Nancy Guppy is an American comedian and television personality from

Seattle Seattle ( ) is a seaport city on the West Coast of the United States. It is the seat of King County, Washington. With a 2020 population of 737,015, it is the largest city in both the state of Washington and the Pacific Northwest regio ...

, Washington, U.S. She is perhaps best known from her time as a writer and cast member of KING-TV's Seattle-centric

sketch comedy Sketch comedy comprises a series of short, amusing scenes or vignettes, called "sketches", commonly between one and ten minutes long, performed by a group of comic actors or comedians. The form developed and became popular in vaudeville, and is ...

program ''

Almost Live! ''Almost Live!'' was a local sketch comedy television show in Seattle, Washington, USA, produced and broadcast by NBC affiliate KING-TV from 1984 to 1999. A re-packaged version of the show also aired on Comedy Central from 1992 to 1993, and epis ...

'', which ran for 15 years (1984-1999).Almost Live Reunion
KING-TV
Archived 2007-12-23
on

Internet Archive The Internet Archive is an American digital library with the stated mission of "universal access to all knowledge". It provides free public access to collections of digitized materials, including websites, software applications/games, music, ...

, accessed 2015-09-19.Tom Phalen
'Almost Live' To Totally Live -- TV's Nancy Guppy Switches To The Stage To Look At Some Of Life's Crazier Moments
''Seattle Times'', April 18, 1996. Accessed online 2015-09-19. Guppy grew up in Seattle's Magnolia neighborhood, graduated from Queen Anne High School and in 1982 from the

University of Washington The University of Washington (UW, simply Washington, or informally U-Dub) is a public research university in Seattle, Washington. Founded in 1861, Washington is one of the oldest universities on the West Coast; it was established in Seattle a ...

(as a speech and communications major). After three years in the Customer Service Credit Department of

Nordstrom Nordstrom, Inc. () is an American luxury department store chain headquartered in Seattle, Washington, and founded by John W. Nordstrom and Carl F. Wallin in 1901. The original Wallin & Nordstrom store operated exclusively as a shoe store, and ...

, she became a secretary in the

Cornish College of the Arts Cornish College of the Arts (CCA) is a private art college in Seattle, Washington. It was founded in 1914. History Cornish College of the Arts was founded in 1914 as the Cornish School of Music, by Nellie Cornish (1876–1956), a teacher of pi ...

drama department. She began playing small parts on ''Almost Live!'', where her then-boyfriend (and later husband) Joe Guppy was a regular cast member, and soon evolved into a writer for the show. In 1989 the couple moved to Los Angeles because her husband was hired by

HBO Home Box Office (HBO) is an American premium television network, which is the flagship property of namesake parent subsidiary Home Box Office, Inc., itself a unit owned by Warner Bros. Discovery. The overall Home Box Office business unit is ba ...

for ''

Not Necessarily the News ''Not Necessarily the News'' (shortened as ''NNTN'') is an American satirical sketch comedy series that first aired on HBO in September 1982 as a comedy special, and then ran as a series from 1983 to 1990. For most of the run, the series featured ...

'' which, however, was close to the end of its run. The two then wrote together on a free-lance basis, returning in 1992 to Seattle and ''Almost Live''. In 1996 she wrote and produced a 32-skit, seven-character stage piece, ''Cheaper Than Therapy'', which was presented that year at Seattle's Market Theater. Since that time, Guppy has been creator/host/producer of a series of programs focusing on Pacific Northwest arts and culture, first ''City a Go Go'' on the Seattle Channel and

KCTS-TV KCTS-TV (channel 9) is a PBS member television station in Seattle, Washington, United States, owned by Cascade Public Media. Its studios are located at the northeast corner of Seattle Center adjacent to the Space Needle, and its transmitter is ...

, and as of 2015, ''Art Zone with Nancy Guppy'', a weekly television program on the Seattle Channel.''Art Zone with Nancy Guppy'' homepage on SeattleChannel.org
/ref> In 2015 she produced an art exhibit ''Musician: a Portrait Project'' at Seattle's newly restored Union Stables, featuring portraits by Ernie Sapiro of 172 prominent figures from the Seattle music scene.Musician: a Portrait Project captures 50 years of music in the Pacific Northwest
KING-TV, 2015-08-24. Accessed online 2015-09-19.

References

Living people Writers from Seattle 21st-century American comedians Year of birth missing (living people) {{US-comedian-stub