Weedman, Lauren 1969–

PERSONAL:

Born 1969; married; husband's name Michael (divorced). Education: Attended the Goodman School of Drama.

ADDRESSES:

Home—Los Angeles, CA. Agent—Marissa Devins, United Talent Agency, 9560 Wilshire Blvd., Ste. 500, Beverly Hills, CA 90212-2401; Christie Smith, Mosaic Media Group, 9200 Sunset Blvd., 10th Fl., Los Angeles, CA 90069. E-mail—contact@laurenweedman.net.

CAREER:

Writer, comedienne, actress. The Daily Show with Jon Stewart, correspondent, 2001; Almost Live, cast member, for two years. Has also had multiple appearances on Rewind and Reno 911. Other appearances include The Great Things about Being …, VH1's Best Week Ever, I Love the 90's, A2Z, Curb Your Enthusiasm, Talk Show with Spike Ferestein, and Night Writer. Has also performed in self-authored plays (see below). Worked as an intern at the Seattle Children's Theatre and the Empty Space Theater.

AWARDS, HONORS:

Best New Play and Best Solo Performance, Seattle Times Footlight Awards, for Rash; MacDowell Colony Fellowship, 2007; included in Top Ten Indie Books, Kirkus, 2007.

WRITINGS:

A Woman Trapped in a Woman's Body: Tales from a Life of Cringe, Sasquatch Books (Seattle, WA), 2007.

Author of the plays Homecoming, Rash, Wreckage, I Thought You Were Dead, Amsterdam, If Ornaments Had Lips, Huu, Bust, and Yea, Tho I Walk. Contributor to Women Playwrights: The Best Plays of 2002, and The Best American Non-required Reading, 2005. Author of Web episodes Our Bodies, Myself.

ADAPTATIONS:

A pilot for the television adaptation of A Woman Trapped in a Woman's Body: Tales from a Life of Cringe has been produced by Fox Network/Twentieth Century-Fox and Imagine Entertainment.

SIDELIGHTS:

Lauren Weedman is an actress, comedian, writer, and playwright. Born in 1969, Weedman attended the Goodman School of Drama and interned at the Seattle Children's Theatre and the Empty Space Theater. She then worked as a correspondent for The Daily Show with Jon Stewart in 2001, and as a cast member of Almost Live for two years. Throughout her career, Weedman has had multiple appearances on shows such as Rewind and Reno 911. Other television appearances she has made include The Great Things about Being …, VH1's Best Week Ever, I Love the 90's, A2Z, Curb Your Enthusiasm, Talk Show with Spike Ferestein, and Night Writer. As a playwright, Weedman has written Homecoming, Wreckage, I Thought You Were Dead, Amsterdam, If Ornaments Had Lips, Huu, Bust, and Yea, Tho I Walk. Her play Rash was named Best New Play and Best Solo Performance by the Seattle Times Footlight Awards. Notably, several of Weedman's plays are one-woman shows in which she has also starred. A prolific writer and actress, Weedman has additionally contributed to Women Playwrights: The Best Plays of 2002 and The Best American Non-required Reading, and she is the author of the Web episodes Our Bodies, Myself.

Weedman's first full-length publication is A Woman Trapped in a Woman's Body: Tales from a Life of Cringe. The book was released in 2007, and a pilot for a television adaptation of the work has been produced by Fox Network/Twentieth Century-Fox and Imagine Entertainment. The book is partly based on Weedman's experiences, but it is largely fictionalized. When Starpulse interviewer Ben Kharakh asked Weedman which parts of the book were true and which were not, she replied that in the introduction, "I should have said none of it was true. Now that it's published and it's all too late and I'm trapped forever with the written word, I realize that I should have said it was nothing but lies. They're all events that I went through, but I did whatever I wanted to the stories. I don't know what the percentage of truth is. Seventy percent, maybe? It's not facts. It's not a memoir. I exaggerated stuff if I thought it was funnier to say something else." That "stuff" includes highly charged interactions with Jon Stewart, star of The Daily Show with Jon Stewart, wearing a dress from a thrift store to the Emmy Awards, getting a coffee enema, the dissolution of her marriage, dealing with what it's like to be an adopted child, and her first relationship following her divorce. Interestingly, the loosely autobiographical essays in A Woman Trapped in a Woman's Body are arranged in reverse chronological order, starting with her exploits as a well-established celebrity and moving backward toward her childhood as a budding comedienne.

Weedman told Kharakh that the two reasons she believes she may have become a comedienne stem from her childhood. A neighboring family once sent a foster child back to foster care, and, being adopted, Weedman acknowledged that she may have subconsciously feared that she could be sent back as well. Explaining the other reason, she told Karakh: "I used to say it's because I was fat…. If you're a girl and you're fat—I think I said this in the book too—if you're not a genius, and you're not gorgeous, you'd better start dancing and be as entertaining as possible, so they don't take you out to pasture and shoot you. … You gotta prove that so that the pack doesn't leave you behind." Regardless of the reason Weedman became embroiled in the business of humor, reviewers of A Woman Trapped in a Woman's Body were much impressed. "Weedman uses raunchiness as a covert route to the heart," observed Booklist critic Donna Seaman. Additionally, a Kirkus Reviews writer stated that the book contains "sincerely funny stuff from a welcome new original voice on the humor-literature scene."

BIOGRAPHICAL AND CRITICAL SOURCES:

PERIODICALS

Booklist, September 15, 2007, Donna Seaman, review of A Woman Trapped in a Woman's Body: Tales from a Life of Cringe, p. 16.

Kirkus Reviews, August 1, 2007, review of A Woman Trapped in a Woman's Body.

ONLINE

Lauren Weedman Home Page,http://www.laurenweedman.net (June 17, 2008).

Starpulse,http://www.starpulse.com/ (June 17, 2008), Ben Kharakh, "Starpulse Sits down with Comedian and Recent Author Lauren Weedman."