How Will ’30 Rock’ Incorporate Kim Jong Il’s Death?
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Pool/Getty Images(LOS ANGELES) — When 30 Rock returns to NBC’s primetime lineup for a sixth season on Jan. 12, producers hopefully will have figured out how to incorporate the death of North Korean dictator Kim Jong Il into a cliffhanger storyline.
When last season ended, Elizabeth Banks’ character, Avery Jessup-Donaghy — wife of Alec Baldwin’s character Jack Donaghy — was being held captive in North Korea, where she was forced to be the now-deceased leader’s mistress.
30 Rock producer Robert Carlock tells US Weekly, “Jack’s love life is pretty complicated and it just got more complicated because I think, technically, Avery is the First Lady of North Korea.”
Carlock reveals the show’s writers realized they caught a bit of a break when they looked at the eight or nine episodes already shot for the new season and discovered they hadn’t referred to Kim Jong Il by name, just to North Korea in general.
Carlock says the show can’t go back to the episodes already shot and address the changes in North Korea, “but the fun puzzle is turning around and trying to figure out how to get [the Avery character] out of there and how to continue things.”
Margaret Cho portrayed the dictator on 30 Rock last season, and Carlock jokes about her return, telling Us Weekly, “Maybe we’ll have to have Margaret Cho showing up again having faked her death, because she wants to get a gig on a morning talk show.”
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