Kerri Kenney-Silver: ‘The Four Seasons,’ ‘Reno 911’ and The State
The Last Laugh
The Daily Beast
4.6 • 661 Ratings
🗓️ 7 May 2025
⏱️ 55 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
Kerri Kenney-Silver never thought she’d get a part like Anne on ‘The Four Seasons.’ After more than two decades playing the disturbingly odd Deputy Trudy Wiegel on ‘Reno 911!,’ the 55-year-old actress believed Hollywood saw her as little more than outrageous comic relief. But then Tina Fey gave her the gift of a lifetime by casting her opposite Steve Carell on Netflix’s latest hit series. In this episode, Kenney-Silver talks about finding the nuance in what could have been a stereotypical caricature of the jilted ex-wife. And she also discusses co-founding perhaps the most successful college sketch comedy group of all time with The State, the terrible career advice she gave her one-time co-star Ellen DeGeneres, and the bizarre longevity of ‘Reno 911!’
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Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | This is the Last Laugh. I'm Matt Wilstein from The Daily Beast, and this week on the show, I am so pleased to welcome back the great Kerry Kenny Silver. |
| 0:15.9 | As I mentioned to Kerry at the top of our conversation, she was on this podcast once before with her Reno 911 co-stars Thomas Lennon and Robert Ben Garant back in 2020 when that show |
| 0:28.1 | was making its big comeback on the dearly departed Quibi platform. Kerry got her start as the |
| 0:34.1 | only female member of the legendary sketch group, The State, before breaking |
| 0:38.9 | through as deputy Trudy Weigel on Reno 911. Now she is showing a completely different |
| 0:45.3 | side of herself on Tina Faye's new Netflix series, The Four Seasons. As Anne, the wife and then |
| 0:52.5 | quickly ex-wife of Steve Carell's character, Nick, |
| 0:55.9 | Kerry delivers a performance that is at times hilarious, deeply heartbreaking, |
| 1:00.6 | and a far cry from the type of broad, improvised character work she is best known for. |
| 1:06.0 | It's really a remarkable performance that she readily admits she never thought she would have the opportunity |
| 1:11.6 | to give. So we are going to get to that conversation in just a minute, but first, just for fun, |
| 1:18.6 | here's a clip of Kerry as Trudy on Reno 911. From that time, she made an infomercial to sell |
| 1:25.2 | her baby. |
| 1:29.7 | Hi, I'm Trudy Weigel. |
| 1:33.0 | With all the hustle and bustle of today's work-a-day world, |
| 1:35.7 | who has the time to make a baby yourself, |
| 1:39.4 | the old-fashioned way, with all that hard work and messy cleanup? This baby is white, full of love, joy and wonder, and could be yours with just one phone call. |
| 1:51.0 | So just call 911 for the Reno Sheriff's Department. |
| 1:56.0 | All baby sales are final, no refunds, no exchanges. |
| 2:00.0 | Order yours today while he's still cute. Say bye, |
| 2:04.4 | bye, bye, bye, mommy. Carrie, Kenny Silver, welcome back to the last laugh. I'm so happy to have you |
| 2:12.9 | here. Thank you so much. I'm so happy to be here. I don't know if you, I feel like you may or may not know that you've been on this podcast before because it was at a very strange time. It was May 2020 when things were a little weird. And you came on with Thomas Lennon and Robert Ben Garant to talk about the return of Reno 911 on Quibi, of course. So many weird things in that sentence. |
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