Bossypants (19 page)

No matter how many times we tried to course-correct the show to make it more accessible—slow the dialogue down, tell fewer stories per episode, stop putting people in blackface—the show would end up careening off the rails again. In my limited experience, shows are like children. You can teach them manners and dress them in little sailor suits, but in the end, they’re going to be who they’re going to be.

By episode eleven
30 Rock
had really found its voice, and it was the voice of a crazy person. The episode ended up being called “Black Tie,” but while we were shooting we referred to it as “Good-bye, America.” We were coming to the end of our initial order and there was no sign of our being picked up again. The other reason we were calling it “Good-bye, America” was because this episode was nuts. If we had any concern that the show was too weird to succeed, we certainly weren’t helping ourselves with this one. The main story of the episode is that Alec’s character, Jack Donaghy, attends a birthday party for his friend, an inbred Austrian prince named Gerhardt Hapsburg.

Gerhardt Hapsburg was played by Paul Reubens, the genius known to most as Pee-wee Herman.

Paul committed deeply to his role. He chose to wear fake teeth and pale makeup, and he had one tiny ivory hand (years before Kristen Wiig’s tiny hands on
SNL,
our writers would want me to point out). In case you were wondering if
30 Rock
would ever be a commercial hit, look at this picture.

In the story, Jenna (Jane Krakowski) is determined to “Grace Kelly” herself by meeting and marrying Gerhardt and becoming a princess. This culminates in a scene where she dances for the prince.

Jane danced (like no one was watching) as Paul improvised, calling out different dance styles: “Jazz! Tap!

Jitterbug! Charleston! Interpretive! Twirl! Twirl again! Keep twirling!” After he professes his love for Jenna and she reciprocates, Gerhardt takes a sip of celebratory champagne, knowing that it will kill him because his malformed body cannot metabolize grapes. He dies immediately. This was our best attempt at writing a sitcom.

Poor Gerhardt serves as a metaphor for the show itself—strange but not stupid, desperate to be loved but abhorrent to most. A proud member of an aristocracy that no longer existed—network television.

Some Unsolicited Theories About Television

Gerhardt’s picture leads me to something else I’d like to acknowledge, which is what a human-looking cast we are. Sure, Alec has a movie star face and Jane is leggy and blond, but the cumulative age of our series regulars is 210, and even the African Americans among us are pretty pasty. I personally
like
a cast with a lot of different-shaped faces and weird little bodies and a diverse array of weak chins, because it helps me tell the characters apart. When actors are too good-looking, I can’t memorize them. For example, I have never seen a picture of Sienna Miller where I didn’t say, “That girl’s pretty. Who is that?”

For years the networks have tried to re-create the success of
Friends
by making pilot after pilot about beautiful twenty-somethings living together in New York. Beautiful twenty-somethings living in Los Angeles. Beautiful twenty-somethings investigating sexy child murders in Miami.

This template never works, because executives refuse to realize that
Friends
was the exception,
not the rule
. The stars of beloved shows like
Cheers, Frasier, Seinfeld, Newhart,
and
The Dick Van Dyke
Show
had normal human faces. And that’s what some of the people on our show have.

When you watched
Sanford and Son,
you didn’t want to have sex with everybody you saw, just Grady. I’ve never understood why every character being “hot” was necessary for enjoying a TV show. It’s the same reason I don’t get Hooters. Why do we need to enjoy chicken wings and boobies at the same time? Yes, they are a natural and beautiful part of the human experience. And so are boobies. But why at the same time? Going to the bathroom is part of life, but we wouldn’t go to a restaurant that had toilets for seats… or
would we?
Excuse me while I call my business manager.

He said it’s a “nonstarter.” They already have that in Japan.

The week after “Good-bye America,” we shot episode twelve, which was called “The Baby Show.” It was officially the last show of our order. Members of our crew were calling around looking for their next job. On set, people started eyeing the furniture, wondering what it would go for in the Cancellation Fire Sale.

Don Fey happened to be visiting the set that last week when Kevin Reilly called to say that we were picked up for the rest of the season. I may never know why they chose to keep the show going (Alec Baldwin), but my proudest moment as an adult was walking back onto the soundstage and telling everyone they still had jobs. (My proudest moment as a child was the time I beat my uncle Pierre at Scrabble with the seven-letter word FARTING.)

By March, the first season of
30 Rock
was complete. (For the record: no epidural, group vaginal delivery, did not poop on the table.) That September we won the Emmy for Outstanding Comedy Series.

Now, I know I’m not saying anything that hasn’t been said hundreds of times, but
30 Rock
is the perfect symbol for the pro-life movement in America. Here’s this little show that no one thought would make it. I’m sure NBC considered getting rid of it, but by the time we won the Emmy, they were too far along.

As the mother of this now five-year-old show, would I still rather have a big, strong
Two and a
Half Men
than our sickly little program? No, I would not, because I love my weird little show. I think this show was put on earth to teach me patience and compassion.

“The Days Are Long and the Years Are Short”

—Stay-at-Home Moms and Sex Workers

Now that we’ve finished season 5, it’s time to start shopping for parachutes again. Rob Reiner was a guest on the show this year, and he went out of his way to tell us all to appreciate this job. Jobs like this are special and they don’t last forever. No need to remind me, Michael Stivic. I have seen my future, and it is a weight-loss game show on Lifetime. And I don’t even win.

Here are answers to some FAQ about 30 Rock:

Q: Is Alec Baldwin really leaving show business?

A: I don’t know, but we do have a contingency plan: a slightly out of focus Billy Baldwin.

Q: Is Tracy Morgan as wild and crazy as his character?

A: There’s only one way for you to find out. Drive across country with him in a Prius.

Q: Will Jack and Liz ever “hook up”?

A: In spite of their “Sam and Diane” sparring, their relationship will remain more like “Norm and Cliff”—making out while drunk and then denying it.

Q: When is it on, again?

A: Thursdays at either 10:00 or 8:30 or… you know what? Just DVR it.

Q: Where did you find Grizz and Dotcom?

A: Grizz and Dotcom were born adorable and fully clothed and found nestled in a field. They were the inspiration for the Cabbage Patch dolls and the Cabbage Patch dance.

Q: When are we gonna see more of Pete and the writers?

A: Season 9.

Q: Has Tracy Morgan ever French-kissed an NBC executive?

A: Yes, but only at an official NBC event, and only against her will.

Q: Is Jack McBrayer really like his character?

A: No, Jack’s character is a simple farm boy from Stone Mountain, Georgia. Jack himself would be useless on a farm, and he’s from the bank-robbery and teen-sex-scandal metropolis of Conyers, Georgia.

Q: How come Liz Lemon talks so much about food and overeating but she’s not fat?

A: The character Liz Lemon has a rare condition called “orophasmia,” where everything she eats immediately falls out her bottom like a ghost. This was established in episode 219, “The One About Liz’s Orophasmia,” in the roller-coaster scene with Emmy-nominated guest star Marisa Tomei.

Q: Is
30 Rock
the most racist show on television?

A: No, in my opinion it’s NFL football. Why do they portray all those guys as murderers and rapists?

Q: How many janitors work at
TGS,
the fictional show within the show?

A: We have established eight distinct janitorial characters. Joe, Subhas, Old Janitor, Rolly, Khonani, Euzebia, Rosa, and Jadwiga. Action figures are in the works.

Sarah, Oprah, and Captain Hook, or How to Succeed by Sort of Looking
Like Someone

I would never have made it into the cast of
Saturday Night Live
if I’d had to go about it in the regular way. When people audition for the show, they have to stand on the historic
SNL
home base stage and try to get a laugh from the four or five stone-cold strangers watching them. They have to demonstrate their funny characters and voices, of which I have none. My own child could tell you that my “funny voices” are completely derivative and my Mr. Smee impression sounds nothing like the guy in the movie.

I ended up on TV because Lorne Michaels likes to promote from within. When he had to choose who would replace David Letterman in
Late Night
on NBC, he picked unknown former
SNL
writer Conan O’Brien. When it was time to pick new anchors for Weekend Update in 1999, he did a nationwide talent search that went all the way across the hall. He let one of the head writers of the show—me—do a screen test with cast member Jimmy Fallon. By the time I tested for the show, I had already worked there for three years. I wasn’t intimidated by anyone in the room, and I already had a day job
at the
show
to fall back on. I didn’t have to do characters, just read jokes without messing up.

The timing of the Weekend Update turnover was, at that point in my life, the luckiest, craziest thing that had ever happened to me.

In rehearsing for the screen test, I realized that I couldn’t see the cue cards. I’ve worn glasses to see far away since I was twenty-one, but I only need them for a few activities, like going to the movies, finding Orion’s belt, and reading cue cards. So I went to the doctor and got my first pair of contact lenses. The day of the screen test I spent about twenty-five minutes nervously trying to get the lenses onto my eyeballs. Right up until camera time, I was sweaty and green from having to touch my own eyeballs like that. If you’ve never had to do it, I’d say it’s not quite as quease-making as when you lose your tampon string, but equally queasish to a self–breast exam. If you are male, I would liken it to touching your own eyeball, and thank you for buying this book.

Jimmy and I did a screen test, as did a bunch of other people in the cast and several comics from the outside world. Because Jimmy was a star and Lorne felt that I would make sure the writing of the segment got done, Jimmy and I got the job.

We did another camera test for set and lighting. Less than eager to touch my own eyeballs again, I just wore my glasses the second time around. After the test, the great comedy writer and chronicler of human perversions T. Sean Shannon came up to me and said in his Texas drawl, “You should leave them glasses on, sister.” And so, a commonplace librarian fetish was embraced for profit.

Once I was hired to do Update, every now and then the writers would put me in a sketch. This usually happened only if all the other women were already in the sketch and they had run out of bodies.

But they didn’t use me much, because I could never really look like anybody else. Molly Shannon has a great face for wigs. Her features are delicate and symmetrical, and her coloring is neutral enough that she can play a blond Courtney Love or raven-haired Monica Lewinsky and you buy it. Maya Rudolph’s face can change from Donatella Versace to Beyoncé in a minute and seventeen seconds. I always just look like me, in a wig. (See below pictures of me not resembling Dina Lohan, Janice Dickinson, or Barbara Pierce Bush.)

The closest I ever came to looking like anyone else was when they tried to dress me up like a bearded lady from the circus and I looked just like my brother. It has something to do with the fact that my eyes and eyebrows are very dark but my skin is very pale and my nose is kind of long. I was absolutely useless when it came to being a look-alike.