From Kirkwood to Hollywood
Improvisation, both on stage and off, has taken Nicole Parker a long way
IU alumna and Mad TV cast member Nicole Parker.
NOTE: The following story appeared in the Winter 2006 issue of The College. For a PDF of the entire issue, go to http://coas3.coas.indiana.edu/CollegeMagazine/w2006/CollegeMagazine.pdf.
These days, Nicole Parker, BA'00, is a bona fide celebrity. With roles on a popular television show and in an upcoming New York City play with Martin Short, she's nearing the top of Hollywood's ladder of success. But before she joined Mad TV, before she co-founded Waterwell Productions, before she performed with Boom Chicago … there was Ben and Jerry's.
That small, cow-covered ice cream shop on Kirkwood Avenue was a regular venue for some of Parker's first improv comedy performances with the IU group Full Frontal Comedy. "Those were so much fun. We always packed that little place," she remembers. "The only bad thing was the backstage area was the ice cream freezer. So that's pretty much all we ate for the whole entire evening, once a week. Which is not the best thing in the world. I mean it is … but it isn't."
Aside from the Cherry Garcia, Parker was initially attracted to IU for its strong reputation in theater and voice — both imperative for the acting career she had been planning "since about age 7." But raised in a suburb of Los Angeles, she also wanted to experience life outside of the city that most aspiring actors flock toward. That's why it was Bloomington's small-town flavor that ultimately won her over. "I loved it the second I got there," she says. "Even going to the admissions office was like going to your grandma's house. I expected them to bring out cookies for me!" When she was offered a small scholarship, no other school could compare.
Parker joined Full Frontal Comedy her freshman year, but not as a career move. "I'd been doing a lot of musical theater and thought I'd just go straight to New York," she explains. "The Full Frontal Comedy improv thing had always been a hobby. I never thought it would really be my job." While cleaning out her apartment the summer after graduation, though, Parker learned that a well-respected Amsterdam improv group, Boom Chicago, was holding auditions in Chicago two days later. Convincing a friend to drive her there, she skipped her flight home and phoned every acquaintance in town to find a place to stay.
"I'm glad I didn't know much about the theater or the job when I was auditioning," she admits, "because I would have been so much more nervous." The impulsive trip paid off, and by October Parker was living in Amsterdam.
After two-and-a-half years with Boom Chicago, Parker moved to New York in 2003. She planned to finally start that career in musical theater, and she co-founded Waterwell Productions along with several friends from IU. These plans were soon trumped once again, though, when just three years out of college Parker was offered the holy grail of improv comedy — a place on the Fox network's popular sketch comedy show Mad TV.
Now in her third season on the show, Parker has played a variety of characters, frequently employing her voice training to do impressions of celebrities like Ellen DeGeneres, Jessica Simpson, and Alanis Morissette. While fans rarely recognize her because of all the costumes, wigs, and make-up she wears on the show, Parker has encountered other side effects of celebrity. Her first season on Mad TV, someone found the silly and obviously fictitious biographies posted on the Full Frontal Comedy Web site when she was in college. This caused what she calls "a scandal" in an online chat room devoted to Mad TV — and apparently populated by overly credulous people with too much time on their hands. Parker laughs, "It almost makes you want to type in, 'Guys, guys, calm down!' But you don't even want to admit that you're looking. … They were also convinced that I was the voice on some animated Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtle movie."
Although she hasn't actually debuted on the silver screen yet, Parker hints she is auditioning for roles, as well as planning future collaborations with her friends back at Waterwell Productions. In the meantime, she is a very visible role model for IU students pondering a career in the daunting world of acting. All they need to do is turn on the TV Saturday nights to see for themselves just how quickly a career can vault from Kirkwood to Hollywood.
--By Emily Williams
