How Amy Grant and Johnny Carson launched Susan Yeagley

Mom and Dad argued a lot when Susan Yeagley was a little girl growing up in Hendersonville.

The only consistent peacemaker in the house during those tough times was late-night TV show host Johnny Carson.

“I’d sneak downstairs and my parents would be laughing together,” Yeagley said.

“I’d go, ‘Wow!’ There is this one thing that makes everybody in the family happy.”

That planted an idea for Yeagley, a 45 year-old comedian set to star alongside Fred Willard, Jane Lynch (“Glee”) and others in the original Netflix movie “Mascots,” opening Thursday, Oct. 13.

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“I started to ask my mother, just out of the blue, ‘How do you get to be in a play? How do you get to make people laugh?’”

Mom found a Nashville acting teacher, Ruth Sweet, who worked with kids in an office in downtown Nashville.

After months of doing skits, poems and readings, Yeagley, then only 11, found herself on her first audition. She tried out to be in a music video for an up-and-coming Christian music star named Amy Grant.

Yeagley booked the gig – and she freaked out on the way.

“It’s always been the same way," Yeagley said. "I still get incredibly nervous. ‘I can’t do this, oh my gosh, Mom, I can’t do this. Turn the car around.’”

Her mother shrugged and said, “OK, honey.”

But as soon as the car started to turn, Yeagley shouted, “OK, stop! I’ve gotta do this!”

Producers told the kids for the video for “Angels Watching Over Me” to bring their own clothes.

“I probably thought, ‘What would Pat Benatar wear?’”

The answer, at least to Yeagley in 1984, was a white sweater with red Japanese lettering and cargo pants.

Little did the girl know she’d get a plumb role. For the video’s classroom scene, Yeagley got to sit right next to Amy Grant.

“She was so sweet, just like a walking Valentine," Yeagley said. "That sweet energy.”

The director told the kids to lean up during certain song lyrics and lean back during others. Sounds simple. Turned out to be tough for a room full of children. But not for Yeagley.

“I don’t wanna brag, but I nailed my lean,” she said, laughing.

Still, that classroom scene took several hours.

Yeagley’s pay arrived at her family’s house a few weeks later: An Amy Grant album and a check for $25.

Yeagley thinks she traded that check for 100 quarters and played Ms. Pac Man video games until her hands hurt.

She hasn’t stopped since, landing dozens more roles in music videos as a kid and landing small roles in movies and TV sitcoms as an adult.

Yeagley has appeared in “Parks & Recreation,” “Almost Famous,” “Rules of Engagement,” “Reno 911!” and a dozen or so other productions since the 1990s.

She also moved to Los Angeles and landed a husband in comedian Kevin Nealon, and the two have a 9-year-old son.

“I have Nashville to thank for all that,” Yeagley said. “And thank you, Amy.”

Reach Brad Schmitt at 615-259-8384 or on Twitter @bradschmitt.