Maryedith Burrell

She was selected for Fridays by the producers because of her experience in many improvisational roles. She became an important part of the Friday Edition news team as roving correspondent and special reporter with the recurring segment Friday Focus. She also added her comedic talent to a wide range of sketches on the show. She always appeared in the popular Battle Boy sketches as Battle Boy's mother, a chain-smoking, often abusive parent who yelled at Battle Boy whenever he set his sister's dolls on fire, harassed the neighbor kids, or made a mess in the yard. The show ended its run in 1982.

Her successful career in film and television spans across writing, production, and acting. Notably, she signed a deal with Walt Disney Studios to create original TV programming. She has worked as a ghost Writer for films that include The Little Mermaid and Casper. Since 2000, she has written a screenplay for Universal Studios and signed with Sony Pictures Entertainment to write the biography of Emily Post.

She was approached by Shelley Duvall whom she had met on Fridays, to write five programs for the successful Faerie Tale Theatre. Unusual names in the film world, who would not normally work in TV, signed on for this venture. As the decades passed, she starred in more TV series and took some recurring and guest roles in many genres of acting. She acted in films, did voice-overs for cartoons, and wrote more movies. One of her movie assignments came from a former Groundlings colleague who had become head of TV movies for NBC. Impressed with the work she had done for Duvall’s series, he asked her to write the teleplay for her first TV movie, Little Match Girl.