Kay Cannon

Kay Cannon
Cannon in September 2009
Born	United States
Alma mater	Lewis University
Occupation	Writer, actress
Spouse(s)	Jason Sudeikis (m. 2004; div. 2010) Eben Russell (m. 2012); 1 child

Kay Cannon is an American film and television writer and actress who is best known for her work as a writer and producer for the NBC series 30 Rock, and writing the screenplay for the Pitch Perfect films. She is also a co-executive producer and writer on New Girl.

Kay Cannon, the fifth of seven siblings, was raised in Custer Park, Illinois and graduated from Reed-Custer High School. She received her BA in Theatre and MA in Education at Lewis University in Romeoville, Illinois.

Kay got her start at the comedic training grounds The Second City, ImprovOlympic and ComedySportz Chicago. While writing and performing around Chicago, she met Tina Fey, a fellow Second City alumna. When Fey began creating the NBC comedy 30 Rock, she sought out people to join the writing staff and turned to Cannon. While at 30 Rock Kay worked her way up from staff writer to supervising producer.

She has won the Writers Guild of America Award for Best Comedic Series for her work on 30 Rock three times, and also won a 2008 Peabody Award for her work on the show. In 2010, Cannon was nominated for an Emmy for Outstanding Writing in a Comedy Series. During this time, Cannon also worked as a co-producer on the feature film, Baby Mama.

She moved from New York City to LA when she signed an overall development deal with 20th Century Fox. Within that deal, she worked as a co-executive producer on New Girl and currently works as a consulting producer on Cristela. As part of her development, Cannon sold a workplace comedy The Wrecking Crew to FOX and wrote the pilot The Runt for CBS.