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Rachel Dratch: Casting Agents See Me As a “Troll” or “Manly Lesbian”

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Rachel Dratch at the 2012 Writers Guild East Coast Awards in February.

When Rachel Dratch was replaced by Jane Krakowski on 30 Rock in 2006, many wondered why the former Saturday Night Live standout had been let go.

The comic and single mother, 46, addresses that in her new memoir, Girl Walks Into a Bar (as excerpted by Slate). "The internet, magazines and news stories all gingerly speculated that I had been replaced by a more attractive actor and that this was the only reason I had been replaced," she writes. "Well, the newspapers and magazines did so gingerly. There is nothing 'gingerly' about the internet."

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Though series star and co-creator Tina Fey found several other characters for Dratch to play, she was eventually phased out of the show; Dratch doesn't blame Fey, 41, for her firing, and the two are still friends.

According to Dratch, "by Hollywood standards" she is seen as "a troll, ogre, woodland creature or manly lesbian. . . Trolls, ogres, and woodland creatures can be done with CGI, so that leaves yours truly to play the bull dykes."

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The  self-deprecating star elaborated: "I am offered solely the parts that I like to refer to as The Unf-ckables. In reality, if you saw me walking down the street, you wouldn't point at me and recoil and throw up and hide behind a shrub."

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The Massachusetts native — who welcomed son Eli Benjamin in August 2010 — will hopefully return to the small screen next fall; she recently filmed an NBC pilot called Lady Friends with Minnie Driver. "It's written by Kari Lizer who wrote The New Adventures of Old Christine," Dratch told her good friend Amy Poehler in a Daily Beast interview. "I think it's really funny, so we'll see."

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