On May 28th, The Four Seasons, Netflix’s hit about a group of friends navigating midlife, based on the 1981 movie of the same name (written and directed by Alan Alda), returns for a second season. The cast includes Tina Fey, Will Forte, Coleman Domingo, Marco Calvani, Erika Henningsen, and Kerri Kenney-Silver, who stars as Anne, one-half of the couple whose divorce kicks off the events of the series. (Minor spoiler if you haven’t seen the first season: Anne’s ex-husband, played by Steve Carell, isn’t returning for season two, but that’s all we’ll say.) A longtime comedic actor, Kerri is perhaps best known for playing Deputy Trudy Wiegel on Reno 911! for the better part of two decades; she’s also had recurring roles on shows like Superstore and Love, done voice work for animated series like Bob’s Burgers, and is a member of the cult-beloved sketch comedy troupe The State. But she first fell in love with performing right here in Westport. “I credit Staples High School as the reason I’m in the business I’m in,” Kerri tells Westport Lifestyle.
Kerri’s family moved to Westport from New York City in the mid-1970s, eventually settling in a house near Compo Beach where Kerri fondly recalls “walking to the little store [now Old Mill Grocery] to buy candy, and going to Old Mill Beach and fishing,” she says. “It sounds like I was raised in the ‘40s! But it was absolutely beautiful.” Kerri’s parents divorced when she was eight, and her dad, Larry Kenney, a gifted voiceover artist whose credits include the Cocoa Puffs bird, Imus In The Morning, and the “taste the rainbow” Skittles tagline, moved back to Manhattan. “So I was splitting my time between Manhattan and Westport, which was really just a dream,” Kerri says. “I would go see theater on the weekends in New York, and then come back to the Westport Country Playhouse.” It inspired her to participate in her own shows, like on the 4th of July in 1980 when she “pranced around the Levitt Pavilion singing ‘You’re a Grand Old Flag.’ I still know the choreography!” she says with a laugh. “I just have such magical memories of Westport. We’d go to Friendly’s across the street from the Levitt, then to the Remarkable Bookshop where I’d get to pick out a book. I took cooking classes at the Y, where I learned how to make pizzas out of English muffins. We’d lay out on the beach, my mom on her towel, listening to the Eagles and using the little barbecues to make an early dinner. It was beautiful.”
When Kerri got to high school, she found a second home in the Staples Players theater ensemble. “We had the most unbelievable program there. Al Pia was running it, Joe Ziegahn was doing all the sets, Judy Luster was one of my teachers. We lived in Joe’s office between classes, learning everything we could. It almost felt like we were doing classwork as an extra to being in an acting conservatory,” she says. She also joined the choir, under choir director George Weigle—who had such a big impact on her that she ended up naming her Reno 911! character, Trudy Wiegel, after him. While at Staples, she became co-president of Staples Players with Kipp Marcus, “who is still one of my best friends today,” she says. She built sets, organized rehearsals, ran budgets, played a lead in a Staples production of Chicago, and wrote and worked on one-act plays for the black box theater. “As an adult, I look back and think God, how lucky. The beach is there. There’s theater. There’s creativity. And there I was, in a public school with every possible resource. It was so informative. I credit a large amount of my career to it.”
And what a career: from Staples, Kerri went on to NYU, where she studied experimental theater at the Tisch School of the Arts. While there, she joined the comedy group that eventually became The State, which ran as a series on MTV from 1993-1995. She’s worked steadily in comedy projects ever since. But last year, The Four Seasons became her breakout dramedy role, allowing her to dig into the complex, layered emotions of Anne, a woman in her mid-50s who has to navigate losing her husband of 25 years, the ways her friendships in their shared social circle change post-divorce, and her ex’s new, much younger girlfriend. Actor Michael Ian Black, Kerri’s longtime friend and fellow member of The State, wrote on his Substack about Kerri’s role on the show: “At last, she has a part worthy of her gifts. A fully realized adult woman who’s funny and sad and complicated. They could have had any actress they wanted for that role, they picked Kerri, and ended up getting the better end of the deal.”
The significance of being cast as Anne wasn’t lost on Kerri, either. “I am known for being in the world of sketch comedy,” she says. “The idea that they would hire me, and not an actress known for drama and realism—I could not believe it. I was just so thrilled.” And once they started filming, things kept getting better. “It was alchemy from the minute we all stepped on that set,” she says. (Credit to Tina Fey where it’s due: “She’s a genius,” Kerri says. “She said ‘I’m putting together a group of people that are kind and will be fun to work with, we’re gonna work in nice places, and we’re gonna wear comfortable clothes.” What more could an actor want?) “[This show] felt important, because even just 10 or 15 years ago, as an actress in my mid-50s, I’d be done at this point. But the center of this story is a group of friends in their mid-50s, because guess what? We’re still here, and we’re still doing things. What a fun story to tell.”
The film the show is based on tells a self-contained, two-hour story, so to come back for a second season was pixie dust on top of a dream. “I really tried to stay out of my head about the future, thinking oh, please don’t let this be one and done,” she says. “For season two, I’m so thrilled about Anne’s journey. Every time I imagined what it might be, the script came in and was a thousand times better.”
The series was something of a surprise hit—even with stars like Tina Fey and Coleman Domingo attached, it was based on a relatively obscure movie and about people in midlife, so there was no guarantee it would find a broad audience. “But more people in their 20s come up to me at airports than any other generation,” Kerri says. It turns out, viewers of all ages want characters and stories that feel real, which The Four Seasons has in spades. “Tina and the writers are so brilliant at tapping into little nuances about aging,” Kerri says. “And I’m so drawn right now to authenticity, even if it’s jowly and messy and forgetful. Stepping into this character, for me, was more about taking things off than putting something on.”
The role has been transformative for Kerri, who says she hopes to continue to show audiences new sides of herself in her performances. “I have a wonderful career. I’ve been incredibly lucky to be consistently working in this alternative comedy world. But to feel like there’s a new chapter, now, that involves what I trained to do as an actor all those years ago? Every day feels like a gift.”
Season two of The Four Seasons premieres on Netflix on May 28, 2026.
Kerri's Westport
The actress shared personal photos of growing up in Westport with Westport Lifestyle.