Kemper '02 stars on ‘The Office’

Nothing was going right for Ellie Kemper ’02. She was doing a one-person comedy show, and every joke she told was falling flat.

“It was just silent in the audience from start to finish,” she said in an e-mail to The Daily Princetonian on Monday. “Twenty-eight minutes of nothing but me talking. And crying on the inside. My boyfriend was at that show. He didn’t even laugh. Actually maybe he left.”

These days, though, the world can’t seem to take its eyes off Kemper. Now starring as Kelly Erin Hannon, the new receptionist on NBC’s hit show “The Office,” the former Quipfire! standout has become a recognizable face across America, acting alongside such comedic heavyweights as Steve Carell and Rainn Wilson.

When she arrived at Princeton in 1998, the St. Louis, Mo., native said she was interested in “field hockey, theater and Sassy magazine” and quickly found her niche in the University’s improvisational comedy troupes. By her own admission, Kemper had little involvement in comedy before she came to Princeton. “I watched ‘Seinfeld’ and made weird home videos with my sister, Carrie,” she said. “That’s about it.”

She loved performing improv with Quipfire! recalling her favorite memory from the group's shows when Tommy Dewey '01 doing a sketch about Angela Lansbury from "Murder She Wrote."

"He crept on the stage with his invisible typewriter, silently recording the murder that was taking place in front of him as he typed," Kemper said. "Unfortunately (or fortunately, for people who like gross things), I wet my pants from holding in laughter. It, like, dribbled down the chair. Miraculously, only Tommy and one other guy noticed"

While Kemper’s peers and professors certainly appreciated her energy, it was her cerebral talent that impressed them the most. English professor Susan Wolfson — Kemper’s senior thesis adviser — said she remembered Kemper as having a heightened sense of self-awareness, “[internalizing] what she was learning into her understanding of herself.”

Wolfson noted that Kemper matured during the process of completing her senior year independent work, which she began working on only a few days after Sept. 11, 2001. “Especially being so close to New York City, the idea of whether it would ever be possible to exercise qualities such as wit and good humor after such a tragic event weighed heavily on Ellie’s mind,” Wolfson said of Kemper’s 82-page thesis titled “Isn’t It Ironic?”

Kemper, who said she had originally considered writing her thesis on the role of orphans in Victorian novels, found comfort in Dave Eggers’ “A Heartbreaking Work of Staggering Genius.” “Eggers’ novel was a story of what it meant to be ironic in the face of tragedy,” Wolfson explained. “It asked whether to do such a thing was shallow, heroic or just emotionally necessary. These were the kinds of questions that fascinated Ellie not just as a senior fulfilling her requirement, but as a person living in a world after 9/11.”

After graduating from Princeton in 2002, Kemper studied for a year at Oxford before moving to New York and taking classes at the Upright Citizens Brigade Theatre and the Peoples Improv Theater. At one point, she wrote for Timothy McSweeney’s Quarterly Concern, a magazine published by Eggers himself. Kemper eventually ended up in Los Angeles, auditioning for a part on “Parks and Recreation,” a show on NBC created by the team that creates “The Office.” Though she didn’t get a role on ‘Parks,’ Kemper returned to Hollywood a few months later to play Hannon, the replacement for receptionist-turned-saleswoman Pam Beasley.

“The entire cast and crew have been so warm and welcoming,” Kemper said. “Everyone on that show gives you so much; there are no bad scenes, because everyone is trying to make the other person look incredible.”