I got cast in the TV show Happy Endings during the unhappiest time of my life. Now, I know you’re thinking: man, this girl’s got a lot of unhappiest times. But I swear this time is up there with the worst. Down there with the worst? The point is, it was bad.
My contract had not been renewed at SNL, but they had at least returned my things. An intern had packed them all into a huge box that arrived at my apartment in LA so wet it nearly buckled under the moisture. I opened the box and it was full of my trinkets and good-luck charms and this beautiful black-and-white photo of my mom. Everything was smashed into a zillion pieces and about eight bottles of alcohol we’d been given by the various hosts had broken because the intern hadn’t bothered to add a stitch of bubble wrap. Which is a step I would have skipped as well, so I couldn’t fault him or her, but . . . still. The contents of the box looked like my entire experience on SNL: a mess of shards with my mom at the bottom of it all. She’d just passed when I booked the show, and now here she was, smiling, with Ben Affleck’s bourbon and melted Godiva chocolates all over her face. I mean I’m sure she liked Godivas, but not that much.
It was now pilot season, a three-month hellscape from January to March in which actors of all age, stripe, and creed audition for every possible upcoming network TV show and pray to win the acting and financial lottery—aka, a role as a series regular. (Then cable took over and it became year-round desperation.) But this year was even more important. Crucial. I was DETERMINED, privately (to a level that made me scared of myself), to book a pilot. To show everyone (?) some people (?) myself (?) that I would not simply be a two-season-and-done forgotten SNL cast member, put to pasture like the wig molds of my head that were housed somewhere in the bowels of 30 Rock. Lots of people who are fired from SNL fade away, poof, and I WASN’T GOING TO GO DOWN LIKE ALL THAT.
No, I vowed, with terrifying intensity, I would book something. Anything. Friend of the friend of the friend! I’d be anyone’s friend! I’d be a passing acquaintance of the main character. A stranger to the main character who we never really get to know or see. A disembodied voice-over that illuminates something for the main character but has the potential to be cut, because why do we even need that voice-over, really? I’d take it. It was all I thought about. Tortured myself over. This was not a period in my life when I “showed self-compassion and self-love and talked to myself like I was my six-year-old, innocent, child-of-God self.” No. That never lights a fire in my fanny. Instead, I said cozy things to myself like, “You better get another job, you fucking fat talent-less fuck.”
It was not a “joyful time.”
But in the mean and between time, I would find comfort in a little ole show called Keeping Up with the Kardashians. And would proceed to keep up with every. last. one. of. them. to. this. very. day.
I loved Kris. I connected with her so deeply, and I was so INTO the show I felt like I was her sixth daughter (Kasey, obviously). I wanted Kris in my life. To comfort me and lift me up and push my career forward with the tenacity of a woman who may or may not have leaked her second-oldest daughter’s sex tape. Now THAT was the kind of loving, supportive mother I needed.
I blew through twelve seasons in three months, and by the end of March the writing was on the wall for my career.
I had been on twenty-seven auditions and booked zingo. My manager, Naomi, told me there were simply no more shows to audition for. I felt utter shame and self-loathing. The same way Kim must have felt when she divorced Kris Humphries after her divorce from Damon Thomas. Like I had failed twice.
I WAS, however, offered a fun part as a rich basic bitch on my friend Nick Kroll and Jon Daly’s pilot presentation for Comedy Central, Rich Dicks, which would later become the brilliant Kroll Show. Because it was just a presentation, it meant it’d be one day of work for the actors, and then Comedy Central would decide if they liked it enough to shoot the real pilot. A pilot of the pilot. But I was so happy and grateful to Nick and Jon (and still am). I remember driving up steep, windy canyon roads to the house where we were shooting, awash in gratitude. While I knew this wasn’t the job that would signal to our industry and my dad that I wasn’t just another SNL refugee—it was a start.
And then, midhair and makeup, Naomi called and informed me there was one train, a little engine that could, that hadn’t left the station. A pilot called Happy Endings, a sitcom about six friends in Chicago, written by a first-time writer, David Caspe, had been greenlit late in the game. The thing was, they had been seeing girls all week and the last audition was . . . today. They were testing two girls for the president of ABC at noon who were their first and second choices, but if I could get there in an hour, they would see me. I would have to leave immediately and drive across town to Sony if I wanted to read for it. “There’s no way I can go,” I told her. “I’m literally sitting in hair and makeup for Nick’s show. My friend who has given me a huge opportunity.” I hung up the phone and told myself it wouldn’t have worked out anyways. The phone rang again. It was my other manager, Brooke Pobjoy, whose first and last name I will use because this second phone call changed my life.
“You have to go. This one’s funny.”
I staggered like a zombie over to where Nick was ABOUT TO SHOOT, and pulled him aside with tears in my eyes and asked him if I could run out really fast—just a quick three-hour-and-change round-trip. He was stunned. And then he inexplicably said, “Go. We’ll film around you and do your stuff when you get back.” Hero. Angel. Mensch.
I drove to Sony with my hair sopping wet, no makeup on my face, and without having read the script, let alone memorized a single line of dialogue. For any other audition, I would know my lines cold. All I knew was that I was reading for a role named Penny, and she was a train wreck. Perfect.
Once in the room, I tried my best, but it was veryyyyy obvious that I was reading the lines aloud for the first time. David Caspe was there, and I noticed right away how warm and friendly he was, so I relaxed a bit. David was seated next to the man I refer to as “the most normal man in Hollywood,” co-showrunner and heart of a human, Jonathan Groff (not the JG of Frozen fame). Sitting in front of them were the Russo Brothers (later of Marvel fame), who were directing the pilot, and producing legend Jamie Tarses. They all laughed a lot, but most of the time when they laugh it actually means you don’t get the part.
I thanked them and was walking out and down the steps when Anthony Russo caught up to me. Could I be at the network test? “It’s in an hour,” he told me. “And could you maybe, um . . . dry your hair and learn the lines?”
Another phone call to Nick and I was soon auditioning against two of my hilarious pals for the role. Afterward, I sprinted to my car and while winding back up the canyon to set, I got the call that I’d been made a series regular on Happy Endings.
I was ecstatic on a level that, to this day, I have never come down from. I felt relief that the then–love of my life (acting) and I were back together. It was the biggest break of my life, much more so than SNL, actually. I always knew in a shadowy part of my heart that I wasn’t meant to be on SNL. I felt like an impostor. It was slightly excruciating, like I was on a sports team but sat on the bench week after week, watching people do what I so desperately wanted to be doing. I felt like I had been invited to a party where everyone knows each other but the host doesn’t bother introducing you. I’d pitched twenty-seven ideas for Weekend Update and wasn’t allowed to do one. In my opinion, Weekend Update is sort of your introduction to America. Otherwise, longtime fans seem to get not just mad, but angry to see a new featured cast member wandering around in the margins of the show. And they expressed as much in comments online like “WHO THE FUCK IS THAT?????” and more lovingly, “She looks like Mike Myers swallowed a couch.” So.
I also just didn’t possess the skill set required to succeed there. I didn’t really do impressions beyond Katy Perry and Jennifer Aniston and “Sleepy Norah Jones.” The other cast members were so brilliant at them and at doing huge characters, and I felt like my style just didn’t line up. Which was no fault of anyone! Lorne Michaels once told me “Good acting isn’t rewarded here,” which I thought was generous, given that it wasn’t working out, and I appreciated hearing it. That’s not to say the cast members aren’t good actors—they are all absolutely genius actors in their roles outside of SNL. But sketch performing is different from acting, and the scenes I wrote were essentially always two women sitting at a bar and emotionally unpacking the nuances of their lives and the textures of their grief. Not necessarily . . . hilarious??
But now, a year later, I was playing the role of Penny Hartz on a show called Happy Endings, and it was clear in my bones that this was my part. Penny was desperate for love and initially written in a sharp but slightly cynical way, so I decided to play her with optimism because most of the amazing single women I knew who were looking for love were fun and genuinely hopeful. I connected to this thirsty and wildly over-the-top positive disaster of a human who said things like, “Uh, yeah. I did take a whore’s bath last night. I had a one-night stand and didn’t have time to shower. So did I rub some dryer sheets on my pits and splash some water on my hush in the bathroom of an Au Bon Pain? Yes, I did.”
The first day of shooting the pilot, I met a comedic soul mate in Adam Pally. I’d known him a little from UCB in New York and always thought he was sweet and funny, but I didn’t know he was also a wild man and a deviant—a word I mean as a compliment in this context.
We hit it off right away, soon feeling incredibly free to say things to each other you wouldn’t say to your worst enemy. Too free, maybe. I tried telling him Lorne Michaels and I had always gotten along really well and that despite everything, I thought he’d really liked me. Adam looked at me deadly serious. “He hates you. You didn’t deliver. He wouldn’t have fired you if he liked you.” Honest stuff. And I told Adam, just as meaningfully, about a week into filming that if he would JUST lose weight, he could be Matt Damon, but unfortunately it didn’t “look like it was headed in that direction.”
Adam was cast as Max Blum, a character named for my husband’s dearest friend Max, who had tragically passed away the year before. Max Blum was a gay character who defied all stereotypes. He was a sloppy mess, lazy as hell, and as unkempt as could be. He was incredibly whiny, very nasty, hilarious and dry and mean and needy but ultimately a sweetheart and everything you hope to see in one character. A lot was on the page, but Adam brought so much complexity to it. His is one of my all-time favorite comedic performances, and one of the ones I find most moving, which isn’t always the case in a sitcom. The character of Max touched a lot of people because his sexuality was nowhere near the focus of who he was. He was proud to be gay, but was also just as insane and selfish and rude as the rest of the characters.
Max’s relationship to Penny also touched anyone who knew the deep, unshakable bond, as comforting and old as time, between the single gal and the gay best friend. Penny and Max were all at once siblings, soul mates, and frenemies. Alwaysssss up to stuff. For a Halloween episode we went as mommy and baby in a BabyBjörn, which required us to wear a harness for nineteen hours of filming (we were on the front lines!). Adam sat on a little wheeled scooter underneath my dress with just his head popping out of a hole under my breasts. Between takes he had no other choice than to lay his (huge) head upon my (huge) bosom while we would discuss and rank the attractiveness of various below-the-line crew members. “Below the line” refers to everyone but the actors and director. Sadly, we called everyone by their first name and position, as in “Alisha Props” or “Doug Sound Mixer.” No one called us Casey Actress or Adam Actor, but everyone knows, as Adam would say, that “above the line can do whatever they want.”
We got each other. During filming Adam lost his beloved mom, suddenly. We both witnessed the spirals of our dads as they trudged through grief, nearly drowning. He concussed me with a boom mic. I had to physically drag him away from a craps table in Vegas. Twice. Both times at 11:00 A.M. He emceed my wedding and rudely called it and the crowd of mostly actors a “Who’s Who of Who’s That?” I bore witness to his style evolution and escorted him to an Emmy party in which he wore Birkenstocks over lime-green socks to emulate Kanye West. He’s yelled at journalists who asked dumb questions about the show and continues to stalk them online to this day. He will say or do ANYTHING. He lives on the edge. And that’s a fun person to be around. You don’t meet many people who will risk life and limb and dignity for a laugh. He is untethered in the greatest way, but no one is worried about him because he is also the nicest little mensch alive. When I got bronchitis for two weeks, he checked in on me every day. Toward the end of that two weeks I sent him a text that said, “I WISH HAPPY ENDINGS HAD BEEN ON NETFLIX AND FOUND THE AUDIENCE SCHITT’S CREEK DID.” To which he responded, “ANNNNND SHE’S BACK! I AM AT PEACE KNOWING YOU ARE FULLY JEALOUS AND RECOVERED.” So many duos come up to me with a certain little glint in their eye and I can just tell from their energy what they’re gonna say. “I’m the Penny. He’s my Max.” It warms my heart that Adam and I have each other and that Penny and Max had each other. Scarecrow, I think I’ll miss you most of all.
Adam is not the only one I deeply miss. The show featured four other equally unhinged touchstones. Four other brilliantly funny and amazingly weird actors, playing equally amazingly weird roles.
Elisha Cuthbert, who was very famous in large part due to her starring role on 24, played Alex. Elisha is as pretty as a picture. A picture that opens its mouth to reveal a low Tallulah Bankhead husky voice with a foul mouth and a cig dangling from her perfect pout. (She’s since quit.) She was even more beguiling a creature than you could imagine. And had been acting the longest. (I was right behind her, if you counted the one line I had in a movie with John Malkovich that was cut.) Elisha had been acting since she was a glint in her parents’ eyes. We bonded immediately and she single-handedly taught me how to be on camera, dragging me subtly to my mark whenever I wasn’t on it, which was always.
As “number one” on the call sheet, she took her role very seriously. “Number one” means you are the star and therefore set the tone of the show, show up first, dictate the culture of the set, and set an example for how hard everyone would be working. She was a PRO. She explained that she had learned what it means to lead a cast from Kiefer Sutherland himself in 24, and he didn’t tolerate any guff, and Elisha tried her best to impress upon us we must know our lines and not have our phones out during takes and not show up late, something that no one listened to ever.
Elisha has an incredible sense of humor and was an absolute ball from day one. She was the only cast member with an actual home when we started, and she welcomed us over all the time. If we weren’t there, we were hanging in her “living room,” which is what she called the Chateau Marmont. This was all so new to me, as I normally ate in my car outside the Crunch Fitness on Sunset Boulevard. I felt so glamorous tooling around in Elisha’s Porsche, listening to her stories and making her laugh. She is such a hard worker. So tenacious. So wonderfully self-deprecating. SO funny. And body be bangin’.
I’ll never forget the episode where our characters wore “hair helmets.” After a fall down a flight of stairs left Penny with a concussion, she had to wear a helmet for a month. Bummed that she would miss out on dates, Alex had the brilliant idea to glue a wig that looked exactly like Penny’s hair to a bike helmet. She could stay safe and still look great. No one would be the wiser—except for the result being terrifying. In the episode where Penny finds out she can speak Italian when she’s drunk, we drank so much orange juice as mimosas and Elisha ate so many racks of ribs we threw up for the rest of the day. Elisha was game for anything.
If anyone messed with any of us, she would set them straight right quick. I was both scared of her and in awe of her. Mama Bear we called her. She became so adept at comedy over the years it was astonishing. I love my little “Leesh Leesh” and learned so much from her. And later, when she was doing The Ranch, she invited me to the makeup trailer to meet my idol, Debra Winger, because that’s the kind of friend she is. And then we went and had a drink in Elisha’s living room.
Damon Wayans Jr. played Brad. There aren’t enough words in the English language or stars in the sky to describe how I feel about my angel sent from heaven, Damon. He is the NICEST, most kindhearted, magnetic, charming, delightful, sweet, hilariously inappropriate (you can take the boy out of the Wayans Family, but you can’t take the Wayans Family out of the boy) person I have ever met. EVERY SINGLE SECOND SPENT WITH HIM WAS PURE JOY. Utterly. I laughed so hard at him one night I singed my bangs on a nearby heat lamp.
His voices, his impressions, his observations, were spot-on. And he is so generous. For a cast and writers’ trip to Vegas after season one wrapped, Damon rented us a party bus that had been thoughtfully outfitted with a stripper pole. Our fun ride turned into a hellish, eight-hour, traffic-filled journey in 104-degree heat. The rest of us arranged other transportation home, except for Damon, since as he said, “someone has to return it.”
I’ve read many interviews in which actors say someone was so funny they made them “break.” I never understood this. You have rehearsed and seen the sketch one hundred times by the time you do it. But with Damon, I finally got it. Filming the episode in which Brad and I kill Alex’s racist parrot, Damon and I could not stop ruining takes. He made such funny little squeaks and sounds as reactions that when I saw him carrying the dead bird with tongs and then give the bird mouth to mouth, I truly could not handle it. My line was “What would Kerry Washington do? Demand to see the president and then make out with him.” I could only say it once, as we were howling, with tears running down our faces. I wish I’d gotten to do more with Damon, but Penny and Brad were not a frequent pairing. The bird episode, though, along with watching Damon shoot the mini one-take musical number of Brad going to the dentist, was up there with the most fun I had on set.
Damon is a teddy bear and I’m going to say it, THE funniest person I’ve ever worked with. He has the gift. He’s a star. My baby Damon.
Eliza Coupe played Jane. Eliza and I had also met in passing at UCB, and she was, and is, a force to be reckoned with. The best thing about Eliza is that she possesses my favorite quality in a human. She is wildly self-deprecating while at the same time being someone you take seriously. Hilarious, wild, ambitious, hardworking, totally and wholeheartedly herself, silly and gorgeous and fascinatingly complex, Eliza made us laugh endlessly. She also let us make fun of her love of formal short shorts, her insane nail colors, her passion for raw carrots, and her delightfully unhinged morning routine. I’ll try and explain it here, but find her and have her take you through it (she will). You haven’t lived until it’s been documented for you.
She is a rare gem. And an incredibly sensitive and thoughtful one. One day I came into my trailer and found a gorgeous bouquet of flowers from her. “You mentioned a while back that today was your mom’s birthday. Thinking of you.” I hadn’t remembered even telling her, or anyone, and her remembering and honoring my mom meant so much to me. I wish for one hour I could go back and witness her and Damon in between takes making each other collapse in laughter, in their own world as “husband and wife,” building their incredible chemistry that everyone loved.
Zach Knighton, who played Dave, was the last one cast because it was a tricky role. Dave needed to be handsome, funny, smart, lovable, sensitive, the kind of guy every girl and guy would want to marry. And have sex with. And Zach was it! The minute he got the part, I started getting texts from female friends and strangers alike asking if I could maybe put in a good word for them with Zach?? Or telling me he had been in a class with them in college and to this day no one has struck them as more handsome and cool. And he was all of those things. He was the type of guy who would hop on his motorcycle at night and just see where the road took him. He’s incredibly outdoorsy in the way, how shall I say, that many actors are not. He built his house with his bare hands. Adam and I once went to a party at his house in Venice, and were stopped in our tracks by the sight of two surfboards leaning effortlessly against the gate, a boat in the driveway and a camper behind it. We were not made of that stock. We were cold and it was eighty degrees. Zach was funny as hell and easy breezy to be around. I’ll never forget the way he would saunter onto set with a coffee and a twinkle in his eye and say in this quiet baby voice, “Hiya, Case.” He wasn’t just a pretty face, however, and when the writers realized he could look like the straight leading man but venture much further afield comedically and be just as weird and dumb and embarrassing as the rest of the characters, they went for it. Zach’s Dave started priding himself on his Deep Vs (verryyyyyy low V-neck T-shirts. Too low!) and fedoras, and Zach’s brilliant character acting came forth.
We were all surprised when our little-show-that-could got picked up for a full season and then ran for three years. You have either seen Happy Endings and love it beyond measure (the fan base is equally rabid and furious it was canceled), or . . . you’ve simply never heard of. (PLUG: it’s on Hulu.) There was just something special about it. An alchemy between the cast and the incredibly talented writers (most of them have gone on to create their own shows). It was silly and hard funny and good-natured and weird, filled with insane dialogue (all delivered at lightning speed) like Max’s line (written by Matthew and Daniel Libman): “If Mary Tyler Moore married and then divorced Steven Tyler, then married and divorced Michael Moore, then got into a three-way lesbian marriage with Demi Moore and Mandy Moore, would she go by the name Mary Tyler Moore Tyler Moore Moore Moore?”
A year into filming, having polished off more than my share of male guest stars, I would start dating the aforementioned creator of the show, David Caspe.
We got together over the summer, and when we finally told the cast, we embarrassingly acted as though we were delivering some monumental news that would change the course of their lives forever.
“No one cares. We don’t work at the U.N.,” Adam told us. “And also, everyone already knew.”
My husband is an absolutely brilliant, gifted, and inspired writer. I am so grateful to him for the role of Penny Hartz. And every role he has written for me since. He wrote Marry Me (another PLUG: on NBC) about our relationship, so I essentially played myself, and currently I’m on Black Monday (on Showtime, PLUGGGG), where I get to play Tiff, a rich, 80s Ivana Trump–esque, hell-on-wheels heiress to a denim fortune. Oddly Tiff is even less of a stretch than my character on Marry Me. Since day one, no one has believed in me more than David. And the fact that we get to spend our lives together and raise our baby boys together and on top of all that still get to collaborate creatively leaves me struggling for words. Meeting him is the single greatest thing that has ever happened to me. (Except for when Kris Jenner sent me a gift basket after I talked about her memwah, as she calls it, on The Ellen DeGeneres Show.)
Happy Endings allowed me to shuck off the professional insecurity that had plagued me post SNL. And I got to sing and dance at a boat show to Natalie Imbruglia’s “Torn” with my version of the Divine Miss M., Megan Mullally, who played my mom. I got a signature look—pajoveralls—and I even got a catchphrase! Amahzing! (Sorry.)
After the third season I was hopeful the show would return for another, but I also sensed it was our last. Which it ended up being. It didn’t take time away from the show for me to finally feel the force of all that it meant to me. I didn’t feel “in hindsight happiness,” because I felt such intense gratitude and happiness as it was happening. It was a real loss. A loss of friendships. A loss of such a special time and place in all of our lives. Over these years, children were born, relationships began, marriages ended, parents were lost, life was lived. And deeply unexpected things happened, such as when production shut down because Adam’s beautiful mom accidentally ate two pot cookies from his trailer, which he had gotten from “Gary Boom Operator.” The assistant director had to pull Adam aside and tell him his mom was crawling around on all fours and didn’t know who the president was. When an EMT asked her how she was feeling she said, “I’m feeling horizontal.” I blame Adam for this.
The point is, Happy Endings saved me in so many ways. And I still miss it terribly. So terribly I could hardly write this. And yes, I REALIZE IT’S JUST A TV SHOW, and again, ONE THAT VERY FEW PEOPLE EVEN SAW—but that’s okay. For me it was a sea change. A tectonic shift.
It’s been eight years since the show ended, and I now know the reason I was on it was much bigger than “proving SNL wrong.” How exactly do I know that? A psychic told me, naturally. (I know I know I said I wouldn’t see them anymore. And I didn’t for a loooong time. I swear.) Laura Lynne Jackson—the only psychic whose brain has been studied by scientists, TAKE THAT—spoke with me and was eerily and immediately able to channel my mother. She said, “In 2005 you had a huge professional experience, huge, life-changing. But it ended early. Don’t feel badly about that. Your mom keeps saying, ‘We had to get you out of there.’”
I had to stop her. “I mean, I wish she had let me have a little more success before I left, maybe a recurring character or . . .”
“No,” Laura, channeling my mom, responded. “We had to get you out of there in order for you to meet David. And have the boys.”
You know how I want to end this essay. I want to end this essay with the name of the show. YOU KNOW I DO. YOU KNOW I SHOULD. THAT I CAN’T NOT. BUT THAT I PROBABLY SHOULDN’T BECAUSE IT’S TOO OBVIOUS.
And so, I’ll end with a thank-you and a nod to our biggest fan, renowned TV journalist Damian Holbrook, who loved and embraced and got the show INSTANTLY. (The character of Damian from Mean Girls is inspired by him, it’s worth noting.) Damian was our earliest champion and part of the reason the show got out there at all. He loves it so much he even got a tattoo on his forearm of the word Happy in the official show font. Bless him. But it’s another tattoo of his that my mind returns to again and again when I think of Happy Endings.
I would always comment on it over the years when Damian would interview me, or we would run into each other. It’s a tribute to his late mother—a phrase she used after she had a fantastic dinner, or after a perfect day, or when an experience was so meaningful it changed the course of her life.
“OH, DID WE ENJOY.”
I love that. Oh, did we enjoy.
Indeed. We did.