My Squirrel Days

 

There comes a time in every sitcom actress's life when she is faced with the prospect of writing a book. When my number was up, I told myself that I would not blink. I would fulfill my duty as an upbeat actress under contract on a television series and serve my country in the only way I knew how. I would cull from my life the very greatest and most memorable of anecdotes, I would draw on formative lessons learned both early on and also not too long ago, I would paint for the reader a portrait of the girl, the teenager, the woman I am today, and I would not falter. I would write a book.

Although this Author's intro is meant to be gently ironic, it feels like the most truthful passage in My Squirrel Days: Ellie Kemper was asked if she would like to write a book, so she did. What follows is a series of what Kemper calls “essays”, and what I would call “chapters”, in which she tells the story of her life in a tone of light self-deprecation. This reads less HAHAHAAAHAHAHH than an amusing conversation with a friend of a friend – nothing gets too personal and you don't feel any burning desire to probe deeper as you look at your watch and note that time is passing pleasantly enough – and for what it is, this book is fine. (Note: I read an ARC and quotes may not be in their final forms.)

My voice has not been described as “warm” or “professional-sounding” as often as it has been described as “please speak more quietly”, so it is a testament to my skill as an actor that I successfully played a receptionist in an office for over four years on NBC. “How did you do it, Ellie?” a lot of people have not asked me. “Were the computers on set actually connected to the internet?” more people wanted to know.

(Turns out, although I had never wondered: Yes, the computers on the set of The Office were connected to the internet and Kemper spent a lot of her time online shopping in the background.) Kemper seems to have been born under a lucky star, into a loving and well-off family. After what sounds like a trauma-free childhood, Kemper attended Princeton (where she fortuitously dropped out of field hockey to join the improv club) and then Oxford, and when she then still didn't know what to do with her life, Kemper's parents continued to support her so the budding comedienne could move to Chicago for an unpaid advertising internship (where her first attempt at writing copy was turned into a local McDonald's radio spot) and where she took intensive classes with various famous Chicago improv groups. After moving to NYC, Kemper continued to work on improv with her fellow Chicago alumni, appeared in a number of national TV commercials that allowed her to quit her one menial job, and after not being hired at SNL, she was offered the role on The Office. This bump-free career trajectory – and an acting CV that has two sitcoms, one theatrical movie release, and a turn as the cranky vet tech in a training video for vet techs – doesn't really feel dramatic enough or lengthy enough to merit a memoir at this stage in Kemper's life; but she was offered a book deal and she took it (and who could blame her?)

I know that a lot of women wish that they had just a fraction of my tendency to fart from being so nervous ease on the red carpet; I understand that many fashion houses are desperate to forbid me from wearing a dress with their name on it because I will irrefutably lower their cachet for my face. But I value my privacy and I really am a lazy homebody at heart, so for these reasons, it fills me with happiness* to let other ladies rule the red carpet.

*rage and envy

While on the one hand My Squirrel Days has this persistently chipper and self-deprecating tone, every now and then Kemper tells a story about losing her cool with underlings, confessing that now she channels her “inner Kimmy Schmidt” to remain positive in the face of setbacks (even her mother had to tell her once that yeah, her job sounds hard, but it's a job that plenty of people dream of having.) While reading this book, I got the sense that Kemper was channeling the kind of cheerful and wholesome character that she is known for playing – smiling on the outside while concealing something more interesting at the heart of her – and while a pleasant reading experience, there's nothing really truthy or fascinating or universal to be found here. Still, I am not unhappy to have spent this time with what Kemper put out.