Rachel Dratch
Rachel Susan Dratch is an American actress, comedian, and writer. After she graduated from Dartmouth College, she moved to Chicago to study improvisational theatre at The Second City and ImprovOlympic. Dratch's breakthrough role was her tenure as a cast member on the NBC sketch comedy series Saturday Night Live from 1999 to 2006. During her time on SNL, she portrayed a variety of roles, including Debbie Downer. She has since occasionally returned to SNL as a guest portraying Senator Amy Klobuchar.
Her other television credits include The King of Queens, Frasier, 30 Rock, and Broad City. She has also played the recurring role of Wanda Jo Oliver on Last Week Tonight with John Oliver, and acted in films such as Dickie Roberts: Former Child Star, Spring Breakdown, That's My Boy, and Plan B.
In 2022, Dratch made her Broadway stage debut in POTUS: Or, Behind Every Great Dumbass Are Seven Women Trying to Keep Him Alive for which she was nominated for the Tony Award for Best Featured Actress in a Play at the 75th Tony Awards. In 2012, she published her autobiographical book Girl Walks into a Bar...: Comedy Calamities, Dating Disasters, and a Midlife Miracle.
Early life
Rachel Dratch was born on February 22, 1966, in Lexington, Massachusetts, the daughter of Elaine Ruth, a transportation director, and Paul Dratch, a radiologist. Both of Dratch's parents were Reform Jews. Dratch attended Hebrew school and had a bat mitzvah. She is religiously nonobservant as an adult, and characterizes the faith she was born into as part of her cultural heritage.Her younger brother, Daniel, is a television producer and writer; his credits include the TV series Anger Management and Monk. Dratch says she grew up as the "class-clown type" attending William Diamond Middle School and Lexington High School in Lexington. She said while performing in high school plays, she gravitated towards acting in comedies more often than in dramas.
Dratch attended the National Theater Institute at the Eugene O'Neill Theater Center in the fall of 1985 and graduated from Dartmouth College in 1988. She majored in drama and psychology, and was a member of the improvisational comedy group Said and Done. While at Dartmouth, Dratch was a classmate of Kirsten Gillibrand.
Career
Dratch was a member of the mainstage cast of The Second City comedy troupe for four years. She received the Joseph Jefferson Award for Best Actress in a Revue for the two revues in which she performed: Paradigm Lost and Promisekeepers, Losers Weepers. At The Second City, she performed alongside future Saturday Night Live head writers Adam McKay and Tina Fey, as well as future 30 Rock performer Scott Adsit. The first incarnation of her SNL "Wicked" sketch was performed in The Second City's Paradigm Lost.In addition to acting, Dratch also played the cello onstage. The theater also hosted the first incarnation of Dratch & Fey, which was later performed at the Upright Citizens Brigade Theatre in New York City, where it was dubbed "the funniest thing to be found on any New York comedy stage" by Time Out New York.
Dratch has appeared in several films, including Martin & Orloff, The Hebrew Hammer, Down with Love, Dickie Roberts: Former Child Star, Click, I Now Pronounce You Chuck and Larry, Spring Breakdown, and My Life in Ruins. She also has joined fellow SNL cast members on A.S.S.S.S.C.A.T.: Improv, which aired September 7, 2005, on the Bravo channel.
Dratch also made television appearances on NBC's Third Watch and in a recurring role on The King of Queens. Her other television appearances include Portlandia, Monk, Frasier, Wizards of Waverly Place, 30 Rock, Aqua Teen Hunger Force, Inside Amy Schumer, Ugly Betty, and The Middle in season five.
She also appeared online with comedian Billy Eichner in a spoof of Jay-Z and Alicia Keys's "Empire State of Mind", titled "Forest Hills State of Mind."
Dratch was originally cast in the role of Jenna Maroney on 30 Rock as Jenna DeCarlo, and the original pilot episode features her in the role. After feedback from test audiences, the role was ultimately recast with Jane Krakowski. She went on to play a variety of small guest roles in several episodes of the first season, including Barbara Walters, Elizabeth Taylor, cat trainer Greta Johansen, custodian Jadwiga, a blue monster, and Dr. Beauvoir.
On March 19, 2012, Dratch's memoir, Girl Walks into a Bar...: Comedy Calamities, Dating Disasters, and a Midlife Miracle was published. In it, Dratch recounts her experiences after being recast in the 30 Rock pilot, including the birth of her child.
In 2016, Dratch hosted the program Rachel Dratch's Late Night Snack on truTV. The sketch comedy program featured Dratch playing a waitress who does not talk in wraparound segments. Dratch also appeared in sketches and the show ran for two seasons.
''Saturday Night Live''
Dratch's tenure at SNL spanned 1999 to 2006. Dratch's recurring characters included Denise McDenna, a Boston teen; Sheldon, the junior-high-school boy from Wake up, Wakefield; Virginia Clarvin, a pretentious professor known as one of "The Love-ahs"; Abe Scheinwald, a Hollywood producer with a terrible acquisition record; and Debbie Downer, a depressed woman who brought others' moods down with her grim non sequiturs.In December 2011, she made a guest appearance on SNLs season 37 Christmas show, hosted by former cast member Jimmy Fallon. On April 15, 2017, she made another guest appearance with host Jimmy Fallon. On a February 3, 2018, season-43 episode hosted by Natalie Portman, she made a guest appearance as a "Patriot of New England" in a Revolutionary War-themed sketch parodying the fans of the New England Patriots and Philadelphia Eagles in advance of Super Bowl LII.
On a September 29, 2018, season-44 episode hosted by Adam Driver, she appeared as Senator Amy Klobuchar in the opening sketch, about the confirmation hearings of Supreme Court nominee Brett Kavanaugh. She continued to reprise the role of Klobuchar during sketches on the 2020 Democratic Party Presidential primary debates, specifically the fifth and sixth debates in November and December 2019.
''Woo Woo with Rachel Dratch Podcast''
On October 10, 2023, Dratch launched her podcast Woo Woo with Rachel Dratch by QCODE alongside her longtime friend Irene Bremis. The show explores paranormal, metaphysical, and “woo-woo” topics such as spirits, psychic readings and crystals. Guests include well-known figures like Tina Fey, Will Forte, and Gloria Steinem, who share personal experiences of the supernatural.Personal life
In her book Girl Walks Into a Bar..., Dratch discusses hooking up with John Wahl, a consultant in the natural foods industry, after meeting in a bar in 2009. Six months later, Dratch was pregnant with their child, and on August 24, 2010, Dratch gave birth to Eli Benjamin, her son with Wahl. In an October 2010 interview, Dratch told People that her pregnancy at age 44 shocked her because she "had bought into all this stuff about, 'Once you're over 40 '" and had "gone through the whole process of letting go of ." As of 2019, Dratch and Wahl were not a couple, but were on good terms and live near each other to parent their son.Books
- Dratch also narrates the audiobook.
Filmography