Rachel Dratch was born on February 22, 1966, in Lexington, Massachusetts,[1][2] the daughter of Elaine Ruth (née Soloway), a transportation director, and Paul Dratch, a radiologist.[3][4] Both of Dratch's parents were Reform Jews.[5] 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.[2]
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"[2] 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.[6]
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 (her critically praised two-woman show with Tina Fey[9]), 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.[10]
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.[12]
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.[13]
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
Her 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, one of the Lovers (with Will Ferrell, as two pretentious professors); Abe Scheinwald, a Hollywood producer with a terrible acquisition record; and perhaps most memorably, Debbie Downer, a depressed woman who brought others' moods down while saying grim non sequiturs.[14]
In her book Girl Walks Into a Bar..., Dratch discusses meeting John Wahl, a consultant in the natural foods industry, in a bar in 2009. Six months later, Dratch learned she was pregnant, and on August 24, 2010, Dratch gave birth to Eli Benjamin, her son with Wahl.[18] 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 [pregnancy becomes difficult]'" and had "gone through the whole process of letting go of [the idea of having kids]."[19] As of 2019, Dratch and Wahl were not a couple, but were on good terms and live near each other to parent their son.[20]
Books
Dratch, Rachel (March 29, 2012). Girl Walks into a Bar...: Comedy Calamities, Dating Disasters, and a Midlife Miracle. New York: Gotham Books. ISBN9781592407118. OCLC830319371. Dratch also narrates the audiobook.
1 2 3 4 Gerri Miller (October 18, 2005). "Rachel Dratch". Archived from the original on October 18, 2005. Retrieved October 28, 2010. Raised in a Reform Jewish family, Dratch did have a Bat Mitzvah but does not consider herself to be observant. "It's more a heritage thing, I guess," she says of her relationship to her roots.
↑ Dratch, Rachel. (2012). Girl walks into a bar--: comedy calamities, dating disasters, and a midlife miracle. New York: Gotham Books. ISBN978-1-59240-711-8. OCLC757469571.
1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 "Rachel Dratch (visual voices guide)". Behind The Voice Actors. Retrieved December 4, 2023. A green check mark indicates that a role has been confirmed using a screenshot (or collage of screenshots) of a title's list of voice actors and their respective characters found in its credits or other reliable sources of information.
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