Smurfs Family Presents: Jayma Mays
amia Suzette “Jayma” Mays (born July 16, 1979) is an American actress and singer. She is best known for playing Emma Pillsbury on the Fox musical series Glee. She also played roles in the films Paul Blart: Mall Cop and The Smurfs.Although redhead beauty Jayma Mays made her feature-film debut under the direction of legendary horror-filmmaker Wes Craven, you likely know her as Amy, the cute sales clerk in one of the most poorly reviewed box office smashes in years: Paul Blart: Mall Cop. And if you were watching the May 2009 American Idol finale and stuck around to catch the Glee pilot episode, you saw this bombshell as the germaphobe Emma Pillsbury, and we bet you liked what you saw.
Redheads armed with drifting, wide, sky-colored eyes and pale, rosy skin tones drive some guys up the wall with their sex appeal, and if you’re one of those guys, Jayma Mays is likely your kind of girl. Add the fact that she can play any role, from demure to nasty to desperate, and Mays’ beauty starts to round out and leap off the screen, making her less of a far-away Tinseltown actress and more of an accessible girl-next-door… with a naughty trace or two. She’s worked with some directors of great repute, such as Wes Craven (Red Eye) and Clint Eastwood (Flags of Our Fathers), she’s had one-offs and brief recurring characters on some of TV’s top shows as well as starred in pilots that went nowhere, and she has costarred on an enormous box office hit (Paul Blart: Mall Cop). In the fall, she’ll play a high school counselor saddled with mysophobia (fear of germs) on FOX’s dark comedy Glee. Jayma Suzette Mays is Virginia-born, raised and educated, earning her degree in Performing Arts in 2001 from Radford University in Radford, Virginia.
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In 2004, she made her first television appearance on Joey. The following year, she made her feature film debut with a supporting role in Red Eye. Mays’s other credits include Six Feet Under, The Comeback, Entourage, Stacked, How I Met Your Mother, Heroes, Pushing Daisies where she played both Elsita and her mother Elsa in episode four, Ghost Whisperer, and Ugly Betty. Mays was in other movies, such as Bar Starz, Flags of Our Fathers and Blind Guy Driving. She starred in the spoof film Epic Movie and as Amy in Paul Blart: Mall Cop. She was a patient on House in the episode “Sleeping Dogs Lie” in 2006. She stars in the 2007 music video for the song “Awakening” by Switchfoot alongside her husband Adam Campbell.Mays has played the love interest of a character played by Masi Oka in two different roles: Charlie Andrews on Heroes and Nina in the direct-to-DVD film Get Smart’s Bruce and Lloyd: Out of Control. She has also been cast as a love interest twice for Glee co-star Matthew Morrison; in an unaired TV show called Nice Girls Don’t Get the corner Office, where Mays landed the lead role and she stars as Emma Pillsbury on the Fox show Glee, which premiered on May 19, 2009.
In March 2010, Mays played the female lead in a live action/animation hybrid film version of The Smurfs. She is also cast as a character named “Charlie” twice: Charlie Andrews on Heroes; Charlotte, Henry Grubstick’s ex-girlfriend on Ugly Betty.Jayma Mays began her Hollywood career landing a long string of television one-offs, from Six Feet Under to How I Met Your Mother to Stacked to House M.D. to Studio 60 on the Sunset Strip until she finally broke that habit by landing a brief, recurring role on one of AM’s favorite shows, Entourage, playing assistant to Dana Gordon for a trio of episodes.In 2007, she landed the lead in an ABC comedy pilot Nice Girls Don’t Get the Corner Office, playing opposite Jane Curtain, but the show didn’t get picked up. She quickly landed another recurring role, this one as waitress Charlie Andrews on Heroes and played another Charlie, this one ditzy, nasty, pregnant, and not-ready-for-the-big-city for eight episodes of Ugly Betty.
On the big screen, she played an important role (if you can call it that) as the Farrah-like sales clerk at the “unbeweavable” kiosk and object of the affections of Kevin James in Paul Blart: Mall Cop, a movie that combined the worst of Home Alone and Die Hard and still managed to be a huge hit, opening with $31 million at the box office.
Mays went straight from her role in Paul Blart to one of the most anticipated shows of the Fall 2009 season, FOX’s Glee. On the show, she plays school counselor Emma Pillsbury, a massive germaphobe with a nervous streak who has the hots for Will, head of the glee club and ostensibly the show’s protagonist (although he is surely the show’s least interesting character). If Glee as a show presents any weakness, it is in the adult characters, but Mays’ delightfully neurotic spin is the exception.
