Heather McDonald
Heather McDonald is an actor, born 1970.
The screen credits are the least of it. McDonald, born in the San Fernando Valley in 1970, works primarily as a stand-up and a writer: she was one of eight writers on the E! series Chelsea Lately as well as a regular in its sketches and segments, and she wrote for and appeared in the spin-off After Lately. Neither show is among the credits listed here, which leaves this page displaying the side work rather than the main job.
That side work has a consistent comic type: the pushy, over-confident suburban woman, delivered with no apology and no wink. She is the saleswoman in White Chicks (2004), Beverly Ann in Hurricane Bianca: From Russia with Hate (2018), Beef in Bill Nye Saves the World, and herself on Watching Ellie in 2002, which is where her television work begins in this list.
The durable part of the career is the talking. She hosts the pop-culture podcast Juicy Scoop, turns up on panel and chat formats such as Join or Die with Craig Ferguson, hosts stand-up showcases including Gotham Comedy Live, and gets called in as a talking head for reality-industry documentaries. Her 2010 memoir of her college years reached the New York Times bestseller list, which is the credential most of her screen appearances are trading on.
Movies (4)
TV (4)
Where to start with Heather McDonald
Gotham Comedy Live is the honest starting point, because hosting a stand-up showcase is closest to the job she actually does. The scripted credits will always undersell her.
For the comic persona in a scripted setting, White Chicks is the one everybody has seen, and her saleswoman is a clean thirty seconds of the type she plays. Hurricane Bianca: From Russia with Hate gives her much more room in a much smaller film, and Watching Ellie is the early curiosity, a sitcom where she appears under her own name.
Join or Die with Craig Ferguson is the format that suits her best: opinions at speed with no script to hide behind. The Randall Scandal: Love, Loathing, and Vanderpump is where the podcast side of her career shows up on screen, commenting on the reality-television world she covers weekly. Bill Nye Saves the World is the odd one out and the least essential.