Marissa Jaret Winokur
Marissa Jaret Winokur is an actor, born 1973.
Her defining work is not on this page and cannot be, because it happened on a stage. Winokur played Tracy Turnblad in the Broadway musical Hairspray, adapted from John Waters's film, and won a Tony for it. Everything else in the credit list sits in the shadow of that performance.
The screen record around it is a working actor's record. She is the counter girl at Mr Smiley's in American Beauty, Sheila in Never Been Kissed, a victim in the garage in Scary Movie: small parts in famous films, made in the years just before Broadway changed her billing. Television gave her more, including Katrina on the Pamela Anderson sitcom Stacked and guest work across Curb Your Enthusiasm, Moesha, The Steve Harvey Show, Just Shoot Me!, Felicity and Dharma and Greg.
There is a quietly brutal detail in the filmography. When Hairspray was staged live for television in 2016, she appeared in it as a Pinkette, a small ensemble part in the show she had once carried. Since then the work has been a mix of character bits and personality television: a stint on the panel of The Talk, a season inside the Celebrity Big Brother house, and comic turns on What We Do in the Shadows, Bupkis and Clone High. It is an honest career shape, and she has never pretended otherwise.
Movies (10)
TV (15)
- What We Do in the Shadows (2019)
- Celebrity Ghost Stories (2009)
- The Talk (2010)
- Dharma & Greg (1997)
- Clone High (2023)
- Jack & Bobby (2004)
- Yo Gabba Gabba! (2007)
- Playing House (2014)
- Crashing (2017)
- Bupkis (2023)
- Celebrity Big Brother (2018)
- Stacked (2005)
- Guys with Kids (2012)
- Perfect Harmony (2019)
- The Ellen Show (2001)
Where to start with Marissa Jaret Winokur
Her sharpest screen minutes are tiny ones. American Beauty and Never Been Kissed both use her for a single scene apiece and both scenes land, which tells you more about timing than a lead role would.
Stacked is the closest thing here to a proper television showcase, and What We Do in the Shadows is the funniest recent guest turn, playing exactly the sort of aggressively normal suburban woman that show eats alive. Bupkis is the most current.
Then there is Hairspray Live!, which is worth watching purely for the strangeness of seeing the original Tracy Turnblad standing in the chorus of her own show. And Scary Movie if you want the pre-Broadway grind, though nobody needs to.
The nineties film bits
Single scenes in films most people have seen, which is a specific skill: turn up, land the laugh, leave. Never Been Kissed and Scary Movie are the two that still get quoted at her twenty-five years later.
The modern comedy
The recent work is the best of it. What We Do in the Shadows hands her a register the show does not give many guests, and Bupkis and Playing House both use her as the person who says the unsayable thing.
The sitcoms and the television career
Stacked was the closest she came to a regular sitcom lead, and The Talk turned her into a daytime presence for a while. Hairspray Live is the reunion with the role she won a Tony for, from the other side of the stage.