GAZELLE SPECIAL
A Homecoming for
Funny Girl Ellie Kemper
B y T r i s h M u y c o - To b i n
14
GAZELLE
grow up to be, Kemper quickly said no.
“I was so bad at planning, I didn’t really give it much thought. I was
very envious of the kids who had a precise idea of what they wanted
to do,” she admitted. “I did those first grade essays, and I always wrote
about becoming a nun. But all I knew was ‘The Sound of Music.’ To
me, all nuns were like Fräulein Maria ... it
was more fantasy, really.”
What Kemper knew for sure was that she
loved performing - even then.
“I’ve always loved acting, and I was
always in high school plays,” said Kemper,
who attended John Burroughs School and
had fellow alum Jon Hamm as her drama
teacher. “He was definitely considered to
be a hunk by some of his students. But he
was such a good teacher. Some people who
are good at their craft are not necessarily
great teachers. He was good at teaching. He
taught me how to improve my acting, which
I ultimately did in college and beyond.”
And it was in college at Princeton
University that Kemper began to appreciate
the art of making people laugh.
“I began doing improv comedy and loved
it - it was something I was good at. That’s
what sparked it, and gave me the confidence to pursue comedy after
college,” she said. “I grew up watching ‘Saturday Night Live,’ ‘Seinfeld,’
‘The Larry Sanders Show,’ not thinking this was a job that people do.”
Even her early crushes involved funny men, and late-night icon
David Letterman was at the top of the list.
(continued on page 16)
"I did those first
grade essays, and
I always wrote
about becoming a
nun. But all I knew
was ‘The Sound
of Music.’ To me,
all nuns were like
Fräulein Maria ... ”
G
rowing up, Ellie Kemper spent a lot of time in the
backyard, in a tree house built by her dad. She admits
she should have been going to middle-school mixers
instead, but at the time, she was determined to make
a connection with one particular critter.
“I was watching a lot of ‘Dances with
Wolves’ and ‘Gorillas in the Mist,’ so I would
go to the tree house and try to be one with
nature,” she recalled. “There was a squirrel
in the backyard, and I’d sit there and watch
it for hours on end.”
Until the day she fell while climbing a tree.
“It looked like the squirrel was laughing
at me,” she said. “I had this fantasy that it
would come to my rescue. But I realized
then that nature is indifferent to humans.”
And while Kemper said the incident
brings up a memory of “me trying and
failing at something,” it’s also a reminder
of fond, happy memories of a St. Louis
childhood surrounded by a close and loving
family - recollections she chronicles in her
new book, “My Squirrel Days.”
“The title refers to one of the central
essays in the book - my ultimately failed
attempt to make friends with the squirrel … I overestimated my ability
to do that,” she said.
But the book is about so much more, and many of the stories are
amusing, witty, funny and self-deprecating - just like Kemper herself.
When asked if she had an inkling as a child of what she wanted to