Among my favorite current Saturday Night Live players is Abby Elliott. Though she’s been on the sketch comedy series for a few years now, her career hasn’t quite launched to mega-stardom status just yet, but that may only be a matter of time. In fact, she may be headed to primetime television, which could mean an end for her days on SNL.
Deadline reports that Elliott has been cast in the lead of a Fox comedy pilot by Dana Fox called Ben Fox is my Manny. Elliott will play a single mother in the single-camera comedy. Her “aimless brother” moves in to help her raise her daughter, played by Maggie Jones.
As for where this pilot puts Elliott’s status on SNL, if Ben Fox gets picked up to series, she’ll be leaving the NBC sketch comedy series to head on over to Fox for primetime. And if Fox ends up passing on Ben Fox, she’ll be returning to SNL. So the bright side is, we’ll be seeing her on TV one way or another.
My only concern with this, as a fan of her work on SNL, is the timing. While SNL has certainly given her some major exposure, she still seems sort of sidelined on the series, at least by comparison to some of the other stars presently appearing on SNL. She’s one of the current regulars on the show that I’ve been hoping to see featured more, front and center in sketches. She seems close to that, but not quite there yet, as she appears in numerous sketches but is often in the background or playing a less prominent role. Then again, maybe Ben Fox will be a hit and the series will fast-track her to stardom. We’ll have to see how things turn out for the pilot.
Here’s a sample of Elliott’s celebrity impersonations, when she joined Anna Faris on stage during the star’s opening monologue...
