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Elizabeth Miervaldis "Liz" Lemon is the
of the American
. She created and writes for the fictional comedy-sketch show The Girlie Show or TGS with Tracy Jordan.
She is portrayed by , who is also the creator of the series and its . Fey has received a , two , four , and a
for her performance.
Liz Lemon was born on October 14, 1970. Raised in the town of , , Liz is the daughter and second child to
and . Liz's parents are outwardly very optimistic and supportive of her, but privately they actually dislike many of their daughter's attributes and life decisions, as revealed during the climax of "". On Saturday, December 6, 1985, she made her one appearance as a varsity football player, having forced her high school to lift gender segregation. Though her parents displayed a supportive demeanor, they were too embarrassed to attend her game despite claiming to have been present. Liz's elder brother, Mitch, was the victim of a
accident the following day, when he was a
senior. Afterwards, he experienced , remaining "stuck" in the day before the accident, thinking for the next 22 years that he was still 17 and that the year was still 1985. In the episode "," her mother is said to have worked as a secretary at
and to have "repeatedly lost [her] virginity" to
while the town pervert watched from the bushes.
finale, "", it is revealed that Liz attended
, co-starring with her as one of a pair of
in a 5th grade musical (although in reality, Crow grew up in , and is eight years older than Liz/Tina). While Liz believes that the two were great friends, Crow only vaguely remembers her, and refers to Liz as a "loser".
She first saw Jack Donaghy and Tracy Jordan, and spoke with Jack telephonically, in 1986 while watching a live telethon alone in her parents' basement on prom night. Immediately after church choir member Tracy fell and realized his talent for getting laughs as a performer, Liz placed a prank call to the pledge line which was answered by Jack, then a young executive from GE's poisons division. Liz claimed to have been a nurse in the war, who was impregnated by General Electric when he was Colonel Electric. Jack's loyalty to GE and his handsomeness impressed Don Geiss, who transferred Jack to the microwave ovens division.
Liz was inspired to become a
by Rosemary Howard, the first female head writer of . She mentioned that she used to teach
to . In , Liz believed that she was an unpopular "" that all of her classmates picked on, only to learn two decades later at her 20-year high school reunion that she was, in fact, the universally disliked class bully. She attended the
on a partial competitive
scholarship, studying
and for which she still has an outstanding . She spent her junior year abroad in , , and speaks passable , which is, in her opinion, "the most beautiful language in the world". She struggles somewhat with the language in "", mixing up the
"to sell" and "to buy" (verkaufen and kaufen), and having difficulty understanding a group of German TV executives. In "", she sings "". Liz also has a longtime goal of learning , at which she eventually makes some progress during a period of community service in "."
In the episodes "" and "", Liz states that she did not lose her
until she was 25 (this would be in 1995 or 1996).
in 1993, when Jenna was studying voice at . By Liz's own words, Jenna was "slutting it up" to get
owners to put her in their . The two shared an apartment in a
neighborhood called "Little ", and together they dreamed of "making it big". While in Chicago, Liz reportedly tried to be an actress, but the only job she was able to book was a
commercial. Liz and Jenna began The Girlie Show at . They worked for years to turn The Girlie Show into a television series, which
picked up (though only to quell the outrage of
show Bitch Hunter), resulting in the pair moving to
for it. Liz became the head writer for The Girlie Show, while Jenna became the show's main star.
In , it is announced that Liz's former boss Gary has died and
takes his place. Neither Jack nor Liz recognizes the other from their brief conversation twenty years earlier. Jack immediately decides to retool the show to make it appeal to a larger demographic, starting by firing Liz's trusted producer
in order to make room in the budget to hire unpredictable actor
as the show's new star. Liz manages to convince Jack to re-hire Pete, but Jack is insistent on making the show center around Tracy and, much to her chagrin, he renames the show TGS with Tracy Jordan.
Since 2005, Liz has lived in an apartment at 160
(which changes to 168 Riverside Dr the building is fictional, but the address corresponds to the block between 88th and 89th Streets); her apartment number is 3B. When the building is converted to condominiums, Liz purchases both 3B and 4B with her earnings from Dealbreakers, with the encouragement of both Jack and Jenna. ("")
Liz has also evidently won at least one . In addition to her responsibilities behind the camera, Liz occasionally acts in TGS sketches.
Throughout the seasons, several people have questioned Liz's gender. She always replies that she is really a girl and "that doctor was a quack." She serves as best man at the weddings of both her former sex partner
and her mentor
(accidentally marrying him in the process). When
tells Jack she thinks Liz looks like , Jack initially assumes she means . She also once demonstrates that she is easily able to grow a
(which she calls "Tom," in reference to the famous Mr. Selleck) in less than 48 hours.
In the final episode, as a nod to ’s finale, "" (complete with a replica of the series' namesake building in a snow-globe stared at by a mentally challenged male), Liz's life serves as the inspiration for a sitcom that is pitched by her great-granddaughter 100 years in the future. The series is green-lighted by immortal NBC president Kenneth Parcell ("") -- even though the series includes every one of the banned features on the list which Kenneth gave to Liz when beginning his tenure in "".
After a mere glance at her in the pilot, Jack sums up Liz as a " , -educated, single-and-pretending-to-be-happy-about-it, over-scheduled, undersexed, you buy any
that says 'healthy ' on the cover and every two years you take up
for...a week". This is confirmed by Pete to be accurate, commenting that the "knitting" part, in particular, was uncanny.
Liz is generally portrayed as something of a "". So, while she is an apparently skilled writer, she seems to have very few
(in "", Jack describes her as "socially retarded"). For example, while she was trying to pick up men at a
bar, a man asked her if the seat next to her was taken, leading her to ask him why she should have to move her coat just so he could sit there. Liz is often shown to be generally insecure and holds a strong concern for how she is perceived by others. Liz is sometimes dismissive of others, a personality flaw that can be connected to her lack of social skills.
Liz has a rather satirical sense of humor. She has frequently been shown to be a stress eater, a trait she shares with Jack. Despite the fact that she often ingests high-amounts of
on a daily basis, she seems to keep her weight under control, perhaps because she does not seem to have proper meals. According to Fey, t "she just likes to eat". Liz does have some knowledge of , though she admits to only using her
to warm her
in the morning. She is
and , as well as "anything warm and adorable". However, she does believe her allergy to dogs is , as she mentions that a dog bit her during the time of her first .
Like Fey, Liz is a big fan of the
, often using events from the
to explain her feelings and actions in daily life. For example, in the episode "", she compares Jack to the
, and contemplates that entering his office is like "stepping onto the ". In "The Source Awards", Liz mentions that for the four past
in a row, she has dressed up as . She has also dressed as the character during
in order to be disqualified from serving. Liz considers
to be the worst film of the series.
proved his love for her when responding to her "I love you", with "I know", quoting 's response to Leia in . Facing the improbability that she will ever have a daughter, Liz offers the child-sized Leia costume which she had bought sometime in the past, to Jack for his daughter Liddy. Eventually, in "", Liz gets married wearing a Princess Leia dress with which she had replaced her earlier, highly flammable costume after inadvertently setting it alight in "". She imitates
in response to Jack's lamentations in ""
Tina Fey in character as Liz Lemon, filming an episode of 30 Rock.
She is also a fan of the
, in which her favorite character is , , , ,, , , and . Her favorite drink is
with ice cubes and , a blend she calls "Funky Juice". She is obsessed with men in green tights. As of "Cleveland", her
is "", which she and Jenna consider a reference to . Her
for "", is "" by .
In the episode "", Liz reveals that the three things she likes in the world are , "sweater weather", and when
present at awards shows. Over the course of the series she has shown an aversion to exposing her feet under any circumstances, except when she mistakenly believed that Oprah Winfrey counted high-heeled flip-flops among her new "favorite things". She usually prefers sex to be either non-existent, fast or "only on Saturdays".
Liz appears to be a
fan. In "", it is mentioned that at nine years old, she sported a
inspired haircut and had posters of
in her bedroom. These three players were active with the Phillies during this period. It is also noted that she uses a "Phillies Sport Wallet" in "". In the season 6 finale "" Liz tells Jack that in payment for officiating at his and Avery's renewal of vows, "I get your Yankees tickets on A-Rod bobble head day. And I'm going to throw that thing in front of a train. Go Phillies!"
By "", Liz has learned the meanings of
through watching
(due to her losing the
to her , thus being unable to change the
channel it was on). Because of her newfound talent, she dubs herself "The MentaLiz". She is unaware at that time that The Mentalist’s original Dutch version, Van der Hoot: Psychische (De Mentalist), was based upon Liz's subordinate 's former career as a police psychic.
In contrast with her friend and
Jenna, Liz seems to have little interest in
female interests, such as . In "", her "" shoes led Jack to erroneously believe she was , and set her up on a blind date with his friend Gretchen Thomas, the "brilliant plastics engineer/". Except when she is pressured to dress more , Liz typically appears in casual, gender-neutral attire. In earlier episodes, she almost always wore plastic-rimmed , though she started to wear them less frequently over the course of the series. Flashbacks reveal that she has worn glasses since she was around four or five years of age. However, according to Jenna in "", she does not actually need glasses. (Tina Fey also does not need glasses, except to .)
Some of Liz's social problems stem from past slapstick events that left her with long-suppressed traumas and phobias. For instance, in "", Liz reveals to Jack that she once ended up falling while wearing roller skates and with her
around her ankles, while covered by a
poster (all while she was trying to find a bathroom to use in her house). When Jack learns she also freaked out when hearing a snippet of music in , she realizes that anything that reminds her of Tom Jones triggers her revulsion to sex. She was also unable to eat
for a long time, and Kenneth's impromptu therapy helped her understand why: her aunt's husband left her, causing the aunt to feed a pre-teen Liz unappetizing egg-based dishes while making bizarre requests for company.
James Poniewozik of
had this to say about an
type situation involving a former classmate in the episode "": "[T]his story is about more than that. It’s about nerdy, neurotic Liz recognizing that she is, after all, a legitimate object of desire—a successful, smart woman who looks like Tina Fey—and embracing it rather than being freaked out by it."
Liz also has a tendency to say "bl?rg!" (the name of her home office furniture from ), "nerds", "what the what?", "nertz", "nerf herder" (quoting
in ), "whuck?" and "son of a mother" as replacem she has also notably used the phrases "shut it down", "I want to go to there", "deal-breaker", "pwomp", and "by the hammer of !".
As demonstrated over the course of her appearances, Liz seems to have
political opinions. For instance, she stated that she believes " dudes should be allowed to
and we should all have ". She is frequently portrayed as supporting . However, she said that there was an "eighty percent chance" that she would end up secretly voting for
in the , a reference to Fey's friendship with former SNL host McCain, as well as her
She is shown to be somewhat burdened with "," which Tracy uses to manipulate her in the episode "". She later says that her affliction "is to be used only for good, like over-tipping and supporting Barack Obama". She is often very concerned abou for example, an
man (played by ) she was dating played the "" when she no longer wished to see him after realizing that they were not a good match.
When questioned what
she was, she replied that "I pretty much do whatever
tells me to". She mentions that she previously tried to get her (former) boyfriend Floyd to try out a
church with her, but he was not interested. In "", Liz compiles a "Pros vs. Cons" list for Dennis, in which his
religion is listed as a negative. When Jack begins referring to her and TGS’s humor as "elitist, East Coast, alternative, intellectual, left wing-..." Liz cuts him off, telling him, "Just say 'Jewish'; this is taking forever."
When Liz and Jack first meet, and for several seasons thereafter, neither realised that they had spoken to each other telephonically twenty years before.
In the beginning of the series, Liz and Jack had an
relationship. As the series progressed, however, this original dislike disappeared, and they are now close friends, with Jack at one point going so far as to tell her, "Lemon, I honestly don't know what I'd do without you". In spite of this, they still occasionally tease each other.
In , Liz declared that she and Jack "are friends", and seems to be welcome in Jack's office at any time. The two joke often about their various personal and work-related problems, and increasingly offer each other advice. Jack has even surpassed Pete as Liz's most trusted confidant. This relationship culminated when Jack, after being told he was to be the next Chairman of , named Liz as his
and successor. In essence, Liz and Jack have developed into each other's best sounding boards. For example, when Liz believed herself to be pregnant, her first reaction was to go to Jack's office (then occupied by the daughter of G.E.'s CEO) and, when ultimately she was unable to speak with him face to face, she left multiple messages on his phone. When Jack heavily embarrassed himself at a business retreat, Liz took the attention away from him by doing
and eventually, danced and took off her top. Jack was clearly moved and appreciative of her actions. She has done similar things multiple times, sacrificing her dignity for Jack's overall public appearance, as evidenced when she kissed Jack's business rival Devon Banks on
so she could
him. Jack responded to this by saying "Well played". Another example is in the episode "", when she stalled for him in front of a , expanding her small reading to involve a
and random readings from the . Liz has a pregnancy scare in "Cooter", and leaves a series of messages on Jack's voicemail as she goes through a series of emotions. The pregnancy test turns out to be a false reading, and Jack flies from
to New York, showing up at her door to comfort her. When Liz struggled with intimacy issues, Jack talked her through them and helped her get to the root of the problem. When she wanted to give up on herself and break up with Carol Burnett, Jack didn't allow her to, telling her "You deserve a guy like Carol and he deserves you because, I'll only say this once a decade: you're great".
Despite their close friendship, Jack rarely addresses her as "Liz", generally preferring to call her by her surname. In the Season 5 episode "", the
at Jack and Avery Jessup's
accidentally
Jack to Liz. Although they remain platonic, Liz and Jack are required to go to
and realize the impact they have had on each other's lives in the past 5 years. In honor of his friendship with Liz and everything she has done for him, Jack gave his first-born daughter the name "Elizabeth", albeit using the nickname "Liddy" vice "Liz" in order to honor ,
and Jack's martial arts instructor Lih De.
Tina Fey has said that Liz' relationship with Jack is "somewhere between
and ." Fey previously stated that there would not be a romantic relationship between the two, as it would be "too icky." More recently, however, she admitted there is sexual tension between Jack and Liz. Jack passes Liz off as his girlfriend to make ex-wife Bianca jealous and Bianca tells Liz in one scene that "I can tell from the way he [Jack] looks at you that he's serious". Colleen Donaghy, Jack's mother, thinks that Liz is a perfect match for Jack. In "", Jack and Liz attempt to win over temporary head of GE, Kathy Geiss by pretending to have a -style real life relationship, escalating to the point where Geiss wants the two to kiss each other (her shouting "KISS!" marks the only time Kathy Geiss has spoken in the entire series); there is a pause, but Jack and Liz refuse.
Liz and Jenna have known each other since 1993, when they met at an audition for a car dealership commercial in , although there are many other versions of how they met (At a bachelor party, at a play Jenna was in). Liz stated in the pilot that she and Jenna worked for years to get The Girlie Show, having formerly been roommates in a Chicago neighborhood called "Little Armenia" around 1996. Given Jenna's insecure nature, Liz is generally forced to act as her rock. This has caused Liz some annoyance, especially after Jack increased Jenna's stress level and paranoia by hiring Tracy Jordan and changing the show's name from The Girlie Show to .
Liz has been seen complaining about Jenna's erratic tendencies behind her back, usually with Pete. Jenna once got mad at Liz when she overheard Liz describe her to Tracy as being "paranoid" and "neurotic." Jenna once
Liz's brother Mitch and said he was disgusting in bed. Liz explains this by saying that Mitch has not been right since he was in some kind of
accident, because of which he thinks it's still 1985 and he's still a teenager. Nonetheless, Jenna attempts to seduce Mitch once more in the episode "Ludachristmas."
Although Liz is happy to be TGS? 's head writer, she envies Jenna achieving the performing career they both hoped for when working at Second City. Liz confesses to Jenna, "there's still this sad little part of me that wants to be the center of attention ... that wants to be you, I guess". Liz gets the chance to be on camera as host of Dealbreakers, but the
is a failure. Despite their frustrations and occasional rivalries, however, the show often reveals that the two women appreciate their friendship and do their best to be supportive of the other's careers. When the phrase "That's a deal breaker, ladies" is coined by Jenna thanks to Liz's writing, Jenna surrenders the spotlight with a surprisingly short sulking period. She later encourages Liz to write a book and take on a talk show gig based on the catch phrase (though the talk show is very short-lived).
Liz and Pete have known each other since about 1996 and he's possibly the closest thing Liz has to a confidant besides Jack, especially since Jenna, her closest female friend, is far too anxious about her own life to function as such. Pete lived in Liz's apartment for an extended period while separated from his wife.
Liz has not really tried to pursue a relationship of any kind with Tracy, preferring to focus her energies on keeping his craziness in check. She is typically friendly towards him, though mainly to further this end. While Liz will refer to him as either "Tracy" or "Tray", Tracy will most often refer to Liz by her full name "Liz Lemon", "LL", or, less often, just "Lemon".
He often challenges her authority, but always ends up losing out when he does. In "", he cracks under the stress of doing the hard production work that Liz does every week, and in "", when Liz allowed him to make a
about her life as penance for her "Dealbreakers" book messing up Tracy's relationship with his wife, Angie, he was so disgusted that he stopped watching it halfway through. In the series finale she tearfully admits that she will miss him when TGS is over.
Further information:
Many episodes of the show have dealt with Lemon's ongoing search for love. According to Pete, Liz has had some "really terrible boyfriends" in the ten years that he's known her. It is implied that she once dated , first when she identifies the "tall, gangly red-haired guy who played guitar all the time" whom she dated as Conan in ""; there seems to be romantic tension between them during a brief encounter. During an in-flight nap induced by a drug which may cause "sexual nightmares," Liz growls something that arguably sounds very much like, "No, Conan, no!" ("Believe In the Stars"). It has become apparent that Lemon has very high standards in men, personified in her imaginary perfect husband, "Astronaut Mike Dexter". She appears to take a somewhat more realistic view her dream man after learning of her mother's premarital relationship with then-future astronaut
and subsequently conversing with Aldrin. She shares "sexual history" with Grizz who alone addresses her as "Beth", and they are seen passionately kissing in the footage from Kenneth's party in "". In season 4, Liz uncharacteristically instigates a one-night stand with James Franco and his Japanese body pillow, Kimiko. At one point in season 5, in the episode "", Liz decides to give up on love and embrace
by adopting a cat she calls , attending book clubs and wearing a
and baggy sweaters.
Liz has also had several multi-episode onscreen romances. A recurring gag is Liz having relationships with men who share the names of celebrities or fictional characters, including
(a Caucasian Englishman), commercial airline pilot Captain
(though his surname is pronounced "Burn-it"), Floyd DeBarbour (i.e., ), Dr. Drew Baird (i.e., ), and . She also "takes her reward" for a time with new subordinate
(assuming Jack is in this case a diminutive of John or Jon, he shares his name with
character Jon Baker, portrayed by Liz's childhood crush, ); he was even dressed as Wilcox during one of their assignations. Other boyfriends include Dennis Duffy.
In her longest onscreen relationship, Liz dates Criss Chros (), a down-to-earth hot dog vendor named after a '90s teen rap duo. Their relationship began sometime before season 6 and continued past the 6th season finale, in which she and Criss finally decide to try to have a baby together. In the 7th and final season, after weeks of unsuccessful attempts at conception, believing it will increase their adoption chances, they get married at city hall.
Lemon was ranked #1 on Yahoo's Greatest 100 Television Characters since 1990. She appeared in 's list of TV's Most Intriguing Characters.
named her the 14th Most Memorable Female TV Character.
also included her in their list of the 20 Best Characters of 2011, ranking her No. 5. Lemon was also ranked No. 15 in 's Top 50 Favorite Female TV Characters.
Slate, discussing how the show covers politics and feminism, assessed Lemon's character as being drawn from other genres of comedy in unexpected ways: "the man-child is a venerable comic tradition, from The Jerk to Billy Madison to everything
does, and 30 Rock proves that an eternal 13-year-old tomboy—scared of sex, obsessed with Star Wars and meatball subs—can be just as funny as her male counterpart." In 2015,
named Lemon the greatest television character since
Like Fey, who was
(SNL) from 1999 to 2006, the character is head writer for a sketch comedy show. For this reason, Liz Lemon is widely seen by critics as a , which Fey herself has confirmed as being her intention. In a video interview conducted with Fey before the airing of the pilot, she stated that Liz is herself "five or six years ago when I first started at my job and had to figure out how to deal with big, strong personalities and get through the day, being sort-of scared of everyone... but acting like you're not scared of everyone."
Fey has reported incorporating some of her own quirks and history into the character, saying that she tries to "share as many of Liz's habits as possible so it feels truthful". Liz has been seen singing "Maybe" and Fey has noted that she also enjoys singing songs from . Both were once rejected by a man who later went to "clown college" which had a huge emotional impact on them.
The character also shares her
with Fey, whose full name is Elizabeth Stamatina Fey. However, Liz Lemon is only very rarely referred to as "Elizabeth" and the character's name is usually given as "Liz Lemon" in official contexts (example, the plaque on the door to her office). It is also worth noting that in Fey's original script for 30 Rock, Lemon's first name was "Lisa". The character's middle name, "," is a Latvian masculine name. Fey has said that, while Lemon's ethnic background is unknown, "Latvian seems to make sense.". She has also, more recently, been suggested to have German ancestry, and speaks at least a little of the language. The character's last name, "Lemon," is apparently intended to imply an acerbic personality and possibly also to make her full name alliterative. Fey has stated that she wanted Liz to have a good last name since she knew the character would often be called by it.
Among the child actors who portrayed Liz in flashbacks to her youth was Fey's own daughter, Alice Richmond, in "".
Liz uses her temporary formal name of Elizabeth Donaghy when announcing the The Jack and Elizabeth Donaghy High School for Teen Drama, The Arts, and Feelings in "".
Name as author of the Chinese counterfeit copies of her Dealbreakers book in ""
Jack Donaghy: "The American public doesn't want your elitist, east coast, alternative, intellectual, left-wing..." Liz: "Jack, just say Jewish, this is taking forever." from episode ""
"St. Valentine's Day". . Season 3. Episode 11. . .
"Jack Meets Dennis". . Season 1. Episode 6. . .
"Episode 209 (A.K.A. Ludachristmas)". . Season 2. Episode 9. . .
"Rosemary's Baby". . Season 2. Episode 4. . .
"Lee Marvin vs. Derek Jeter". . Season 4. Episode 17. . .
"The Rural Juror". . Season 1. Episode 10. . .
"Jackie Jormp-Jomp". . Season 3. Episode 18. . .
"The Breakup". . Season 1. Episode 8. . .
"" (in which her title is "woman of honor" versus "best man")
Booth, William (). . .
Poniewozik, James (). . .
"Hard Ball". . Season 1. Episode 15. . .
"Black Tie". . Season 1. Episode 12. . .
"Hiatus". . Season 1. Episode 21. . .
"Do-Over". . Season 3. Episode 1. . .
"Apollo, Apollo". . Season 3. Episode 16. . .
"Secrets & Lies". . Season 2. Episode 8. . .
"The Aftermath". . Season 1. Episode 2. . .
"Ludachristmas". . Season 2. Episode 9. . .
"Tracy Does Conan". . Season 1. Episode 7. . .
"Seinfeld Vision". . Season 2. Episode 1. . .
Whilst dancing at the post-show party with James Franco and his pillow, Kimiko, in "", Liz seduces him by suggesting, "Let's do this." She introduces the pair to her nephew the next morning.
Potts, Kim (March 2, 2011). . AOL TV 2012.
Jackson, Josh (December 5, 2011). .
. . February 27, .
Weiner, Jonah. . Slate.
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