Hey, nerds! Who's got two thumbs, speaks limited French and hadn't really considered writing a show that featured Tracy Morgan trying to stab Conan O'Brien and Jane Krakowski singing about muffin tops, and which leaned heavily into her nine years of experience on Saturday Night Live?
Because, actually, when Tina Fey tossed out an idea for her first television pilot back in the early aughts, she envisioned herself playing a producer on a Bill O'Reilly-esque cable news show with Alec Baldwin as the on-air talent. "The first pitch was not unlike The Newsroom on HBO," she explained in a 2013 interview with Rolling Stone. "It was good we didn't try to do that, because I would have drowned trying to keep up with the subject matter."
Instead, an NBC exec suggested that she write what she know—a series about what it was like to create a weekly live sketch comedy show that just happened to film at 30 Rockefeller Plaza.
Her initial reaction, she admitted, was to worry that "it seemed so lazy to just write about writing." But then she dreamt up the idea of using Morgan as the star of her fictional TGS and "thought, 'Oh, this could be a thing.'"
And there was nothing lazy about 30 Rock—each 30-minute episode was packed so tightly with hilariously absurd one-liners that a blogger calculated one 2010 viewing averaged 9.57 jokes per minute.
"I feel like we made a lot of good episodes of the kind of show that usually gets canceled," Fey mused to Rolling Stone of their willingness to go there with storylines featuring both a kidnapping by Kim Jong-il and the runaway reality hit MILF Island. "The kind where there's 20 episodes and 'only me and my hipster friends know about it.' That part's still true. But we made 140 of them!"
Though the Liz Lemon party came to a halt nearly seven years after its Oct. 11, 2006, premiere—having imparted such crucial wisdom as, "Never go with a hippie to a second location"—it lives on in both the hearts of dedicated fans and the cast themselves.
Having spent seven seasons receiving what he calls "a master class of working as an actor, working as a creative in television and working as director," Keith Powell (a.k.a. proudly Black Harvard grad turned TGS writer Toofer) admitted to E! News, "I still to this day tell 30 Rock stories on my jobs. I just came back from directing something in Connecticut and they all knew all my 30 Rock stories."
Thankfully he was kind enough to repeat them all to us. In honor of the series' 15th anniversary, he and "little sister" Katrina Bowden—just 17 when she got the part of Liz's attractive young assistant Cerie—sat down with E! News to share just how they landed on the series behind a series, how hard it was to keep a straight face and why they're down for whatever Fey might dream up next.
Yes, Fey put a lot of herself into stress eating, Star Wars-loving, sharp-witted writer/producer Liz Lemon. "I wouldn't want her to do anything that I wouldn't do," she noted to Rolling Stone. And she leaned heavily into her circle of talented friends when putting together the cast.
"A lot of these parts of the people who are regulars, I wrote with people in mind," she admitted in a 2008 interview with cinemablend.com. "For example, Jack McBrayer who plays Kenneth is an old friend of mine from Chicago, so I really wanted him for that part and was very happy when no one objected. And Scott Adsit [producer Pete Hornberger] is an old friend of mine. I wrote that part with him in mind and we wrote with Alec in mind, too. And we were very pleasantly surprised when he agreed to do it."
It was his appreciation for Fey's writing, a belief in executive producer and SNL head Lorne Michaels and the promise of a steady schedule that gave him four-day weekends to spend with daughter Ireland Baldwin that got Baldwin to sign on to the part of besuited NBC exec and Liz mentor Jack Donaghy.
Alec Baldwin [to Rolling Stone]: I wish you could know, when I look back, how terrified I was. These people were all UCB, Groundlings, Second City, eighth-degree black-belt comic talent. It was like getting in the ring with Royce Gracie and the Gracie family in mixed martial arts: These people are going to kick my f--king ass.
There's the cliché of, "If this doesn't work, I'm dead." For every Jimmy Spader who goes from movies to TV and scores, there's ones who it doesn't work out for, and then it's tough to dig yourself out of that rut. So I put all my faith in Lorne.
Krakowski, meanwhile, was tapped to take over the role of paranoid, narcissistic star Jenna Maroney (she joked to Rolling Stone she pulled "every horrific story and stereotype you've ever heard of any actor") after Fey initially cast pal Rachel Dratch. "I think the big thing was—at least what they told me—that at first they wanted to have more comedy sketches in the show," Dratch told New York Magazine of the switch. "Then they decided they weren't going to focus on the sketches, so they needed more of a sitcom actress, as opposed to a character actress."
And the way Powell and Bowden remember it, their casting were pretty much fate.
Keith Powell: It actually really began, frankly, with Aubrey Plaza. Aubrey's like my little sister and I've known her since she was about 11 or 12 years old. She was a page in the NBC page program and she was assigned to a casting office and 30 Rock at the time was The Untitled Tina Fey Project. Aubrey called me up and was like, "They're looking for a character who's exactly like you. So you need to, like, get on that." And I was just like, "Uh, yeah, sure, Aubrey."
And then a month later, I got a phone call to audition for it and I was like, "Oh, this is the thing that Aubrey was talking about." And then I auditioned for it just with the casting director. It turned out that I had, through mutual friends, known and met with and hung out with Tina Fey's brother. And I didn't know it at the time. When my tape was sent to Tina, Tina also went, "Oh, right, my brother said that there's somebody that he hung out with that kind of reminds me of Toofer as well." So it's just all these people who are like, "This part's yours!"
Tina really liked me. And then I got a phone call from my agent and he said, "Well, the part's not yours yet, but you're the only one in the running for it right now." He's like, "But Lorne Michaels needs to meet you." And so I went to the table read for 30 Rock, for the first episode, and I was nervous and freaked out but I guess I did a good job because Lorne came up to me after the table read and said, "Good. Job." That "Good job" got me the job.
Katrina Bowden: My character was actually a recast, so they had cast someone else in the pilot. But then when they were testing it they remembered me and I went back in. It was a really quick maybe, like, three or four day process, and I was 17 at the time and about to start college. I got the call the day after I read with Tina and I was like, "Okay well I guess I'm not going to college."
I was going to go to the New School in New York City. So I really just wanted to work and live in New York. I didn't really want to go to college, so I was like, "Yes!"
Powell wasn't the only one feeling the stress at that initial table read—New Jersey resident Bowden discovered just how anxiety-inducing it could be to commute from her hometown to the series' studio in Queen's Long Island City.
Bowden: I'd never been there before. I took a train and it was delayed until I was running five minutes late for the table read and I was like, "Oh my god I can't believe this is happening!" And I'm running up the steps trying to find the room I'm supposed to go in and I barge in and everyone's already sitting there and I'm like [gasps]. And I hadn't met anyone except for Tina, so it was like this huge cast of all these great actors and all of our producers and everyone that I hadn't met yet. And I'm like, "Hi, I'm so sorry I'm Katrina!"
And they're all like, "Come on and just sit down!" They were so nice and so welcoming, but it was one of those days I was so, so nervous, because it was my first day. And it was a riot. It was so funny and every single table read we ever had was just a blast because it was hysterical, every time.
Much like Fey infused every Lemon-ism with bits of her personality ("In an upcoming episode they'd written Liz as being super into Harry Potter, and I was like, 'Guys, I stop at Star Wars,'" she joked to Rolling Stone) both Powell and Bowden found ways to make their parts their own.
Powell: I believe that I infused Black pride in Toofer. And I don't believe that was there when the show began. I brought a lot of myself into the show. I am like Toofer. I grew up in a family that very much prized education, but also prized heritage and tradition and Black history. And I believe that those two things could coexist—that you could be smart and proudly Black. And that was not an oxymoron. And I believe that one of the reasons why I booked this show is because there were a lot of people who were auditioning for it who saw Toofer as a joke. That the joke was that he was Black and smart. And I believe that Toofer didn't believe he was a joke. He thought it was life.
I really wanted to create a grounded character. I didn't want him to be somebody to be dismissed or laughed at or made fun of. You know, listen, the show was about making fun of people. So there was obviously comedy in there. But for me Toofer was an opportunity to talk about being smart and Black.
Bowden: Cerie was such a fun character to play. I brought shades of my personality in there. I mean, I'm definitely not that character, so I just kind of tried to add my bubbly sense of humor to it. She was, like, a secret genius but more of a flake, more just a flighty, I-don't-really-care-about-anything person. And I'm not really like that at all but I think that's kind of why it was so fun to play that character. Because I've met people like Cerie in real life and kind of don't really understand how they operate in that way.
And those outfits that I wore, you have to remember I was 17 when I started on the show, so those miniskirts and the high socks weren't really far off from what I was wearing when I was a teenager. My favorite outfits—I think it was episode three of season one, and my character just has a montage of these crazy outfits and there's one where I'm wearing, like, a poncho and underwear, and boots. And I think that was my favorite cause it was just so odd. I was kind of just game for anything and I trusted it would all work in the end.
With all of that envelope-pushing, the cast lived in perpetual fear that the series would be canceled, particularly as they premiered at the same time as NBC's other peek-behind-the-camera series, Studio 60 on the Sunset Strip.
Powell: We didn't think it was going to last past the pilot. We were all very scared that all the episodes weren't going to air. I mean, I remember weekly fear that the show wasn't going to air. And then when we got our back nine, we were convinced that was it, that we were only going to be a one-season show. I mean, NBC, frankly, never expressed confidence in us until our third Emmy win. And then, you know, we all felt a sigh of relief. But we feared we were always on the verge of cancellation.
Bowden: I feel like it wasn't really until season three that we realized that people were really recognizing it. I think it was right when Tina Fey started going on SNL to do the Sarah Palin skits is when people really started paying attention to 30 Rock. And I started noticing more people tuning in and watching it and that's when it really took off.
Despite a cast jam-packed with comedic whizzes, improvising wasn't a thing, even Tracy Morgan insisting he stuck fairly diligently to Tracy Jordan's lines. "I read the script all the time. Every day," he assured CNN. "I come from a stand-up background and the first three letters in the word funny are fun. So I always had fun with it and I guess I made it look easy. I made it look like I wasn't reading the script."
Bowden: I know that surprises a lot people because a lot of our cast came up in Second City and in different improv groups. But our writers, they were so talented and so, so good that we didn't really have to improv and we really just stuck with the script. Sometimes we had alt lines but most of the time it was just what was written and it always worked perfectly.
Powell: We would be able to improvise the beginning of a scene and the end of a scene, but 90 percent of the time that wasn't included. But it's a testament to the writers on the show that they wrote the way that we talked. So it sounded organic to us. And so, no, no, no, not a lot of improvising. I think that in the seven years, I got two things that I improvised on to the show and they were like really tiny things.
There was one episode where Tracy was writing his book and he said something ridiculous, and my line was something as simple as, "What do you mean?" And I improvised, "I'm almost afraid to ask: What do you mean?" And it got in! But it was something that small that I was like, "I got it in!"
Learning "to download lines and be able to rapid fire send them out," as Powell put it, was a challenge. ("You have to really know your lines, because if you don't say them fast enough, they'll be cut," Krakowski told Rolling Stone.) As was managing to get through any scenes with a straight face. But even with all of that packed into 14-hour days, the set was every bit as fun as it looked.
Bowden: It was so hard not to break in certain scenes, especially when you have, like, Tracy Morgan in the scene because he's one of those people that would, even though none of us really improved, he would always find a way to add something weird in there that threw us all off guard. So those are always hard not to break. And a lot of times we did break and we'd just have to shoot it again.
Powell: When we were making it, we didn't expect it to be this cultural zeitgeist-y kind of thing. We were just making something that was funny for us. And I was just a foot soldier in it. I was a small wheel in a beautifully created, crafted machine. And it was great to observe everything. I had the dressing room across from Tracy Morgan. So as you can imagine I saw a lot. And it was just wonderful to be an observer and be a part of television history.
Bowden: Tracy's such a funny guy! And he's the person that always had his dressing room open all day long so anyone could go in and out. I remember the funniest thing: He was a big fan of Michael Jackson music, so he would play it all the time. I would get kind of sick of hearing the same songs over and over and over again. And I remember one day I walked into my room and I was like, "Oh he's playing a soft-rock song." That was so different for Tracy. And I started listening a little closer and it turns out he's listening to a soft-rock cover of "Billie Jean" by Michael Jackson. It's literally the same song I've been hearing every single day.
It was always a blast. I mean, we would be there all day long. Long, long shooting days and I wouldn't want to be anywhere else. We all just genuinely got along really well, especially when we had those writers' room scenes. We would all just goof around and have so much fun.
The series enlisted everyone from Jon Hamm (who auditioned to play Jack before coming on as Liz's attractive, yet, dim-witted pediatrician boyfriend Dr. Drew Baird) to Jerry Seinfeld (he volunteered!) to Matt Damon after the Oscar winner ran into Fey during the 2009 awards circuit and asked for a part, leading to his arc as her pilot boyfriend Carol Burnett.
Powell: I remember the day The Muppets came to set. People freaked out. I remember the day that Jennifer Aniston came to set. People freaked out. I remember working with Al Gore and we took photographs with Al Gore. I never got to meet Oprah, but I remember that episode very, very well because they played clips of it at award shows a lot.
Bowden: I think like some of my best memories with the whole cast were when we were in L.A. for the award shows like the SAG Awards or the Emmys. Because we were the New York crew and we would come out to L.A. for this whirlwind weekend and it was always such a blast. I remember one year the Emmys were on my birthday and it wasn't one of the years that we won, and I don't remember what news network it was, but they had everyone say happy birthday to me when we got our trophies and that was a very fond memory.
After seven seasons and somewhat lukewarm ratings, Fey decided it was time to take a bow, despite Baldwin offering to accept a salary cut to create an eighth season. "I love our crew dearly, and I hate being in the position of saying, 'Sorry, we're ending this nice workplace you've had for seven years,'" she reflected to Rolling Stone. "But, you know, the ratings continued to drop."
Jane Krakowski [to Glamour]: It's very bittersweet. It's been those kind of days at work where everyone's noticing a tear in someone's eyes, and we all just have to make no eye contact whatsoever. I've been going through the halls like, "Nobody look at me. I'm going to lose it!" We made it so much longer on the air than anybody thought we would. And it's very hard for this all to end because we know this is as good as it gets—working with Tina Fey, Alec Baldwin, and Robert Carlock, our executive producer and head writer.
Powell: Special shoutout to my boy Kevin Ladson, because Kevin was the prop master for all seven seasons on that show. And Kevin slyly spoke in my ear about the things that I could steal from Toofer's desk that could just go missing and no one would know.
The cast's 2020 NBC special wasn't the only reunion they've enjoyed in the more than eight years since going off the air. Though both Bowden (with a gig on The Bold and the Beautiful and a slate of upcoming movies) and Powell (juggling a recurring guest role on This Is Us with his flourishing directing career) are busy, they're both down to get together with the gang whenever possible.
Bowden: I've kept in touch with the other cast members who live in L.A. Jack McBrayer was actually my neighbor for a long time. And I keep in touch with Keith, obviously, as well. And the rest, we talk to each other every now and then if something comes up. I would love to have something else happen with the show, it's so iconic. I would totally be game for whatever they wanted to do, but I also know sometimes it's not good to mess something up that was so perfect. So whatever Tina and her crew decided to do, I'm game.
Powell: I feel like there's always opportunities for all of us to get back together. I got a phone call today from one of the producers on 30 Rock, who I subsequently worked with and we were trying to figure out how to work together again. So, you know, we all fall in each other's orbits.
Jack McBrayer is like my brother. And Scott Adsit is, like, the best human being on the planet and Katrina Bowden is like my little sister. I just got finished working with Jane Krakowski on Dickinson, I directed an episode that she's in. And so Jane and I were just reminiscing about our days on 30 Rock the whole time. Me and Alec rip it up on Instagram. It was just a wonderful group of people and we were a tremendous family. Just thinking about them just makes me want to hug them all.
—With reporting by Alli Rosenbloom
(E! and NBC are both part of the NBCUniversal family.)