Rachel Dratch: Hollywood sees me as a troll
(CBS News) "Saturday Night Live" alum Rachel Dratch, best known for her role as "Debbie Downer" has had a few surprises - bad and good - in her life after 'SNL.'
One of those surprises is how she is perceived by Hollywood. In her new memoir, "Girl Walks into a Bar: Comedy Calamities, Dating Disasters, and a Midlife Miracle," Dratch writes, "If you saw me walking down the street, you wouldn't point at me and recoil, but by Hollywood's standards, I'm a troll, ogre, woodland creature, or manly lesbian."
Rachel Dratch's Greek Movie
Competing for laughs
On "CBS This Morning," Thursday, Dratch said she felt like she had to address the issue in the book.
"I don't think that about myself, but this is like what I was seen as in the whole Hollywood scene," Dratch said. "In real life, I'm gorgeous, beautiful."
Dratch said she wasn't offered many parts, and spent many days watching "Dr. Phil." But when she was called by her agent, she was often told she could play something akin to a 55-year-old obese lesbian.
"I was getting a lot of stuff like that," Dratch said. "And there's not a lot of call for that in Hollywood. There weren't a lot of those jobs coming. But, you know, after you're done with 'SNL' you think, movies, and then it was a little plateau there. So I was spending a lot of frittering away a lot of time, so that's when I decided to start writing. I didn't know it was going to be a book. I started writing these stories up. I didn't know where it was going."
In the midst of it all, the 44-year-old actress also had a baby, a major plot twist in her life and her book. The father of the child is someone she met in a bar.
Dratch said, "I was thinking I didn't want to have a child on my own so I was sort of letting go of the idea of having kids. 'It's official, I can't have children.' To quote Debbie Downer. So, I started letting go of the idea. But then...I kind of got surprised pregnant. So, it was sort of -- I don't know, a big unexpected life twist."
For more with Dratch, including what she's working on now, watch the video in the player above.