Star of Comedy Central's now defunct cult favorite Strangers with Candy and sister to famed satirist David Sedaris, Amy Sedaris is a surprisingly attractive woman. Almost stunning, in fact. This might come as a shock to fans who know her best as the character Jerri Blank, a lesbian ex-con and former teenage runaway who left behind her life of whoring and shooting up to reclaim her adolescence and return to high school at the age of 46. Sedaris, blonde and roughly the size of a munchkin, prefers to disguise her good looks with a wide variety of wigs, stage makeup, costumery (including a "fat suit" she wore to give Jerri saddlebag thighs), and outlandish facial expressions. The style of her comedy, which is mostly confined to the stage (with a few notable exceptions, Strangers with Candy being one), is difficult to describe, but one of her friends compared her to a "manic, perverse Lucille Ball."
Biography
Amy Sedaris was born on March 29, 1961 in Upstate New York, but she considers North Carolina to be her home state, as her family moved to Raleigh when she was a toddler. She was fascinated with performing since childhood, when she and her siblings would stage plays in their backyard. Her interest in costuming also budded during this time - she got her first wig (of many) as a gift when she was six. She has fond memories of wearing different wigs during weekly trips to the supermarket with her father, where she would assume the persona of one of their neighbors and challenge herself to remain in character throughout the entire shopping trip.
As a child, Amy Sedaris dreamed of working as either a teacher, a social worker, or in the nearby women's penitentiary (doing what, exactly, she refuses to say). After graduating from high school, she opted to do none of the above, landing a job waiting tables in a local Red Lobster instead. Despite her now lengthy resume as an actress, comedienne, and playwright, she still describes herself as a "career waitress."
In the late 1980s, bored with her job in the food service industry, Sedaris moved to Chicago at the urging of her brother, David. There, she joined the Second City comedy troupe, where she became friends with the likes of Paul Dinello (whom she dated for 8 years), Stephen Colbert (of Daily Show fame), Mitch Rouse, and Chris Farley. Sedaris spent several years touring the country with Second City before she moved to New York City to write plays with her brother.
Amy and David Sedaris called their writing team the Talent Family, and have written, produced, and acted in a long string of plays. The plays, all comedies, generally feature Amy Sedaris in a leading role (or roles), and incorporate elaborate, often demented plots. For example, 1994's Stitches, one of the Talent Family's first plays, was about a popular high school girl whose face is horribly disfigured by a boat propeller, thus launching her career as a sitcom star. In 1995, the Sedaris siblings won an Obie for One Woman Shoe, a satire that revolved around welfare mothers who are forced to perform on stage in order to earn their government check. The Talent Family's most recent production is The Book of Liz, in which Amy Sedaris plays an Amish woman who runs away from her community after a newcomer usurps her cheeseball-making operation, hooks up with a Ukrainian woman dressed as Mr. Peanut, and lands a job at a Pilgrim-themed restaurant that serves "I hate the English muffins."
In 1995, Sedaris teamed up with Paul Dinello, Stephen Colbert, and Mitch Rouse to write and act in the sketch comedy series Exit 57, which ran on Comedy Central for two seasons. Although the show earned five Cable ACE nominations, it was notoriously unfunny and never gained many loyal viewers. Four years later, inspired by the insipid moralizing of after school specials, the four comedians got together again and came up with Strangers with Candy, which was cancelled after 30 episodes, despite having earned much underground popularity. Comedy Central kept the show in late night reruns for several years before unceremoniously pulling the plug and yanking all references to it from their web page. Sedaris has expressed interest in breaking into more mainstream comedy, but only if she can retain complete creative control.
When she's not performing, Amy Sedaris has been described by friends and acquaintances as mild mannered, soft spoken, and meek. She enjoys baking, and sells homemade cupcakes and cheeseballs during intermission at Talent Family performances. As soon as she puts on a wig or makeup, however, her manic tendencies immediately emerge. Her brother David is fond of telling a story about her photo shoot for his book Me Talk Pretty One Day. One of the short stories is called "Shiner Like a Diamond," and Amy Sedaris was made up to look like she had an impressively painful black eye. David has this to say: "Following the shoot, she wore her bruises to the dry cleaners and the grocery store. On the rare occasions when someone asked what happened, my sister smiled as brightly as possible, grabbed my arm, and said, 'I'm in love! Can you believe it? I'm finally in love and I feel great!'"
Amy Sedaris currently lives in Greenwich Village with her rabbit Tattletail and her imaginary boyfriend Ricky. She loves small woodland creatures and her kitschy apartment is chock-full of stuffed animals (of the taxidermal variety). She says she dreams of leaving show business one day to run a bakery or a wig shop, she hasn't decided which.
Work Chronology
Theater
Movies
Television
Sources:
http://www.privymagazine.com/AMYSEDARIS.html
http://www.salon.com/people/feature/2000/05/05/sedaris/
http://www.jerriblank.com/
http://www.papermag.com/paperdaily/paperclips/01paperclips/amy_sedaris/
http://us.imdb.com/Name?Sedaris,+Amy