Amy Sedaris builds comic grotesques out of her whole body, then makes them sad without letting them know it. She is at her best in shows she has made herself and in a voice booth; mainstream films tend to give her a scene and a half.
Fi1m perspective
Princess Carolyn, the agent in BoJack Horseman (2014), is a pink cat, and for the first few episodes she is a running joke about the Hollywood agent who returns every call. Then you notice what Sedaris is doing with the voice: brisk, bright, slightly too fast, the sound of someone who has decided that if she stops talking she will have to think. We were more moved by that cat than we expected to be, and it was because Sedaris never asks for it. She plays a woman who has spent her adult life tidying up after a man and lets the tiredness show through the efficiency. We called it competence as a kind of grief, and we stand by that.
It is odd that her most considered work should be done sitting still, because Sedaris is, by her own account, not that sort of performer. "I feel like I’m more clownish. I’m physical. I’m more of a clown," she has said. She came up through Second City's touring company in Chicago in the late 1980s, moved to New York in 1993, and built her name on the sketch series Exit 57 (1995–96) and then Strangers with Candy (1999–2000), which she wrote with Paul Dinello and Stephen Colbert and in which she played Jerri Blank, a grown woman back at high school, with the whole body and no discernible conscience. The joke is the body first and the character second. She played Jerri again in a 2005 film that critics found either offensive or uneven, and sometimes both. At Home with Amy Sedaris (2017–2020), which she created and fronted, takes the same instinct into a parody of the domestic hosting programme, crafts and hospitality and sketches. It has a devoted following and it has been called too cult-specific to travel, and both things are true.
Mainstream film has not known what to do with her. Deb in Elf (2003) is the part most people know, a supporting turn in a hit that lets her be odd for a scene at a time. Peli Motto in The Mandalorian (2019–2023) is the same arrangement, a recurring eccentric in a franchise that brought her a wider audience. Molly Gordon and Nick Lieberman's 2023 mockumentary about a children's drama camp casts her as Joan Rubinsky, then writes her out before she has said much and is poorer for it. In Is This Thing On? (2025), Bradley Cooper's third film as director, she and Sean Hayes are on hand for noise. None of these are bad. None of them gives her room.
The pattern is plain enough. Give Sedaris the whole show, or a booth and six seasons, and she will find the person under the grotesque. Give her a scene and a half and she will do a funny voice and go home. If you know her only as the woman in Elf, start with Princess Carolyn, and stay past the first six episodes.
Biography
Amy Sedaris is an American actress, comedian and writer. She was born on 29 March 1961 in Endicott, New York.
Sedaris created and starred as Jerri Blank in the Comedy Central series Strangers with Candy (1999–2000) and its 2005 film prequel, which she also wrote. She later created and starred in the TruTV series At Home with Amy Sedaris (2017–2020), receiving two Primetime Emmy Award nominations for Outstanding Variety Sketch Series. Her film roles include Mrs Haynish in The School of Rock (2003), Deb in Elf (2003) and Joan Rubinsky in Theater Camp (2023). She voiced Peli Motto in The Mandalorian (2019–2023) and appeared as Kemp in Is This Thing On? (2025). She is the sister of writer David Sedaris.
