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Becker, Jennifer
Kerri Kenney-Silver
Issue #33
The Reno 911! actress returns to her inescapable comedy roots in The Ten
By Carlye Wisel
Published: September 1st, 2007 | 12:00am
For most people, being stuck in a perpetual class reunion would be considered an awkward hell. For Kerri Kenney-Silver, it’s the good life.
As an undergraduate studying theater at New York University in 1988, she stumbled across an audition flier for The New Group comedy troupe and joined as its only female member. A few years later, after obtaining a new name and a contract with MTV, their self-titled sketch comedy show, The State, premiered on the network. Though Kenney-Silver has moved on to movies, television, and music, the heart of this self-described “educated professional–producer-writer-actress-wife-mother” definitely lies within State lines.
Theoretically, The State could be considered the Broken Social Scene of popular comedy. Its actors are successful by themselves (Michael Ian Black is their Feist, so to speak), but a multimember collaboration is something the public — or simply people who enjoy laughing — should pay attention to. That’s why Kenney-Silver’s role in The Ten, an interpretation of the Ten Commandments through comedic vignettes, is so remarkable; it reunites almost every original member of The State.
“It’s cliché, but it’s like [having] all of your best friends in one place,” she says of working on The Ten. “No matter how many people are around or what we’re doing, we always end up in a corner together, talking, having a blast, and joking around. I think we all can safely say that no one makes us laugh like one another still after 20 years.”
The cast previously reunited once with cameos in TV show–turned-movie Reno 911!: Miami, but The Ten, with its original script, characters, and concept, is a different type of collaboration. Co-written by State comedians Ken Marino and David Wain (who also directed the film), The Ten, which hit theaters August 3, features Kenney-Silver as a mother convinced that her two black children were fathered by Arnold Schwarzenegger. For her, working with Wain and Marino again was “like riding a bike.” So easy, in fact, that for a woman from a creative, improvisational background, she was able to stick to the character’s lines, verbatim. “I did it word for word,” she says. “We’ve written together and worked together for so many years that we all have such a very similar voice. It just easily fell out of my mouth.”
Kenney-Silver does get to improvise at her day job, where she works alongside State alumnae Thomas Lennon and Robert Ben Garant. “Every day, I almost wet my pants at one time or another,” she says, referring to their current collaboration as co-stars of Reno 911!, a Comedy Central series about incompetent cops in Reno.
“It just seems obvious and logical,” Kenney-Silver says of consistently working with Lennon and Garant, who play Lieutenant Jim Ron Dangle and Deputy Travis Junior on the show, respectively. “It would be like me asking you, ‘So, what’s it been like to have the same father from since you were born?’ Literally, it’s like, I don’t know any differently.”
Kenney-Silver stars as Deputy Trudy Wiegel, a dim-witted mental basket case who is head over heels for Lennon’s inferably gay, short-short–wearing, often-vandalized–bike-riding Lieutenant Dangle. With outrageous characters like these, it’s surprising to hear that police officers have had “100, 1,000% absolutely overwhelming support” for the blatant, sarcastic mockery of their occupation.
“They come up to us like we’re friends,” Kenney-Silver says of 911!-watching officers. “We’ve had cops tell us our show is more like their daily life than the show COPS, because 90% of the day, you’re not taking people down. You’re eating hot dogs, sitting, gassing up your car, and playing practical jokes on each other.”
Traffic stops are part of the daily grind, too. Once, while racing home at 90 miles per hour on the Pacific Coast Highway with fellow State member Michael Ian Black riding shotgun, Kenney-Silver was pulled over by a female police officer. “She leans her head in, and she looks at Michael, she looks at me, she looks back at Michael, she looks back at me, and she gets this wry smile on her face. She goes, ‘You are so lucky that I love you.’”
Kenney-Silver got off with a warning, but one of her co-stars in 2006’s Pledge This! wasn’t as fortunate. Her name? Paris Hilton. “I had a blast,” she says of her surprising role alongside the notorious socialite. “Any time you get to party with Paris Hilton is a good time. Had a lot of free, uh, shots of Patron. A lot of free private jets. It was like ‘When in Rome,’ but in this case, ‘When in Miami.’”
Regardless of what side projects she chooses to do, Kerri Kenney-Silver believes that her bond with fellow State actors is not only her past and present but her future, too.
“It is my career path. I know for a fact that in one way or another, we will always all work together,” she says. “We have been for 20 years — I don’t know why it would be any different. We’ve all gone off, everyone’s done their own thing and will continue to. But, always, we end up coming back and doing projects together because that’s where our essence is as people, as writers, and comedians.”
It’s this comedic camaraderie that has given Kenney-Silver the freedom to pursue various careers, including a stint as bassist and lead singer for Cake Like, a ‘90s rock trio. Joined by Jody Seifert and Nina Hellman, the three began casually playing their musician boyfriends’ extra instruments, only to find that they enjoyed themselves so much that four or five hours would fly by. Rock stardom was never their goal, though. In fact, they were barely prepared for their first gig at a party in Brooklyn. “We needed people to help us figure out how to plug in our instruments and how, where the knobs were, what the knobs do. We had our songs written down on napkins,” she says. “It was a hobby. I didn’t expect one one-millionth of what ended up happening to us.”
A few shows later, Cake Like was approached by Avant Records’ John Zorn about making a CD. “[He] said, ‘Do you guys have enough songs for a record?’ and we were like, ‘Of course we do!’ But you know, of course we didn’t,” Kenney-Silver says. Cake Like quickly wrote more songs and recorded an album.
It’s understandable that a band comprised of two actresses and a college roommate — whose first thoughts of 1994’s Delicious were, “Whoa! You know, we have something to give our parents for Christmas!” — were shocked that people were even listening. But, with a stellar review from Rolling Stone, a two-page spread in Venus Zine, music produced by Ric Ocasek, and a tour with Neil Young (who also gave them a second record deal), their success was undeniable.
While Kenney-Silver has since moved on from music, she plans to play more once on break from shooting Reno 911!. As always, her driving force still has its influence — she’s excited for the possibility of playing with Craig Wedrin, who composed music featured in The State.
No matter what project Kerri Kenney-Silver chooses to pursue — rock star, socialite sidekick, and confused cop included — she will always have a home base to return to within her family of State comedians. For her, “It’s where we started, and I think it’s ultimately where we all live.”
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Gary (3 months)
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