that had tried to wait tables in a sketch, and she met her match.”
“Mr. Show” became a massive cult favorite, and the exposure led to roles for Rajskub on “The Larry Sanders Show” and in the Paul Thomas Anderson films “Magnolia” and “Punch-Drunk Love.”
Rajskub believes she couldn’t have made it in entertainment without the recognition from “Mr. Show,” as she was a mess in auditions.
“I didn’t have a clue,” she says. “I would wear men’s T-shirts that were like, ‘OK, this one’s not too dirty,’ and maybe brush my hair on a good day, and go into these casting offices.”
The editor on “Punch-Drunk Love,” in which Rajskub played Adam Sandler’s sister, showed her to the creator of “24,” who wound up writing the role of Chloe O’Brian specifically for her.
“I feel like I grew up on the show. I learned some depth,” she says. “Even though [the stories] were super tense, I would always find some levity. That became something people identified with my character.”
As for identifying with her stand-up, Rajskub says the audience at Carolines can expect a more structured and personal performance — and no tape.
“It’s a lot of personal observations and revelations that are ridiculous,” she says. “This is the most user-friendly version of myself. It took me many years to figure out that you want to let people in on the joke.”