Janeane Garofalo interviewed by GEEK Magazine

Come January, Garofalo will holster her left-leaning guns for at least a day as the woman once named “funniest person in Rhode Island” joins the cast of the Emmy-Award-winning 24 as FBI special agent Janis Gold.

Wiped from a long afternoon shoot, Garofalo boasts she’s doing her own stunts for the FOX TV show. They’re just not that Bauer-ific. “Jack Bauer’s the one who is saving the world. I merely just sit at my computer,” she deadpans. “I don’t do any stunts. I am an FBI agent who sits at a computer most of the time. Well, I guess I do my own typing. But it’s a fake computer. Actually, it’s a real computer. But I’m not really typing anything. I just randomly type. Sometimes I type sentences to occupy my time but for the most part, it’s just random typing.”

Attempting to dig a little deeper into what exactly makes Agent Gold tick, Garofalo confesses there isn’t much to tell. “She’s an FBI agent. She’s new. And she’s a computer whiz, which if you knew me, is absurd. That’s all. There’s really not that much that is distinctive beyond that that I can tell you.”

Where’s Jack Bauer when you need him. He’d get more out of her.

And apparently so would Senator John McCain.

Leading up to the presidential election, the Republican nominee told Marie Claire he identified more with Jack Bauer than Jack Nicholson or Bob Dylan because they both “escape all of the time.” And while he drew the line at Agent Bauer’s torture methods, Garofalo says of the comparison, quite simply, “He wishes.”

“I don’t enjoy any of the right-wing elements of the show and I’m not proud of the torture on the show being utilized by our own nation’s institutionalized policy of torture,” she adds. “In fact, I find it disgusting. Having said that [laughs], this is a fictitious show.” It was widely reported that the lawyers at Guantánamo, who were instructed to come up with new interrogation techniques, found inspiration from 24.