Happy Birthday, Christa Miller!

You might be thinking, Who is Christa Miller? If you have any sense of television comedy over the last ten years, you'll know her face if not her name.
Recognize her?

After appearing in two episodes of Seinfeld she got her big break on The Drew Carey Show, which ran from 1995 to 2004. She played Drew's friend and on-off girlfriend Kate, for seven years. She left in 2002.

At about this time she appeared in two episodes of Scrubs as Dr. Cox's ex-wife, Jordan Sullivan. One reason she was cast, besides her great comedic talent, is that one of her good friends was one of the writers on Scrubs. Her husband, Bill Lawrence, was the show creator and executive producer. Originally conceived as a one-and-done story arc character, she proved so popular that she became a recurring character for the rest of the series. I can't verify it, but I'm pretty sure somebody on the DVD or someplace talked about the fact that her son on the series, Jack, was played by her and Bill Lawrence's actual son.

That's Bill Lawrence on the far left, next to her, with most of the rest of the cast.

When Scrubs ended (sort of) in 2009, she moved to the ABC-TBS comedy series, Cougar Town. This series stars Courtney Cox and was also created by her husband.

 

Happy Birthday, Christa Miller!

with Craig Ferguson on The Drew Carey Show

Christa Miller talks about how she got the Scrubs job

 

with Brendan Fraser as Justin's brother, Ben on Scrubs

 

Cougartown out-takes from season three