Girl Walks Into a Bar (2 page)

In reality, if you saw me walking down the street, you wouldn’t point at me and recoil and throw up and hide behind a shrub. But by Hollywood standards, I’m a troll, ogre, woodland creature, or manly lesbian. I must emphasize that of course in the real world, lesbians come in all shapes, sizes, and varieties of hotness. I’m not talking about the real world—I’m talking about Hollywood and Hollywood comedies, where lesbians come in two varieties—the hot, unattainable, “What?
You’re a lesbian? No way! Not after you get with me!” variety, and the mullet-sporters. Needless to say, I was being called in for the latter. It’s like how black and Latino actors get frustrated because they’re called in only to play drug dealers, or Arab actors get calls to play cab drivers and terrorists. In the narrow lens of Hollywood, which wants to give the instant stereotype viewers can zone into, I belong in the lesbian parts. Trolls, ogres, and woodland creatures can be done with CGI, so that leaves yours truly to play the bull dykes.

That’s the very
quick answer to the question “What happened to me?” But read on—I’ll tell you some more.

We’re Going in a Different Direction

I was a cast member
on
Saturday Night Live
for seven years. Then my contract was up. I was going to be starring in a new show called
30 Rock
in the role of Jenna. Have you guys seen
30 Rock
? Yeah … I’m not Jenna.

That was back in 2006 and strangers
still
ask me, “Why aren’t you on
30 Rock
?” “What happened with
30 Rock
?” “Are we gonna see you on more
30 Rock
?”

30 Rock
. If you are one of those “Oh! I don’t have a
television
” people, then I will give you a brief background. Of course, if you don’t have a television, then none of the following will matter to you, but let me tell you,
this
is the
very important
stuff you are missing while you are playing the fiddle or telling stories by firelight or whatever it is you do instead of watching TV.
30 Rock
is a show about the backstage happenings at an
SNL
-type comedy show called
The Girlie Show
. Created by and starring Tina Fey. Produced by Lorne Michaels (who, for you
actively non-TV people, is also the creator and producer of
Saturday Night Live
). Also starring Alec Baldwin and four other actors Tina had worked with previously—Tracy Morgan from
SNL
, Jack McBrayer and Scott Adsit from Second City, and, briefly, me from both
SNL
and Second City.

After we shot the pilot, I got a call from my agent. “They’re changing the show.” Or he may have said, “They’re going in a different direction.” In showbiz, you hear that phrase a lot. At best, it means you are being replaced by a black man. (“Oh! I couldn’t have done that part—now it’s about a black man! The character of Suzie is now named Jamal! See? They went in a
Different Direction
!!”) At worst, the different direction is the direction of Away From You, as in “We Don’t Much Care for You!”

At the time, I was not even upset by this news. I was told that the show, which in the pilot had included real sketches within the context of the sitcom, was now no longer going to have sketches. Instead of a sketch performer, they wanted more a sitcom ingénue type. If you have been in the acting business for any length of time, you don’t take this stuff personally. Replacements in pilots happen all the time. Everyone always refers to the fact that Lisa Kudrow was replaced on
Frasier
—“and look what happened to her! She went on to do
Friends
!” It’s the anecdote that always gets trotted out of the barn whenever an actor is consoling another for being kicked off a job. Besides, Tina called me up and said that, instead of Jenna, she had thought up a different role for me to play. Actually, many roles. I would appear in various episodes as a different character each time, popping up in the show in all sorts of
incarnations. I thought this idea was unique. I had never seen anything like it before, and I thought it could be fun to be a sort of “Where’s Waldo?” character within the show. Plus, I felt way more comfortable doing these kinds of parts than playing Jenna, a diva type who, in the pilot, sort of tries to seduce Alec Baldwin. No one needs to see me try to seduce. I think that would be grim and awkward for all parties involved. I felt fine about the whole situation. And then things started to go in a Different Direction.

For one thing, this story became instantly public. Before, I had a mild level of fame—not the type to land me in a blurb in
Vanity Fair
—“spotted dining in one of New York’s hotspots, Rachel Dratch had the duck confit!” But after I got replaced on the pilot by Jane Krakowski, oh boy, was I a celebrity! I had never been
this
mentioned in the press or
this
buzzed about for my whole career, until now that something “bad” was happening. “Someone’s getting fired? Tell me everything. Now, who is Rachel Dratch again?” It was everywhere—“What a Downer for Dratch” read the articles, and here’s where the story turns ugly. Literally.

The general opinion seemed to be that it wasn’t about “sitcom” or “sketch.” It was about attractiveness. It was about Pretty. The Internet, magazines, and news stories all gingerly speculated that I had been replaced by a more attractive actor and that this was the
only
reason I had been replaced.

Well, the newspapers and magazines did so gingerly. There is nothing “gingerly” about the Internet. When I first got hired on
SNL
, I was warned by the other actors: Don’t read what they say about you on the Internet. With newfound fame, that’s like
telling a child, “Whatever you do, don’t look behind this door.” My fellow cast member Ana Gasteyer would call the act of reading people’s comments about yourself on the Internet “cutting,” as in the mental illness of cutting yourself with sharp objects. She’d come in and say, “I cut last night.” Occasionally, you would look online if you were feeling masochistic. Early in my
SNL
career, I stopped pretty much for good when I saw one comment that hit me in the face like a frying pan. Actually, that was the comment. It said I looked as if I had been hit in the face by a frying pan.

I arrived on the
30 Rock
set to play my first little character. Because I still had a part on the show, I was in the unique situation of being there for the reshoot of the pilot I had shot a few months earlier. Most actors replaced on pilots aren’t then hanging around to see how all the action goes down when they no longer have the part. “No matter, I’m a professional!” I thought. As I walked onto the set of the “backstage area” and rounded the bend, it occurred to me I might need more than professionalism. I might need superhuman Zen master strength: There, surrounding me, were these huge pictures of Jane Krakowski posing as various characters in the posters for
The Girlie Show
. There was Jane dressed as a little girl with a huge lollipop! There she was as a grumpy old lady clutching her purse! In a way, the posters were no surprise; I had seen them before. They were exact duplicates of the posters I had posed for when we shot the pilot earlier in the summer and
I
was Jenna—same setups, same poses and looks and props. They were everywhere and they were large. Was this real or was I having some sort of fun-house mirror/showbiz anxiety dream?

Later that day, the surreal feeling continued. The first character I was playing was the Cat Wrangler—a woman who was based on all the animal wranglers Tina had encountered on various sets. The Cat Wrangler was not an attractive lady. Working with all those cats, she was not dressed for glamour, and she had a long mullet. Bad clothes, no makeup, and horrible hair. Lesbian? Check!

At this read-through, there was a video feed to the big NBC execs over in Burbank, so we were all seated around this horseshoe-shaped table. That way, the people in California could watch the performance of the script as it occurred. In an unfortunate coincidence, it just so happened that the producers in New York wanted to see how my wig and costume looked
right
when it was time for the read-through to begin. There I was at the table—the
only
one in costume, and everyone else looking fresh as a daisy. Jane was in some hottie dress with regular-person makeup; all the guys were in their regular clothes; Tina was there, looking cute. And pan across the table to the end aaaand … AGH! Who is that person in the corner with the wiry mullet? The one who looks like a carnie worker in the army jacket? That must be Rachel. Whoo, boy. We really made the right decision there, guys. I imagined them high-fiving over in Burbank as I tried to shrink myself into my own mullet to provide maximal invisibility.

To her credit, Jane made things much easier early on when we were in the makeup room. She stated outright, “This is really awkward,” and I agreed and that was that. I was relieved that we addressed our strange circumstance. I should point out that we had this conversation while she was wearing a
showgirl costume—a showgirl costume exactly like the one I had worn for the pilot, the costume that may well have been a factor in my losing the part, for I’m sure I looked quite comical in it, and Jane looked like a hot showgirl.

Oh, Lord. At least my first week on the job led me to a deep and soul-affirming conclusion, a lesson I could carry with me as I traveled the peaks and valleys of life’s journey: Showbiz be crazy.

Luckily, after that
first week, my anxiety dream ended, and I started to feel more comfortable on the set. I was having fun playing my various characters—one week I’d be Liz Taylor, another a little blue man who was Tracy’s hallucination, another a Polish hooker. And Jane immediately made the part of Jenna her own, defining her as the wacky diva she would be known for as the show developed. Off the set, though, people kept asking about what had happened: strangers on the street when I was going to get coffee, relatives at a holiday when I was just trying to relax with my fourth glass of wine, casual red-carpet interviewers I thought were going to ask me an inane thing like “What are you going to be for Halloween?!” who would instead suddenly decide to go all
60 Minutes
on me—“SO WHAT HAPPENED WITH
30 ROCK
?!” As the questions kept coming, I found myself starting to waver between the two theories of why I had been recast. More often I had the more sane and pro-Rachel opinion that it was just a case of type, that they wanted an ingénue and not a sketch performer.
When I was younger and in acting class in high school or college, we didn’t really understand type. In class, I could be playing Lady Macbeth or Blanche DuBois—terribly, mind you—but we were taught that acting is all about becoming the character and drawing on your own personal experiences to embody the character’s situation. You can do anything! At Second City or even
SNL
, it worked the same way, only in a comic context—I could play a supermodel in a sketch at Second City, or the president, or … well, whatever I wanted! In a sketch show, your own personal type doesn’t really matter; your talent lies in the fact that you can play all sorts of character types. When you get to sitcomland, or movieland, though, your own type is a factor. I’m not going to play a hottie on TV when real hotties exist … superhotties that moved to LA from their small towns in Iowa because they were born superhotties.

In terms of my type, I knew I was no leading lady or diva. I always thought I would end up in that typical “best friend” role in movies or TV, but it would turn out that, by Hollywood standards, I was too odd to play even that. Especially nowadays—the best friend is someone
slightly
less beautiful than the leading lady, except with brown hair. Or glasses! “Hey! She’s wearing glasses! My brain now sees her as slightly less attractive than the lead! Everything makes sense in the world!” That’s the reality I was beginning to comprehend. That’s Hollywood, kids (I say as I take a drag of my More lady cigarette). It ain’t all glitz and glamour and shrimp cocktail and cocaine parties.

In my less self-assured moments, the more negative speculation
about the replacement started to seep into my head. Maybe all those meanies on the Internet were right; maybe a bunch of focus groups watched the pilot and checked off a box marked “No!” Maybe the way it works for a new show is a bunch of TV execs sit around a room with some wires and EKGs attached to their wangs, and when I was on screen, the needle dipped dangerously into the Code Red Anti-Boner Zone. I was starting to feel like the ten years of training and performing and sweating it out pre-
SNL
, plus the seven years
at
SNL,
all went out the window because I didn’t have a symmetrical face. This would have been OK if at some point along the way I had gotten the memo: “Oh, and if you want to be a successful female comedian, you better have a symmetrical face.” Maybe I was naïve, but this was the first I was hearing of it. I grew up watching perfectly lovely female performers whom I don’t think you would call “hotties”: Gilda Radner, Lily Tomlin, Carol Burnett. Those were my comedy idols. I would think of the genius Jean Stapleton of
All in the Family
and how today some ding-dong in the network would insist she be played by Megan Fox to get the male 18–49 demographic. “People,” he’d say at the meeting, “Megan can be
very
funny.” I had always been pretty sure that comedy was about producing a laugh and not a boner. Now I had to produce laughs
and
boners? When did the rules change? This is not the kind of stuff you consider when you are young and dreaming about becoming an actor and thinking, “I have fun doing the school plays!”