BAYER
Vanessa

• 1. Career
• 1.1. Saturday Night Live

Vanessa Bayer is an American actress and comedian. She was a cast member on the NBC sketch comedy series Saturday Night Live from 2010 to 2017, for which she was nominated for an Emmy. She co-created, co-executive produced, and had the lead role in the Showtime comedy I Love That for You, loosely based on her experience as a survivor of childhood leukemia. She has appeared in such films as Trainwreck (2015), Office Christmas Party (2016), Carrie Pilby (2016), Ibiza (2018) and Wander Darkly (2020).

Career

As of 2012, Bayer was collaborating with her brother Jonah on the web series Sound Advice for Above Average, where she stars as Janessa Slater, a media coach who helps famous musicians change their images. She was part of the all-Jewish cast of The Second City's stage show Jewsical: The Musical, a musical that presented a comedic take on Jewish life and culture. She played Kate Clark in the Chicago-based feature comedy Off the Cuff. She performed improvisational comedy at Chicago's ImprovOlympic, where she trained with SNL castmate Paul Brittain, and at the Annoyance Theatre and The Second City.

Saturday Night Live

Bayer joined the cast of Saturday Night Live as a featured player on September 25, 2010. She was promoted to repertory status for the 2012–2013 seasons. In 2014, she was nominated for an American Comedy Award for her work on the show, and in 2017, was nominated for a Primetime Emmy Award for Outstanding Supporting Actress in a Comedy Series. She departed SNL on May 20, 2017, after seven years there.

Her recurring characters included:

• Laura Parsons, a child actress always performing roles originally played by adults, including from Forrest Gump, The Wolf of Wall Street, Brokeback Mountain and Dallas Buyers Club
• Brecky, a former porn star who creates homemade commercials to obtain free luxury items (with Cecily Strong)
• Rebecca Stern-Markowicz, a co-host of J-Pop America Fun Time Now, which celebrates Japanese culture, (with Taran Killam and Jason Sudeikis)
• Rosa, a housemaid, in "The Californians"
• Miss Meadows, an unrealistically perky poetry teacher trying to connect with her delinquent students
• An unnamed director of talk show Mornin' Miami
• Jacob the Bar Mitzvah Boy, who appears on Weekend Update to perform a rehearsed speech with forced jokes about a given subject
• One of three workshop elves who perform their jobs poorly in the hope that their master will "punish" them (with Kenan Thompson)
• Dawn Lazarus, an inept meteorologist who appears on Weekend Update and struggles to discuss the weather
• A housewife who cooks for her husband and his friends in a series of increasingly absurd Totino's commercials
• One of two Weekend Update guests who claim to be "best friends" with various world dictators, and gossip about petty drama in their social circle (with Fred Armisen)