Briga Heelan

Actress Briga Heelan transitioned from relative unknown to starring roles in the sitcoms "Ground Floor" (TBS 2013-15) and "Great News" (NBC 2017- ) in just a few short years, thanks in part to her skill with comedy and effervescent personality. After leaving the East Coast for Los Angeles, the Massachusetts native and musical theater actress studied improv, which aided her greatly in netting comic roles on series like "Cougar Town" (ABC, 2009-12; TBS, 2013-15), among other projects. Her work on the Bill Lawrence sitcom led to her first starring role as a series regular on his comedy "Ground Floor," where she earned comparisons to Jennifer Aniston for her blend of beauty and brainy humor. Raised in eastern Massachusetts by a mother who acted and a playwright/teacher father, Briga Heelan developed her own interest in performing and began pursuing it at an early age. She attended the Walnut Hill School for the Arts before continuing her education at the Cincinnati Conservatory of Music and then the University of Southern California, where she earned a degree in theater. Though initially a musical theater actor, Heelan discovered that she had a talent for comedy, and honed it at various Los Angeles improvisational schools. She landed her first television appearance in a 2011 episode of the short-lived sitcom "Man Up" (ABC 2011- ) and quickly advanced to recurring roles on "Cougar Town" and "Jane by Design" (ABC Family, 2012). Her turn as Holly, flighty mother of a daughter fathered during a fling by Grayson (Josh Hopkins), brought her to the attention of the show's creator/producer Bill Lawrence, who cast her in his next comedy effort, the workplace sitcom "Ground Floor." Heelan played Jenny, an employee in the maintenance department of a big-city bank firm, who discovered that her recent partner in a one-night stand - series lead Skylar Astin - also worked in her building as a budding young middle manager mentored by the curmudgeonly Mansfield (John C. McGinley). Though the series received mostly middling reviews, Heelan was singled out for critical praise for her comic chops. After the show ended, Heelan joined the cast of Tina Fey and Robert Carlock's workplace sitcom "Great News" (NBC 2017- ) as an ambitious local news producer whose meddlesome mother (Andrea Martin) begins interning at her TV station.