30 Rock’s most demanding divas

Whether your back-to-office date is already lurking like that lunchbox that’s slowly puffing up in your work bag, or your brain is still set to OOO – to the point that real life is just bouncing right off – it’s the perfect time for a 30 Rock binge.

30 Rock is set behind the scenes of fictional live sketch comedy series TGS. The title refers to the New York City street address 30 Rockefeller Plaza – the real-life home of NBC studios, where series creator and star Tina Fey worked as a writer and performer on long-running sketch comedy series Saturday Night Live. The series parodies the conflict between writer and performer egos, and clueless upper management, who’re all about the bottom line instead of the punch line. But above all, it’s about crazy people running amok issuing bizarre demands.

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Liz Lemon (Tina Fey)

As head of TGS, Liz is caught between conflicting demands from her writing staff and the network. She has her plate full – half with cheese, the other half with managing a group of filthy, foul-mouthed writers, and the show’s insanely demanding, insecure talent. Liz barely has time for a love life, let alone enough time to act up. The moment she turns her back, it’ll all fall apart. In fact, in one episode she warns the writers to keep working in her absence; only to turn around and find that they’ve all dematerialised.

The diva demands: When her writer’s room guys steal her once-a-year delicious sandwich treat as a “prank”, Liz goes on a screaming, vase-shattering rampage during which she threatens Kenneth with violence that we are 100% convinced she’ll follow up on, yelling, “You’re gonna get me another sandwich or I’m gonna cut your face up so bad, you’ll have a chin.” This is, apparently, standard Liz behaviour. But that’s kind of relatable to anyone who’s ever had to body slam a sibling to wrestle their treat back before said sibling can lick it.

Jack Donaghy (Alec Baldwin)

Jack starts the series as a newcomer to the world of television, having stabbed his way up the corporate ladder in the General Electric appliance manufacturing company. The moment that he’s promoted to the unlikely position of Vice President of East Coast Television and Microwave Oven Programming at GE (this is based on the real-life career of NBC CEO Bob Wright), Jack throws his weight around making changes to Liz’s sketch comedy series The Girlie Show, changing the title to TGS with Tracy Morgan, and having Tracy replacing Jenna as star of the show.

While he’s rich and powerful now, Jack grew up poor. He graduated from Princeton University on a handsomeness scholarship. And after Harvard Business School, he worked as an intern in Washington DC while embracing adventure sports like hunting polar bears and climbing Mount Kilimanjaro. He loves nothing better than a vicious negotiation, outlining his strategies in the book Jack Attack: The Art of Aggression in Business. And every time he meets someone new, he tries to figure out how he’d fight them.

The diva demands: Jack’s position turns his whims into orders, whether he’s demanding that the writing staff work GE products into their sketches, challenging his apprentice to chop off his (Jack’s) finger to prove he’s worthy of Jack mentorship, or ordering Kenneth to seduce Jack’s nemesis, Devon Banks (Will Arnett) after finding out that Devon is gay. To encapsulate just how unreasonably demanding Jack can be, he once boasted, “I love the Earth. I have these rare Kadupul blossoms flown in every morning from Sri Lanka on a private jet. That’s the definition of green.”

Tracy Jordan (Tracy Morgan)

Tracy’s mom “Lickerish” was a prostitute and single mom. His background growing up in the projects (public housing) gives him a wealth of stories like, “I’ve seen a blind guy bite a police horse! A puppy committed suicide after he saw our bathroom! I once bit into a burrito and there was a child’s shoe in it! I’ve seen a hooker eat a tire! A pack of wild dogs took over and successfully ran a Wendy’s! The sewer people stole my skateboard! I once saw a baby give another baby a tattoo! They were very drunk!“

These days, though, he writes a column in Ebony Magazine called “Musings”, and will sometimes correct people’s grammar. Despite a stable, 17-year marriage with his wife Angie (Sherri Shepherd), Tracy is wildly mentally unstable and thanks to problematic spending he owns several houses, a yacht, a solid gold jetski, two Batmobiles and the “Aids monkey’s bones”.

The diva demands: Tracy’s bizarre demands are endless. Aside from his two entourage members – Dot Com Slattery (Kevin Brown), a Wesleyan University-trained stage actor, and gentle giant Grizz Griswold (Grizz Chapman) – Tracy uses Kenneth to fulfil his every need, no matter how inconvenient. For example, “Kenneth, get me some fried rice! But pick out the peas. And the rice. I just want carrots.” He also relies on Kenneth to help him tell white people apart, fetch him nachos (but only the ones they sell at Yankee Stadium), or sell his wedding ring and use the cash to buy a gaming console.

Jenna Maroney (Jane Krakowski)

As the series premieres, Jenna is the main star of The Girlie Show, a sketch comedy series created by her friend Liz Lemon. Conceived in a toilet and born in a parking lot, Jenna (original name Yustrepa Gronkowitz) comes from a white trash background. Her mom Verna (Jan Hooks) didn’t know who her dad was, aside from being a mall Santa who went by the name Travis. Alternatively, according to her interview with Barbara Walters (Rachel Dratch), Jenna’s father, Werner Maroney, was a burger server in suburban Santa Barbara who dumped Verna for a curly-haired surfer named Roberta.

While Jenna is quiet about her past, going to extraordinary lengths to conceal her age, we do find out that she went to high school on a boat, and that she faked her own death to avoid getting eaten by a bear – unlike the rest of her church group. She dated a college fraternity guy when she was 12 years old and was engaged to a US congressman at the age of 16. Jenna studied at the Royal Tampa Academy of Dramatic Tricks before meeting Liz at Northwestern University.

Jenna is a narcissistic, insecure disaster zone who has, for sure, committed manslaughter while trying to avoid a turtle in the road. She once (falsely) claimed that a dog had rabies so that it would be put down and she’d become the star of their dog food advertisement. And she’s the founder of Jenna’s Kids, “a summer camp where pretty blonde girls can learn how to be mean”.

The diva demands: Jenna wants the world to revolve around her, and the moment she suspects that the spotlight is about to swing elsewhere, she’ll say things like…“Oh, don’t be so dramatic. That’s my thing. If you take it away from me I will kill myself, and then you!” or “Don’t hire another blonde woman on the show! If it’s a blonde woman, I will kill myself!” and “I know it’s my turn to do the dishes, but I’m in character and if you make me do the dishes I will kill myself!” But our favourite demand and threat might be, “Someone get a PA to feed me baby food or I will drop a d in the green room!” (d = poop).

Kenneth Parcell (Jack McBrayer)

His name is short for Andromakennethamblesorten, and he might be an immortal angel. The NBC network’s relentlessly cheerful page (a cross between a studio intern and a production staff dogsbody) comes from a pig farming family in Stone Mountain, Georgia, and grew up as a member of the Eighth Day Resurrected Covenant of the Holy Trinity church. He later attended Kentucky Mountain Bible College where he studied his obsession, Television Theory. His mother claims that his first words to her as an infant were, “Momma, I am not a person. My body is just a flesh vessel, for an immortal being whose name, if you heard it, would make you lose your mind.” And Jack once warns Liz that in five years’ time, they’ll either all be working for Kenneth, or he will have murdered them.

The diva demands: Kenneth is fanatically devoted to the NBC Network and believes it’s his duty to do everything his colleagues ask him to, so he’s normally on the receiving side of unreasonable requests. But in the Season 4 premiere, NBC refuses to pay Kenneth for his overtime hours “to save money” and Jack tells him that they all have to make sacrifices, only for Kenneth to accidentally find out that Jack is getting paid an exorbitant bonus (they had to use an extra page for all the zeros). So Kenneth calls the other pages to strike until Jack will admit that he is a liar, and restore overtime payment (but mostly admit that he’s a liar).

The rest of this gang of lunatics

Dr Spaceman (Chris Parnell): Tracy Jordan’s doctor is proof that it’s not just Cs who get degrees! But while his general medical knowledge and political opinions are deeply questionable, he has a firm grasp on how to cater to Tracy’s wild brain chemistry.

Pete Hornberger (Scott Adsit): The producer of TGS and the writer’s room’s one sane man has a slippery grip on personal boundaries, often revealing embarrassing details about his home life.

Cerie Xerox (Katrina Bowden): Liz’s glamorous assistant has a relaxed attitude to work and the office dress code, much to the delight of the writer’s room perverts.

Toofer Spurlock (Keith Powell): This TGS writer’s nickname refers to the fact that he fills two roles on the show – as both a Black man, and as a Harvard educated intellectual snob.

Frank Rossitano (Judah Friedlander): This lazy, sarcastic TGS writer is known for his trucker hats and his manchild attitude. He still lives with his mom.

Josh Girard (Lonny Ross): This immature young TGS writer is best known for his impressions. Unlike the other writers, he often appears in sketches.

JD Lutz (John Lutz): The rest of the writers often make fun of JD for being fat and lazy, and the fact that they stop there is part of what’s wrong with TGS as a show!

Sue LaRoche-Van der Hout (Sue Galloway): Often dismissively referred to as “girl writer”, this French-Dutch import seems out of place at TGS.

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