Melanie Hutsell was born in Maryville, Tennessee, right at the foothills of the Smokey Mountains near Dollywood. She was shy as a little girl, but would slowly come out of her shell as the years went by. When Melanie was asked by her Freshman English teacher to perform a soliloquy from "Romeo and Juliet", she was absolutely terrified, but after class, her teacher told her she should start auditioning for plays. Her favorite role was "The Wicked Witch of the West". From there, she went on to to The University of Tennessee and studied drama for 2 years. One day, she happened upon a book about "The Second City" and knew that this was describing exactly what she wanted to do. Against her parents wishes, she moved to Chicago, studied at Second City and met one of the best Improv teachers in the business, Mr. Mick Napier. At the request of Mick himself, Melanie became one of the co-founding members of "The Annoyance Theatre", which is still thriving today. It was her performances in both "The Real Live Brady Bunch" and "The Miss Vagina Pageant" that would get SNL talent scout, Marci Klein, and, ultimately, Lorne Michaels's attention, landing her an audition for Saturday Night Live (1975). At age 23, Melanie was hired on SNL from 1991-1994 where she played, "Jan Brady", a lovable yet completely deranged Tri-delta sorority girl, alongside Siobhan Fallon Hogan and Beth Cahill and later, Tori Spelling, Monica Seles and Tonya Harding. From there, Melanie moved out to L.A. to continue pursuing acting and quickly fell in love and married Fred Rapoport. Fred is a wonderful composer and owns his own company called "Static Music". They have two awesome kids, Carly and Leo. Melanie's most recent impersonation is "Queen of Southern Cooking", Miss Paula Deen. Melanie had the pleasure of surprising Miss Paula herself with the impersonation on Kiddin' Around (2009) in 2009. It was a total blast and Paula was a great sport. In addition to acting, Melanie is also pursuing screen-writing, as well. But her first love is acting and has, most recently, done roles in, United States of Tara (2009), Bridesmaids (2011) and a new sitcom on CMT called Working Class (2011), alongside Melissa Peterman. Melanie also wrote, produced and acted in a short film called "Harold and Hilda Jo", that will be coming out in 2011. While there is no question that Melanie has a deep passion for acting, one of her biggest heartaches is missing her family in Tennessee. She gets back home as often as she can and her southern roots continue to be a big part of her identity.
