Tracey Wigfield Biography
Tracey Wigfield is an American comedy writer, actor, and producer who won a Primetime Emmy Award in 2013 for her work on 30 Rock. She created, produced and appeared in the NBC sitcom Great News.
Tracey Wigfield Age
Wigfield was born on June 19, 1983, in Wayne, New Jersey, United States. She is 36 years old as of 2019. Wigfield is an American by nationality and she belongs to white ethnicity. Wigfield was raised Roman Catholic and today describes herself as a “Sorta Catholic.” In a 2017 America magazine piece, she described being Catholic as “not a huge part of my deal… I practice what I call “Chipotle Catholicism”: I go down the line picking and choosing the parts of Catholicism that appeal to me (charity, Pope Frank, spooky stories about saints) in order to create a custom-made spiritual burrito.”
Tracey Wigfield Height
The American writer stands at a height of 5 feet 3 inches (1.61 meters) and she weighs 58 kg (127 lbs).
Tracey Wigfield Family
Wigfield is the daughter of Kathy Wigfield (mother) and Dave Wigfield (father). Ashley Wigfield (32) is a younger sister and she is also an actress.
Tracey Wigfield Husband | Tracey Wigfield Children
Wigfield is a married woman. She tied the knot to her boyfriend turned husband Adam Countee. Adam is an American actor, producer, and writer popular for his work in Silicon Valley (2014), Community (2009) and The Mindy Project (2012).
Wigfield announced her engagement on her Instagram account showing ring on March 18, 2015. Finally a year later the couple walked down the aisle on May 21, 2016, at the Church of St. Paul the Apostle in Manhattan. Meanwhile, their reception took place in Cipriani 42nd Street in Manhattan including 244 guests.
The lovebirds first met each other when they were working together for a TV series The Mindy Project in early 2013. Countee fell in love with Wigfield at first sight. After seeing each other for a couple of times, the duo stared their romantic relationship.
As of now, the husband and wife are living a blissful married life and free from divorce rumors. The duo is blessed with a daughter, Celine Countee born on December 29, 2017.
Tracey Wigfield Education
Wigfield graduated in 2001 from the all-girls Immaculate Heart Academy in Washington Township, Bergen County, New Jersey. In high school, she used her parents’ video camera to record comedy skits together with a friend.
She graduated from Boston College, a Catholic university founded by the Jesuits, in 2005, where she majored in theater and English.
Tracey Wigfield Career
After graduating, Wigfield moved back home and took an internship at CNN, then transferred to the page program at Late Show with David Letterman. She was then a production assistant on the short-lived television sitcom Knights of Prosperity.
She was hired as a writer’s assistant on 30 Rock during the show’s second season. Wigfield moved up to staff writer and then producer. From other writers, she was referred to the Upright Citizens Brigade Theatre where she began performing and writing.
Wigfield and Tina Fey did much of the writing for the series finale of 30 Rock and the two went on to win the Primetime Emmy Award for Outstanding Writing for a Comedy Series for the episode, which aired on January 31, 2013.
After 30 Rock had ended, Jack Burditt brought her to California to write for The Mindy Project, for which she and Mindy Kaling were co-executive producers. Wigfield appeared on the show as Dr. Lauren Neustadter. She created the NBC sitcom Great News, her first pilot, of which Fey is an executive producer. The series follows a producer at a news station whose mother begins an internship at the company.
Tracey Wigfield Net Worth And Salary
Wigfield has an estimated net worth of around $2 million as of 2019. She earns a lucrative wealth from her profession as a writer, actress, comedian, and producer. Wigfield is an established name in the industry who earns quite a good sum from her projects. Normally, a TV writer makes an earning of about $96,000 per year. However, it depends upon the popularity and as she is a higher level writer she makes around $157,000 every year. Her sources of income come from a different profession like acting and producing.
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Tracey Wigfield Interview
Great News: How Tracey Wigfield made her own mark after 30 Rock
What was the shift for you between growing up enjoying your mother’s personality, and looking at her through the lens of writer and thinking, ‘Oh, she could actually be a TV character?’
TRACEY WIGFIELD: I’ve always thought she was really funny, and I’ve always felt funny when telling stories about her. Her personality cracks me up. She has no filter, she has no sense of boundaries. She loves Hollywood and entertainment and would come visit 30 Rock sometimes, and everyone there got a kick out of her. In fact, a couple of years ago, Tina and her family were going on vacation to Disney World, and I don’t know how it came about — I’m sure my mom was like, “Ooh, you’re going to Disney World” and Tina was like, “Yeah, you should come, Kathy” — and then, like, we actually went with them. Tina Fey brought my mother and sister and I with her on her family vacation. [Laughs] To answer your question, everyone thinks their mom is funny and their family is funny, but I guess I just started noticing other people thought she was funny, too. And since this is my first time developing a show, it’s not like I have a giant array of life experiences from which I could draw. I wasn’t in the military or, like, used to work on an oil rig. So I was thinking about, well, what do I know? What do I like talking about? What do I think is funny? And my mom just seemed like kind of a perfect pre-made character.
Had you ever written her into a sketch before, or was this the first time you put her on paper?
Not at UCB, necessarily, or even in college. I know on The Mindy Project, I wrote the episode that introduced the character of Danny Castellano’s mom, who’s played by Rhea Perlman. That had a little bit of [my mom] but she’s a different character. She’s this very Catholic, Staten Island woman who’s easily offended and makes Mindy come over to have a guilt dinner where she just talks to her crucifix the whole time about how bad Mindy is. She was a different kind of character but I had a lot of fun writing that, so that was another thing where I was like, “Oh, if I had my own show, this would maybe be at the center.”
Were you raised religious?
I was raised Catholic. It’s funny — a lot of the people I’ve talked to who have seen the show always say, “Oh my God, you wrote a show about my mom.” It seems to fall along, like, Jewish, Catholic, Italian lines. My mom’s Italian and I was raised Catholic. Not super religious, but I went to Catholic school from kindergarten to college…so, wait, I guess that’s religious, now that I think about it.
When you told your mom the show was happening, was there anything off limits?
In a weird way, she was like, weirdly not phased by it. I think for a lot of moms who deeply believe in their children more than they believe in themselves, it’s not surprising to her that I am making a TV show and she kind of always thought I would. It would have been a disappointment if I hadn’t. And the fact that it’s about her, I think she thinks is flattering and she’s excited about it. She rolls with things. Maybe it’s just being older but she just rolls with things in a way that I don’t know if a lot of people would.
What about your sister and dad?
My sister is a writer on the show, so that was really helpful having her there. She’s someone that you could be like, “Wait, what’s that thing mom always said? What would she do in this situation?” I was a little worried about my dad because his real name is Dave [like the character in the show] and he is a wonderful man. He’s supported my sister and me and my mom our whole lives, and he’s just the sweetest, smartest guy. And how he’s portrayed on the show is more just a joke about how he’s treated by Carol and his daughter, that he sort of just does all the housework and makes all the money and drives them everywhere, which I think is something that certainly my dad has felt throughout the years, and something I also think any dad in a house full of women just becomes resigned to. My dad hasn’t seen all of the episodes, but I asked him a couple times, “You’re not offended, right? You know I love you and think you’re a perfect father.” But he has a good sense of humor. I think he thinks it’s funny. I hope he does!
Whatever Twitter is to budding comedians right now, what tool did young Tracey use that helped you explore comedy?
My best friend from when I was little, my friend Renata and I, used to make comedy videos, and this was way before YouTube. When we were like 11 or 12 years old, we had a little Sony camcorder and we would make sketches, basically, and be super dedicated to it. We would write these scripts and act in them and make our parents watch them over and over again. I remember saving money to buy a wig. Like, we loved doing that. And in a way, it’s really cool how that’s basically what my job turned out to be.
What was your VHS masterpiece?
Our most ambitious one was a parody of Sense & Sensibility called Stupid & Stupidity. It was a period piece, which was very hard because we didn’t have access to the costumes we felt like we needed. Or men. [Laughs] That was always really hard. My dad would have to be in it, and my sister would have to be a boy in a wig. It was really ambitious but I think that one came out really good.
Leaping ahead a decade, what was your first formative career touchstone after college?
A huge game-changer in my life was getting hired as an assistant at 30 Rock. I had just gotten out of college a year or so before, and I worked as a page at David Letterman and as a PA on another show that got canceled. I was about to turn 24 and I had given my résumé in at 30 Rock, because my boss called in a recommendation for me. I got that job and it felt huge at the time, but it really has been, even to this moment, the biggest thing that’s ever happened to me. Even now, I’m working with the same people who gave me my first shot, and now they’re supporting me in this very different way on Great News. Ten years later, I feel like I’m not at the end of that story but in a new chapter of it. It’s really cool and gratifying that Tina and Robert [Carlock] took this chance on me when I never had a job before, and when do you ever get an opportunity to… not pay back, but sort of make them proud in this way?
Do you remember the first time you made Tina laugh out loud?
[Laughs] No, but I remember more times when I didn’t. I was obviously a huge fan of hers, and I was so scared of her when I first started. God, I remember it so vividly. As an assistant, your job is to type notes of the jokes people are saying, but if you have a good joke, you can pitch it, and that was how I eventually got hired. One of the first times, when I was first getting my bearings doing that…Tina was in the room, and I had some joke about brown M&Ms and I kept going back and forth in my head like, “Do you say it? Don’t say it, it’s not funny. You should say it.” And then finally I said it and no one laughed and Tina said, “Oh yeah, I said that, two minutes ago.” So it was both a) not a funny joke, and b) I was clearly not paying attention and doing my job typing up what she was saying. I was mortified. Obviously, she’s incredibly nice and I’m sure she forgot about it, but I remember it to this day and I’m still trying to make her proud.
In joining and helping launch The Mindy Project, how different was your headspace as opposed to starting at 30 Rock?
At 30 Rock, I was starting knowing nothing. I had never written at all, but I was a big fan of Tina and I was learning everything about how to write jokes and craft episodes, like it was my graduate school in comedy writing. And when the show ended, I was a producer but I wasn’t one of the people in charge. On Mindy, I got that experience. Not running a show, but maybe being a person or two under the person running the show. I got more experience editing, being on set, going to production meetings, pitching episodes to the network. All these other skills that they didn’t trust me with on 30 Rock, I got to do on Mindy. And I also got very close to Mindy. She’s a good friend of mine. Like with Tina, I think it was just even subconsciously good for me to work for so long on shows where the boss was a woman who was really competent and good.
As the boss now, do you have a soft spot for people rising up the way you did?
Yeah. Especially women writers’ assistants. With girls coming up, I think you just have an affinity for helping them, because there are still less women doing this than men. When you’re a female showrunner, I think it’s a priority for you to make things as equal as possible in your own small, little way. Also, men do that kind of cronyism all the time, so I feel like I’m allowed a little bit of cronyism like that.
What kind of writers’ room did you want to assemble?
It was very important that I not, and you can’t always guard against this, but that I not hire any assholes. Especially in a writers’ room. I wanted a room of people who were real collaborators and really funny obviously but also really interested in building episodes together. You don’t want a rotten apple.
Source: ew.com