Jenna Maroney

Jenna Maroney
Jenna Maroney
First appearance	"Pilot"
Created by	Tina Fey
Portrayed by	Jane Krakowski Rachel Dratch (unaired pilot only)
In-universe information
Gender	Female
Occupation	Actress/singer
Family	Werner Maroney (father) Verna Maroney (mother) Sister (name unstated) Courtney (half-sister) Brother (name unstated) Charlotte (niece)
Religion	Kabbalah ("The Fighting Irish")

Jenna Maroney is a fictional character on the American television series 30 Rock, played by Jane Krakowski. Despite being credited as a regular, the character does not appear in every episode, having been absent from five of the twenty-one episodes of the first season and three of the fifteen episodes of the second season. In 2009 and 2010, Krakowski was nominated for an Emmy Award for Best Supporting Actress for her performance in the role.

Personal history

Jenna was born Ystrepa Grokovitz on February 24, 1969. This was revealed in the episode "Goodbye, My Friend", in which it was also announced that TGS Co-star Tracy Jordan would share that same date of birth. The year was later confirmed in the episode "Jackie Jormp-Jomp". She grew up in Bakersfield.

Jenna's father, Werner (or Travis) Maroney, was a burger server in suburban Santa Barbara. Apparently, he spurned Jenna's mother Verna, a dental hygienist, for a "curly-haired" surfer named Roberta. Jenna still says she will "always be his little girl." After that, her mother made her sit on every mall Santa's lap in Bakersfield in an attempt to find him. She has a sister who urinated in one of her eyes when she was little, which caused it to not open all the way. Another of Jenna's sister (or possibly the same one) has also died. Her half sister Courtney surprised Jenna on an episode of fictional chat show Vontella (a parody of Maury), they did not get along and immediately began fighting. When Jenna appears on Vontella for a second time she is told Courtney is dead (Jenna does not seem upset). She also has a niece named Charlotte who has drawn her pictures which Jenna finds offensive, despite them being perfectly innocent and childlike.

During Jenna's teen years, her mother moved what family she had left to Florida in search of money, a husband, or anything she could get her hands on. The high school Jenna attended was located on a boat, which subsequently sank.

Jenna started her singing career when she was young, by singing Christmas carols in Sears, as a distraction while her mom shoplifted. Jenna studied voice at Northwestern University and, apparently, when she first met Liz Lemon in 1993, Jenna was "slutting it up" to get car dealership owners to put her in their commercials. She also studied at the Royal Tampa Academy of Dramatic Tricks where she majored in portraying prom queens and murdered runaways (mentioned in "Black Light Attack").

She has been engaged to a congressman (when she was 16 years old) and David Blaine, and dated O. J. Simpson, a music producer (hinted at having been RedOne), a sniper, and a mob boss, and was in a three-way with Tom and Roseanne Arnold.

In season 3 episode 9, "Retreat to Move Forward," Jenna and her foil, Frank Rossitano, had a one night stand. Jenna had been drinking straight whiskey and Frank stated his attraction to her emotional instability. The next day, Frank asks Jenna to not mention the incident, which angers Jenna, as she perceives Frank to be a loser and that it should be she who is more embarrassed. Later, Jenna states that Dog the Bounty Hunter is the "second-grossest guy [she's] been with," alluding that Frank is the first.

A recent boyfriend, during Season 4, was named Paul, played by Will Forte. Paul is straight, but he is a professional female impersonator. They met when Paul was the winner of a Jenna Maroney look-alike contest in which Jenna herself placed fourth. Jenna became jealous when Paul later switched from Jenna drag to Cher drag, but eventually, she accepted his compromise: Paul becomes Cher on one side of his body (including a wig, makeup, clothing, and one shoe) and Jenna on the other side. The point is that Jenna can now have sex with two of her favorite people: Cher and herself.

Acting career

Jenna started off in theater, in performances that included The Jenna Chronicles: A One-Womyn Show in 1996 and Con Air: The Musical in 1997, where she appears to have played Rachel Ticotin's character. She was nominated for a CableACE Award for her work on HBO's Arliss. She appeared for three episodes on the show Night Court as a werewolf lawyer and is blamed by the cast for leading to the show's cancellation. She also appeared in an episode of Law & Order as a "lady rapist" and from a poster in her dressing room, had also starred in a production of the Broadway musical Evita.

Jenna was the star of The Girlie Show, a sketch comedy series that was created by her friend Liz Lemon. Jenna's star billing is reduced drastically when Jack Donaghy is hired as a new network vice president and brings in Tracy Jordan, a popular but unpredictable actor. And on top of that, Jack decides that Tracy is a higher priority than Jenna, so he orders the show's title change to TGS with Tracy Jordan.

The move makes Jenna furious because not only is she left out of the loop, but upset that Liz gave in to Jack's demands. In addition she finds herself at the mercy of Tracy's antics, the writing staff's constant pranks, and Jack's constant avoidance of her (his reason is that she is not promotable for the show). But despite all this, Liz assures Jenna that her future on the show is safe (Lemon forces Jack to sign a contract stating he will never fire Jenna in the pilot).

When she is not doing the show, she also does films, including her first starring role, "The Rural Juror", written by John Grisham's brother Kevin. Jenna was going to promote the film on Late Night with Conan O'Brien until Jack replaced her appearance with Tracy.

One of her characters on the show is "Pam, the Overly-Confident Morbidly Obese Woman," for which she must wear a fat suit. In "The Rural Juror," she appears in a sketch as Paris Hilton, where "most of the jokes were about the nose."

While on the first season hiatus, Jenna starred in the Broadway adaptation of Mystic Pizza, was required to eat 28 slices of pizza on stage every week, and had gained a significant amount of weight by the premiere of season 2. Jack's observation was that she either needed to lose 30 or gain 60 pounds, because anything in between is not acceptable on broadcast television. She was unable to control her appetite, and her attempts at bizarre crash diets, such as the Japanese Porn Star Diet (which involved eating only paper), proved to be ineffective. She was equally successful at disguising the weight (drawing the eye up, not standing next to fit and attractive women, etc). Although Dr. Spaceman suggested radical surgery and offered to prescribe her crystal meth, she instead decided to keep the weight on after doing a sketch called "Me Want Food," which proved to be popular with viewers. (In a case of life imitating art, the "Me Want Food" T-Shirt is also available for sale on the 30 Rock website.) However, this phase didn't last long, as she soon lost her desire to eat, and she lost the weight she had gained despite Kenneth Parcell's attempts to force-feed her.

Jenna then starred in a movie based on the life of Janis Joplin, but Joplin's name could not be used for legal reasons. Instead, the producers used a succession of similar, ridiculous names for the character as production progressed, finally settling on "Jackie Jormp-Jomp". She attempted to jump on the vampire craze with a starring role in a werewolf movie, to be filmed in Iceland. Production had to be shut down, however, when they realized that the country had only one minute of darkness per day.

In The Fabian Strategy, Jenna gets a pay increase and becomes a producer of TGS with Tracy Jordan (she put this in her contract because no one really knew the show would reach a fifth season). Things go well for Pete because Jenna is the one firing people and he doesn't have to deal with it. But Jenna forces him to fire her after finding out that it will bring the budget down to what Jack wants.

In Live Show, Jenna claims she has never broken character during a performance, stating that she was on stage in Pippin with Irene Ryan when she died, yet continued performing.

Music career

Jenna is also a singer (and possibly a rapper, having once participated in a Gangsta rap contest). She has apparently been a somewhat successful dance pop superstar overseas, with one of her hits, a risque number entitled "Muffin Top" reaching number-one in Israel and number four in Belgium. She performed the song once on TGS unaware that the show had already gone off the air for the evening. She apparently had another single entitled "Chocolate Rainbow" (a possible nod to the infamous viral video Chocolate Rain) that she felt was "too good" for TGS. She has had the honor of singing at the United Nations and Jenna sang Whitney Houston's "Greatest Love of All" when the crew surprised her with a birthday party, but her performance was repeatedly interrupted, much to her chagrin. Jenna also joined celebrities such as Sheryl Crow in performing the charity single "Kidney Now!" to help Jack's father find a kidney donor, after sneaking on the stage, due to not being invited. In the fourth season premiere, Jenna decided that she needed to "go country" to help her career, and in a promotion for NBC's tennis coverage, she made her Country debut with the single "Tennis Night In America."

Personality

Jenna likely has histrionic personality disorder. Generally, she also fits into the "dumb blonde" stereotype as well as the stereotype of actresses being air headed and self-centered. Off-camera, she is conceited, frequently lies about her age and uses her sexuality (i.e., flirting) to get her way with men. She tries to seem smart to her fans and to the general public, even going as far as telling Life & Style magazine her favorite book is the Quran. Sometimes her views get her in hot water with the public, even when she is misquoted, such as when Maxim asked her about her view on the Iraq War, Jenna misheard, thought she was being asked about theatre troupes rather than troops and declared "I hate the troops". To do damage control, Jenna was put on the show Hardball with Chris Matthews, but confused Barack Obama with Osama bin Laden, causing more problems. To top it off, she then does a musical number about America, but sparklers that are supposed to spin don't and they inadvertently show as swastikas. She also loves attention and will do almost anything to get it, such as wearing a back brace and telling everyone her vocal coach has died.

She also has a habit of spilling secrets, as evidenced in the episode "The Baby Show," when she told everyone about Liz's desire to have a baby, prompting everyone to volunteer to become Liz's sperm donor and surrogate.

She is shown to be overanxious about her acting career, which is apparently failing. Paranoid about losing her job, she proves to be any easy target for anyone who wants to mess with her head, since she tends to foolishly listen to whatever anyone tells her. Liz usually has to intervene at the last moment to bring her back to reality.

Jenna has had a number of feuds with Tracy, who she believes is favored by the show's producers. They have debated over numerous issues, including who has it worse, black men or women. They have worked together, though, such as when they believed that Kenneth was a murderer hiding dead bodies in his bedroom and when they were co-hosts of the Macy's St. Patrick's Day Parade, which resulted in Jenna falling asleep on live TV and Tracy repeatedly saying "fuck". In addition to Tracy, she considers Jenny McCarthy to be her "nemesis" and she also has an ongoing feud with Raven-Symoné, for undisclosed reasons.

According to Liz in "The Rural Juror," Jenna's hair is dyed. In "The Fighting Irish," Jenna stated that she was a follower of Kabbalah, which, in her words, "combines the fun part of Judaism with magic." She owns a condo in Clearwater, Florida, which implies she is also involved with Scientology.

Jenna claims to speak with a mild English inflection because she lost her virginity while listening to the My Fair Lady soundtrack.

It is implied that Jenna is attracted to women. In the episode "Into the Crevasse", she seems to enjoy watching two female porn stars, representing herself and Liz, making out.

In the season 3 episode, "The Ones", Pete suspects that Jenna might be a sociopath, after repeatedly poisoning Kenneth with strawberries, to date a hot EMT. Later in the episode, Pete downgraded her personality to extreme narcissism, after she felt genuine remorse for her actions.

Fictional discography

Singles

• Muffin Top (Season 1, Season 3)
• Chocolate Rainbow (mentioned in Season 3, but never played)
• Tennis Night (Season 4)

Fictional filmography

• TGS with Tracy Jordan—Various Characters (Seasons 1-5)/Producer (one episode)
• The Rural Juror—Constance Justice
• A show in the Law & Order franchise (most likely Law & Order: Special Victims Unit)—a "lady rapist"
• Jenna Gets Hard—a sexually charged exercise video.
• ShopRite Supermarkets—Commercial Spokesperson
• Arliss—Received a CableACE Award nomination for a guest spot on the show
• Mystic Pizza: The Musical—Summer 2007 stage show Broadway and the 2007 film adaptation
• The New Mickey Mouse Club—as a Mouseketeer
• Night Court—three-episode arc as Sparky Monroe (a werewolf lawyer). The rest of the cast blamed Maroney for the show's early cancellation.
• She also has "slutted it up" for car dealers so she could be in their commercials
• Hushed Rapings—Jenna played criminal profiler Jill St. Ferrari in this Lifetime original miniseries.
• Sing Them Blues, White Girl: The Jackie Jormp-Jomp Story—Janis Joplin-inspired character in an as-yet unreleased biopic.
• Evita, which closed at intermission.
• Videos for a Japanese Karaoke company.
• Trivial Pursuit: The Movie-Arts & Literature
• Gossip Girl
• Emmanuelle Goes to Dinosaur Land—Made for TV softcore porn movie
• Sister, Can You Spare A Breast? - a Lifetime Original Movie. She bribed the HFPA into giving her a Golden Globe award (or, probably, nomination), but they were so offended that they banned her for life (from getting a nomination or award).
• Take My Hand, a torture-porn movie like Saw. In fact, according to Jenna, "The producers of this movie [Take My Hand] rented Saw and watched it."