Jenna Maroney

Frequent SNL host Alec Baldwin was the first choice for the role of Jack Donaghy, and marked a substantial shift into television for the Oscar nominee.

Notably, the role of Jenna Maroney was originally portrayed by Rachel Dratch, who does appear in today's pilot as a professional cat wrangler, along with a multitude of supporting roles throughout the series.

Although she filmed the original unaired pilot at NBC, the decision was made that sketches would play less of a role in the show moving forward, and a call was made to find an actress as more straight-ahead sitcom chops.

Jane Krakowski, a Tony winner and Ally McBeal alum, would step into the role.

And Liz springs into action, deploying the one tool she has left in her tool belt, which is allowing Tracy Jordan to just banter and do whatever he wants on camera for a few minutes.

And oh boy, can he do that? And it's such a funny deployment of like, let's just lob a grenade into the stage and see what happens.

And it feels like the moment of, liz showing that she trusts tracy and it's like this who knows how this is going to go but he's done enough to win her over that she trusts him with her baby she trusts him with her show to go out there for two minutes and i think it's a it's like a really fun team up to put it against the for now call her consummate professional jenna maroney and see how she reacts to this improvisation is very fun and like what conflict that may create but i think for the performer and creative side it really gets all your ducks in a row for what this series could be

rich what about you how did you like the ending of this uh pilot

... no good to me.

And there's the 30 Rock parody MLK one that Jenna Maroney does.

[laughs]

Oh, that's funny.

She's deluding herself even with w- her stories that she's telling, which is fascinating character wise.

I mean, it's Jenna Maroney prete- thinking she has a hysterical pregnancy, right? Like, and she just believes it, that she'll be a good mother.

Ju- like-

Someone's gonna give that attention to me

It's like Swiss cheese

... of my friends not to preface anything I said with actor announcement the way Jenna Maroney says it.

[laughs]

I mean, Sherie Shepherd's character, who's married to Tracy Morgan.

Yeah.

Baldwin, as you said, eating it up.

Jane Krakowski as Jenna Maroney.

She's a genius.

What's

her name? It looks like a Jenna Maroney cutaway from 30 Rock.

It literally looks like a Jenna Maroney cutaway.

Yeah, it's so fucking funny.

She's doing the Gin and Maroney grin like, I'm the coolest person in this room sitting with all my friends who've been trafficking minors.

[laughs] Yeah, it does.

I also believe that this movie might be Jenna Maroney's villain origin story.

I love that she was in this movie so much, and honestly, playing a very similar character to how I imagine a young Jenna Maroney [laughs] would act.

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

She...

And she's like, "You didn't call." And he's like Yeah.

[laughs]

It's like Jenna Maroney, but it's Jenna Maroney.

Yeah, and for her, she's kind of this actress really grappling with aging.

And it just reminded me of Jenna Maroney in a

little bit.

I'm playing the mother.