Stephnie Weir

Weir was born in Odessa, Texas, and grew up in a working-class West Texas family. Her father worked as a truck driver while also owning a used car lot and a salvage yard. She graduated from Odessa High School in 1986 and initially attended Odessa College studying theatre and broadcasting before transferring to Southern Illinois University Edwardsville, where she earned degrees in anthropology and women's studies.

After a theatre professor recommended she move to Chicago, Weir relocated to the city and began training at The Second City and the ImprovOlympic (now iO) under Del Close and Charna Halpern. She quickly distinguished herself through strong character work and was hired as a writer and performer on the Second City Mainstage, where she appeared in productions including Promise Keepers, Losers Weepers (1998, directed by Jeff Richmond, also featuring Rachel Dratch), Psychopath Not Taken, and Second City 4.0, the company's 40th anniversary show directed by Mick Napier with a cast that included Kevin Dorff, Tami Sagher, Susan Messing, and Rich Talarico. She won the Chicago Improv Festival Award for Female Improviser of the Year in 2002.

In 2000 Weir joined the cast of Fox's sketch comedy series MADtv as a featured performer, advancing to repertory status the following season. She appeared in approximately 124 episodes across Seasons 6 through 10, writing most of her own sketches and earning two Writers Guild of America Award nominations. Her best-known impressions included Anna Nicole Smith and Reba McEntire, and her original recurring characters included the deadpan Southern belle Dot Goddard, Dr. Kylie Johnson, and Dorothy Lanier. She met actor and comedian Robert Dassie at The Second City, and they married in 2001 and formed the improvisational comedy duo WeirDass, performing in New York, Chicago, and at the Edinburgh Festival.

After MADtv, Weir starred in the ABC comedy Big Day (2006 to 2007), played a lead role in the FX mockumentary The Comedians (2015) alongside Billy Crystal and Josh Gad, and appeared in Happy Together on CBS (2018 to 2019). She served as consulting producer on Raising Hope and The Millers and has made guest appearances on Veep, Crazy Ex-Girlfriend, The Goldbergs, and Night Court. Her film credits include Fun with Dick and Jane (2005) and Godmothered (2020). She also headlined the solo show The West Texas Weirs. Weir's transition from iO and Second City into the MADtv ensemble placed her in one of the few American sketch television environments outside Saturday Night Live with a sustained national audience. Her six seasons on the show (1999 to 2005) encompassed recurring characters and original sketches that drew on the character-based scene work she had developed in Chicago's long-form training culture. Her subsequent screen and stage career has included work in scripted television and live performance, maintaining the character specificity that distinguishes performers formed in the Chicago long-form tradition from those trained primarily in short-form or sketch comedy.