If Rachel Dratch's performances on 30 Rock, in one-off guest spots playing celebrities and various oddballs, were too broad (a characterization I don't agree with at all) wouldn't that be the fault of the director and Tina Fey. It would be their responsibility to reign in any performer on the show, right? If an actor's performance is not what the director and producer want, then it's up to the director or producer to elicit a different performance.

As shown in the youtube clip I posted of Dratch playing Jenna in the original pilot, she was not broad and over-the-top. Dratch is an actress, who possesses the ability to modulate her performance. So whatever she was doing when she played Elizabeth Taylor or the cat wrangler was what she was being asked to do.

Now, as far as your post goes, it is clearly communicating that the best subtraction from a cast (in TV history!?) was dropping Dratch from the role of Jenna after the pilot because "she played it so broad." And so I asked what you were talking about because, as it is plain to see from that posted footage, she did not play Jenna in a manner that was out of place with the other performances. Thus my WTF reaction.

I agree that based on what we all know about Jenna Maroney, having watched the entire series play out, Dratch would have been wrong for the part. But Fey's original conception of the format of the show was to include full-length TGS sketches in the episodes, and so Dratch's ability to perform skecth comedy would have been an asset. It was at the behest of NBC that Fey altered the intended format of the show, which meant what would be required of the actress who played Jenna changed. Jenna was now a conventionally pretty actress, who was vain about her looks and insecure about them fading, a part Dratch would have been completely wrong for.

Absolutely not. She wasn't subtracted from the role of Jenna. She never played Jenna on the show. She was subtracted from the show after Season 1 because she showed up in just about every episode playing some sort of exaggerated character. It was very distracting and it didn't work, so they pulled her from the cast after Season 1, and she wasn't missed. The show worked better without her dropping into every episode.
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You post does not include a clip of Dratch playing Jenna or any explanation/description of what she did as Jenna that you thought was "so broad." So, I (as indicated) had no idea what you were talking about. And I still don't.

And she was not a regular during the first season of 30 Rock. The credited cast was Fey, Morgan, Krakowski, McBrayer, Adsit, Friedlander, and Baldwin. Then you would go down to Toofer, Cerie. Grizz and Dot Com, Lutz, and Jonathan, as characters who were series regulars.
Dratch made 11 (by my count) guest appearances during the first season, but since she only played the same character three times and did not have any story arc connected to that character, it would not be a regular recurring role. She would just be a guest actor, and so never a member of the regular cast.

You posted this while I was typing. I guess I just didn't realize that you had a completely different understanding of what the thread was about.

Based on your posting these examples right away:
Frasier and Lilith on Cheers
Jimmy Smits on NYPD Blue
Gloria Rubin on ER
Saul Goodman and Gus Fring on Breaking Bad
Brianne of Tarth on Game of Thrones

Since these are all examples of adding actors and characters to the regular cast of the series, I assumed your subtraction would be in the same vein.

It was my understanding that Dratch was considered a cast member on Season 1. They definitely took her recurring bits away after the first season because they weren't working on the show. If she wasn't considered a regular cast member, that's my misunderstanding.
FWIW, Lilith was never a regular cast member on Cheers either.

I had no idea Dratch originally played Jenna. She wasn't right for the role - she doesn't have the crazy self-obsessed bimbo feel to her.

I did like the many roles Dratch played throughout the series though. They were all funny (or at least the vast majority of them).

so Heather Locklear can’t be an answer to this thread since she was always a special guest star on Melrose Place?

I think the character of Jenna was very different in the original plan.

Most people think the spat between the Hatfields and McCoys started over a pig. History fact: it actually started over Rachel Dratch.

That’s true. Google it.

I love that a DVDtalk battle can now break out pretty much ANYWHERE. No thread is safe.

Now if we think the Dratch thing is bad, there's been over a dozen actors who've played Doctor Who. I think Rachel Dratch was the 8th.

Heather can be an answer! She was a great addition to Franklin and Bash (IIRC for only one season).

​​​​​​​I thought it was completely obvious that was what was intended by the original post.

I was thinking the same thing, when reading this thread.

A couple of Star Trek ones I don’t think were mentioned but Chekov wasn’t in TOS until the second season and he became a fan favorite for sure.

And DS9 had Ezri Dax come in for the last season and did a bang up job adding to the Trill mythology (Nicole de Boer’s birthday is today fyi).

Even though the thread title says "cast member," I hope that everyone can see that the posts are really about the characters. So whether or not Rachel Dratch was ever literally a member of the 30 Rock cast --she wasn't-- it is actually irrelevant.

Rachel Dratch stopped appearing on 30 Rock after the first season because she left NYC and moved to LA. If she wasn't going to be a full cast member of SNL or 30 Rock, she needed to leave NY and go where she could pursue acting jobs. Do you think Tina Fey would kept her best friend from appearing even once on her show for four years if Dratch had been living in NYC the whole time?

And yes, Bebe Neuwirth was never a credited regular cast member of Cheers, but the character of Lilith was added to the show. Despite the thread title, the thread is about best and worst characters added to shows.Since Dratch did not play a regular character on 30 Rock, there was no character to subtract from the show.

But I wasn't trying to start an argument. I really did not understand the meaning of the post since it did not fit the literal or figurative meaning of what the thread is about.

If you really want to talk about cast, not characters, then Tim Conway joining The Carol Burnett Show is one of the best.