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A fresh talent in TV comedy, Tracey Wigfield is now the creator of her own series about a mother-daughter dynamic
Mother and daughter Kathy and Tracey Wigfield are the comic creative force behind new NBC sitcom ‘Great News’.
Tracey Wigfield is a rising star in television comedy, a Tina Fey protégée who won an Emmy as one of the youngest writers on 30 Rock and is now the creator and showrunner of a new NBC sitcom, Great News. Among the comedy writing in-crowd, however, her mother, Kathy, is nearly as well known.
Kathy Wigfield may be the only 61-yearold paralegal from suburban New Jersey who texts regularly with Mindy Kaling — her daughter’s former boss on The Mindy Project — and spent a family vacation at Disney World with Fey. At a party after the 30 Rock finale in 2013, Jack McBrayer, who played Kenneth the page, approached Kathy Wigfield and told her, “You’re like everyone’s mom.”
Sitting beside her daughter recently over frittatas at Sarabeth’s on Central Park South, Kathy Wigfield laughed at the memory. “I look at them as like my little kids,” she said, smiling.
Now, Wigfield mother and daughter, who speak every day and call each other their best friends, are having an on-screen moment. Their relationship inspired Great News, which features a New Jersey mother named Carol Wendelson — played with septuagenarian pizazz by Andrea Martin — who lands an internship at the local TV news station where her daughter, Katie (Briga Heelan), works as a producer.
Carol proceeds to insert herself into every aspect of her child’s professional and personal life. Sound familiar? “I wanted to write about her because she was a funny character in my life,” Tracey Wigfield, 33, said as her mother fussed with her daughter’s clothing — couldn’t she have worn a better shirt? — and discussed their plans to see that evening’s performance of Dear Evan Hansen.
“My mother’s crazy,” Tracey Wigfield added. “But I’m also really into my mom.”
Carol Wendelson is closely modelled after Kathy Wigfield, down to her head-totoe outfits from the retailer Chico’s. When Kathy Wigfield visited the Great News set in Los Angeles last year, she encountered Martin in full costume — coincidentally wearing the same colourful paisley-print top.
In real life, Kathy Wigfield is not a stage mom in the classic overbearing sense. It was her daughter’s idea to try show business, not hers. “She used to say, ‘Get me a manager so we can go on auditions,’ Kathy Wigfield recalled. “I didn’t know how to begin doing that.”
Tracey Wigfield acted in commercials as a child, including an ad for a toy called the Glitterator that featured her shouting, “It’s Glitter-ific!” She later interned at David Letterman’s Late Show before landing at 30 Rock.
“Tina recognised her wonderful talent,” recalled David Miner, a 30 Rock executive producer who, along with several other alumni from the show, is working on Great News.
“There are a lot of people who aren’t really ready to run their own show. Tracey was so ready for this.”
After 30 Rock, Tracey Wigfield decamped to Los Angeles for a senior position at The Mindy Project, where she was a writer and co-executive producer, and played a small on-screen role. (In Great News, she plays Beth, an oddball meteorologist.) She signed a development deal with Universal Studios and ran the mother-daughter idea by Fey, who quickly approved.
Fey and her creative partner Robert Carlock are executive producers of Great News, and offered weekly input on scripts via Skype from New York to the writers’ room in Los Angeles. The show, set in the lower-rent waters of local TV news, is taped on a set that is a near-copy of the NY1 studio in Manhattan, where the pilot was filmed.
Tracey Wigfield, whose corner office on the Universal lot features the same framed photo of thermostats that appeared in Liz Lemon’s office on 30 Rock, said that she was drawn to the idea of an older woman finding workplace success late in life despite coming from a generation in which women were not always encouraged to pursue careers.
Her mother, she recalled, often accosts network executives at events, including Robert Greenblatt, NBC’s head of entertainment. “She would corner NBC execs and be like, ‘Do you know anyone at Days of Our Lives?” Tracey Wigfield said, laughing. At one point, Kathy Wigfield talked a producer of General Hospital into hiring her other daughter, Ashley, for a small role.
“Knowing my mom, she without a doubt could have been a great agent, or an executive, or a TV writer, or a million things,” Tracey Wigfield said, her mother beaming beside her. “My mom and women of her generation weren’t pushed in the same way I was.”
During a recent taping, Tracey Wigfield was fully comfortable leading a team of dozens, joking with cast members, conferring with her director between takes and ironing out details on set. At one point, she and other writers were brainstorming ideas for which faded celebrity they could turn into a waxfigure prop.
“Can we get Justin Guarini? What’s he doing?” Tracey Wigfield asked, referring to the now-obscure From Justin to Kelly co-star. Somebody suggested Richard Hatch from Survivor. Would the Menendez brothers work?
Finally, a winner was declared: Air Bud, the basketball-playing dog. “Googling ‘90s celebrities and picking one — that’s 90% of comedy writing,” Tracey Wigfield said, closing her MacBook.
Despite living across the country, her mother is never far away. She visited her daughter’s set several times, leading to a few pranks in which crew members sneaked her into scenes, surprising the younger Wigfield.
Last spring, Tracey Wigfield’s pilot was picked up by NBC a week before her wedding; she had a brief honeymoon in Italy before rushing back to Los Angeles to start production. Over brunch, Wigfield recalled that she and her mother spent New Year’s reminiscing about their momentous 2016.
“Your favourite was when my show got picked up,” Tracey Wigfield, one eyebrow arched, reminded her mother. “Not my wedding.”
The matriarch threw up her hands. “I didn’t sit around thinking, ‘Oh, one day when she gets married…’” Kathy Wigfield explained. “Anybody can get married! I’m happy she found the guy she did.”
“But,” she added, “not everyone has a TV show.”