Growing up, Rachel Dratch considered herself a class clown. With a comedic career that reaches back to her college days, it’s safe to say that embracing that identity has worked out for her.
“Things kind of float up to me. I just kind of zen out down the river and then things appear,” she said in an interview with The Cut in 2019.
Dratch was born in Lexington, Massachusetts, and developed an interest in comedy at an early age, typically gravitating towards comedic roles instead of drama in her high school’s plays. She attended the National Theater Institute at the Eugene O'Neill Theater Center in 1985 and then graduated from Dartmouth College in 1988 with a double major in Drama and Psychology. While at Dartmouth, she was a member of the improvisational comedy group Said and Done.
After graduation, she moved to Chicago to study improv, spending a few years in The Second City Touring Company before becoming part of the Mainstage cast in 1995. Her talent won her the Jeff Award for Best Actress in a Revue.
In 1999, she landed her big break as a cast member on “Saturday Night Live.” Her seven-year tenure gave us characters including the iconic Debbie Downer (a depressed woman that could bring everyone down with her in any given situation); a pretentious professor in one half of “The Luvahs” alongside Will Ferrell; and Abe Scheinwald, a Hollywood producer with a terrible acquisition record. Her comedic timing and ability to keep a straight face while delivering her often ridiculous lines would frequently cause her castmates and guest stars to break character, forcing them to avert eye contact in order to avoid collapsing into laughter.
Aside from her “SNL” career, Dratch has appeared in several films and television shows, including “The King of Queens,” “Monk,” “I Now Pronounce You Chuck and Larry,” “Click,” and “Wine Country.” She has also authored an autobiography, Girl Walks Into a Bar...: Comedy Calamities, Dating Disasters, and a Midlife Miracle, in which she discusses her surprise pregnancy at the age of 44 and the trajectory of her Hollywood career.