RETTA FOR ACTION I
How this Jersey-born funnywoman made the hilarious journey from chemist to comedian
N another life, she’d have been Dr. Marietta Sangai Sirleaf. Luckily for TV viewers, she chose a much funnier path.
The actress and comedian known simply as Retta broke out with her starring role as the sassy, man-eating Donna Meagle on NBC’s “Parks and Recreation.” Three seasons of regular appearances on Bravo’s “Girlfriends’ Guide to Divorce” followed. Now, there’s the crime dramedy “Good Girls,” in which she, Christina Hendricks and Mae Whitman play loving, suburban moms who rob a grocery store. Mayhem ensues.
And Retta’s become an author, too, with a new book of essays, “So Close to Being the Sh*t, Y’all Don’t Even Know” (St. Martin’s Press). It was not the kind of book she ever saw herself writing.
“I always had in my head that one day, when I had nothing else to do, I would write a book,” Retta tells The Post over the phone from her publisher’s office in New York. “Romance! A steamy...” She cuts herself off, laughing.
A daughter of immigrants from Liberia, the 48-year-old grew up in Edison and Cliffwood Beach, NJ. Back then, she wasn’t dreaming of her name in lights; on the pre-med track at Duke University, she saw her name followed by the initials “MD.”
After graduation, she worked as a pharmaceutical chemist at GlaxoSmithKline in Raleigh, NC, for about a year, until she had an epiphany.
“TV was my [only] roommate, so it was being alone with my TV that I decided I want to be on it,” says Retta. She says she envisioned herself doing the same kinds of eponymous, comedianled shows she loved watching — shows such as “The Drew Carey Show,” “Roseanne” or “Martin.” She thought: Why not “Retta”?
From that moment it was clear: “I just assumed I gotta get onstage if I want my own sitcom.”
She moonlighted as a comic in North Carolina before finally ditching big pharma for good and moving to Los Angeles. Then she began doing stand-up on the college circuit.
For Retta, college gigs could be unpredictable. At one Southern school, students took her stand-up bit about Kentucky Fried Chicken a little too far.
“They had gone to KFC and got a bunch of empty buckets, then had copied my headshot and had my head popping out of a chicken bucket,” says Retta, who could only think of her parents’ embarrassment if they ever heard about it. “My mother is going to be mortified that her black child’s head is popping out a chicken bucket and they’re serving fried chicken at the show.”
Those college standup days are long gone. After seven seasons on “Parks and Rec,” a show she remembers fondly, she loves being on “Good Girls,” and says she and her co-stars had sleepovers when they were filming.
Speaking about her unsmooth-criminal character on “Good Girls,” Ruby Hill, Retta reveals her own short stint as an outlaw.
“When I was very young, I shoplifted a puzzle,” she admits. “My godmother made me take it back and buy it.”
Her family members, it seems, keep her grounded, thanks to successes of their own. Her aunt, Ellen Johnson Sirleaf, was president of Liberia and a winner of the 2011 Nobel Peace Prize. When she heard of the honor, Retta quipped, “Now I gotta go find some drowning babies to save before the next family reunion.”
Until that happens, she can at least boast that “Good Girls” has been renewed for a second season. There may even be an Emmy — if not an MD — in her future.