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Elizabeth "Liz" Lemon is the fictional protagonist of the American situation comedy 30 Rock. She is portrayed by Tina Fey, who is also the creator of the series and its show runner. Like Fey, who was head writer of Saturday Night Live (SNL) from 1999 to 2006, the character is head writer for a fictional SNL-esque show. For this reason, Liz Lemon is widely seen by critics as a fictionalized version of Fey herself, which Fey herself has confirmed as being her intention. In a video interview conducted with Fey prior to the airing of the pilot, she stated that Liz is herself "five or six years ago when I first started at my job and had to figure out how to deal with big, strong personalities and get through the day, being sort-of scared of everyone... but acting like you're not scared of everyone." Fey has reported incorporating some of her own quirks and history into the character, saying that she tries to "share as many of Liz's habits as possible so it feels truthful." Liz has been seen singing "Maybe" and Fey has noted that she also enjoys singing songs from Annie.Both were once rejected by a man who later went to clown college and both were once referred to with the "c" word, which had a huge emotional impact on them. The character also shares her given name with Fey, whose full name is Elizabeth Stamatina Fey. However, Liz Lemon is only very rarely referred to as "Elizabeth" and the character's name is usually given as "Liz Lemon" in official contexts (example, the plaque on the door to her office). The character's last name, "Lemon", is apparently intended to imply an acerbic personality and possibly also to make her full name alliterative. Fey has stated that she wanted Liz to have a good last name since she knew the character would often be called by it.

Liz stated that she was from somewhere called "White Haven", possibly referring to White Haven, Pennsylvania. This conjecture is strengthened by the fact that she mentioned that her name, misspelled as "Lez", appeared on a scoreboard at Phillies game when she was eight, this being more likely to occur if she were from Pennsylvania. (Fey hails from Upper Darby, Pennsylvania, a suburb of Philadelphia.) Liz's optimistic family were introduced in season 2. Liz's parents, Dick and Margaret Lemon, are very supportive of her, at least outwardly. Liz has stated that her mother used to use their vacuum to drown out the sound of her fighting with her husband. Consequently, the sound of a vacuum still makes Liz anxious and she therefore rarely vacuums her apartment. Her brother Mitch had a skiing accident on Sunday, December 8, 1985 when he was a high school senior. Afterwards, he remained "stuck" in the day before the accident, thinking for the next twenty-two years that he was still seventeen and that it was still 1985. This delusion was finally shattered sometime in December 2007, by which time Mitch was forty years old. Liz was inspired to become a writer by Rosemary Howard, the first female head writer of Laugh-In. She mentioned that she used to teach improv to senior citizens. In college, Liz studied theater tech for which she still has an outstanding student loan. This is due to her course losing its acreditation so she thought she didn't have to pay for it anymore. Liz and Jenna Maroney knew each other well as early as 1996 and together dreamed of making it big. They shared an apartment in a Chicago neighborhood called "Little Armenia" and began The Girlie Show on Second City. At that time, the show apparently starred both of them. Liz and Jenna worked for years to turn The Girlie Show into a television series, the pair of them even having to move from Chicago to New York City for it. Liz became the head writer and apparently the unofficial show runner for The Girlie Show while Jenna became the show's main star. It is not known when the television version of The Girlie Show started, but it was apparently after the year 2000 and the show had evidently run long enough to successfully find a fanbase by the time of 30 Rock's pilot. Liz and the writers apparently had a good relationship with their boss Gary, who was stated to love the show and be pleased with the ratings. However, Gary's death is announced in the pilot and Jack Donaghy takes his place. Jack immediately decides to retool the show to make it appeal to a larger demographic, starting by firing Liz's trusted producer Pete Hornberger and making her hire unpredictable actor Tracy Jordan as the show's new star. Liz manages to convince Jack to re-hire Pete, but Jack is insistent on making the show center around Tracy and, much to her chagrin, he renames the show TGS with Tracy Jordan. Liz currently lives in an apartment at 160 Riverside Drive, which is a real apartment complex in New York City, her apartment number is 3B.

Information regarding Liz's age on the show has been fairly contradictory, but she is usually pegged as being in her mid-thirties or so. In the episode "Tracy Does Conan", which, despite airing in early December of 2006, mentions Thanksgiving is coming up, a nurse at a blood donation clinic says Liz is thirty-five. In the previous episode, "Jack Meets Dennis", Liz says her birthday was "last week". All this suggests Liz was born around November, 1971. This is contradicted by the episode "Cougars", which aired approximately one year later, where Liz says that she is thirty-seven. In the next episode, "Secrets and Lies", Liz mentions her birthday was "yesterday", suggesting a birth date of December, 1969. Flashbacks show that Liz was preschool-aged in the early 1970s. Fey was born on May 18, 1970 (1970-05-18) (age 37).

Jack's overview

Jack, at a mere glance, described her, apparently accurately, as a "New York third-wave feminist, college-educated, single-and-pretending-to-be-happy-about-it, overscheduled, undersexed, you buy any magazine that says 'healthy body image' on the cover and every two years you take up knitting for...a week." Pete said the "knitting" part, in particular, was uncanny.

In contrast with her friend and foil Jenna Maroney, Liz seems to have little interest in stereotypical female interests such as fashion. Her "bi-curious" shoes led Jack to erroneously think she was gay and set her up on a blind date with his friend Gretchen Thomas, the "brilliant plastics engineer/lesbian". Jack does not find Liz attractive, as he repeatedly makes clear through backhanded compliments. Except when she is pressured to dress more femininely, Liz typically appears in casual, gender-neutral attire. In earlier episodes, she almost always appeared wearing plastic-rimmed glasses, though she has started to wear the glasses less and less over the course of the show. Flashbacks reveal that she has worn glasses since she was about four or five.However, according to Jenna she does not actually need glasses. This is probably intended to parody the fact that plastic-rimmed glasses are considered to be Tina Fey's trademark in real life, despite the fact that she does not actually need glasses except to see far away.

Liz is generally portrayed as something of a geek, so, although apparently a skilled writer, she seems to have precious few social skills, for example, while she was trying to meet a date at a karaoke bar, a man asked her if the seat next to her was taken and she asked him why she should move her coat just so he could sit there. Jack has described her as "socially retarded". Liz has tried using Match.com to find a boyfriend. Liz has a rather sardonic sense of humor. She has frequently been shown to be a stress eater, a trait she shares with Jack, and, although she is often seen eating junk food, she seems to keep her weight under control, perhaps because she doesn't seem to have proper meals. According to Fey, the character is not bulimic; "she just likes to eat." Liz does have some knowledge of cooking. She is allergic to dogs and, apparently, cats as well as "anything warm and adorable." She has evidently won at least one Emmy Award. Liz has been seen signing her name on a check with her left hand, adding items to her pros-and-cons list of Dennis with her left hand, and Jack has referred to her "left-handedness". Tina Fey is left-handed. She speaks fluent German and studied in Germany (presumably West Germany as this would have been during the 1980s) during her teens. Liz has a strong aversion to unfairness and breaking rules as demonstrated in the opening scene of the pilot, where, when a man cheats to get a hot dog from a hot dog stand more quickly by "creating" a new line which several people from the "original" line promptly join, she responds by buying all the hot dogs and giving them to the "good people" who stayed in the original line. Later, when Liz considered quitting over Jack's changes to the show, Pete told her that she had the best job in New York and that she shouldn't, in his words, he told her, "Don't buy all the hot dogs!"This also displays the tendency she seems to have of acting rashly in a fit of anger. She also seems to have a weakness when it comes to maternal instincts. The day after Liz told Jenna that she wanted to have children, she found herself bombarded with offers from people who wanted to be sperm donors or surrogates for her. Liz was also asked by a makeup artist to hold her baby daughter while she was doing touch ups on Jenna, but, after leaving Jenna's dressing room, Liz blacked out and found herself standing in her apartment, still holding the baby in her arms, thanks to the baby's hypnotic effect on her.Liz compares the effect to highway hypnosis.

Liz is a big fan of Star Wars, often using events from the original trilogy to explain her feelings and actions in daily life. Liz mentions that she recently dressed up as Princess Leia for four Halloweens in a row. Liz considers Attack of the Clones to be the worst film of the series. She is also a fan of Heroes, in which her favourite character is Hiro Nakamura, Lost, Little People, Big World, Ugly Betty, Top Chef, Designing Womenand The Daily Show. Her drink of choice is Pinot Grigio.As of "Cleveland", her ringtone is "Ride of the Valkyries", which she and Jenna consider a reference to What's Opera, Doc?.

As demonstrated in several encounters with Jack, she seems to have left-wing politics and is most likely a Democrat. For instance, she stated that she believes "gay dudes should be allowed to adopt kids and we should all have hybrid cars". Liz, however, has not been shown to own a car, hybrid or otherwise. She is frequently portrayed endorsing Hillary Clinton. Despite her vocal support of Obama, she says that there is an "eighty percent chance" that she will end up secretly voting for John McCain in the 2008 election. She is shown to be somewhat afflicted with "white guilt," which Tracy uses to manipulate her the episode "Jack-Tor." She later says that her white guilt "is to be used only for good, like overtipping and supporting Barack Obama". She is very concerned about not being seen as racist for example, an African-American man she was dating played the "race card" when she tried to explain that they weren't a good match. Liz seems to be anti-Catholic as illustrated in her "Dennis Cons" list. When asked what religion she was she replied that "I pretty much do whatever Oprah tells me to".Liz was probably raised Christian.

Jenna Maroney

Liz stated in the pilot that she and Jenna worked for years to get The Girlie Show and a series of flashbacks reveal that Liz and Jenna have known each other since at least 1996, having been roommates together in a Chicago neighborhood called "Little Armenia".Given Jenna's uptight nature, Liz is generally forced to act as her rock.This has caused Liz some annoyance, especially after Jack increased Jenna's stress level and paranoia by hiring Tracy Jordan and changing the show's name from "The Girlie Show" to "TGS With Tracy Jordan. Liz has been seen complaining about Jenna's erratic tendencies behind her back, usually with Pete. Jenna once got mad at Liz when she overheard Liz describe her to Tracy as being "paranoid" and "neurotic". Jenna once slept with Liz's brother Mitch and said he was terrible in bed. Liz explains this by saying that Mitch hasn't been right since he was in some kind of skiing accident, because of which he thinks it's still 1985 and he's still a teenager.

Pete Hornberger

Liz and Pete have known each other since about 1996 and he's possibly the closest thing Liz has to a confidant, especially since Jenna, her closest female friend, is far too anxious about her own life to function as such. Liz seems to have more genuine respect for him than anyone else on the show. Pete lived in Liz's apartment for an extended period while separated from his wife.

Tracy Jordan

Liz has not really tried to pursue a relationship of any kind with Tracy, preferring to focus her energies on keeping his craziness in check.She is typically friendly towards him, though mainly to further this end. While Liz will refer to him as either "Tracy" or "Tray", Tracy will most often refer to by her full name "Liz Lemon", or, less often, just "Lemon".

Jack Donaghy

Liz, unsurprisingly, does not particularly like Jack Donaghy, though she grew to respect him somewhat over the course of the first season. The degree of her dislike for him tends to vary from time to time. Fans have shown an interest in "shipping" Jack and Liz together. Tina Fey, however, has stated that there will not be a romantic relationship between the two, as it would be "too icky." Despite this, there have been two episodes which hint at the possibility. Jack passes Liz off as his girlfriend to make Bianca, his ex-wife, jealous and Bianca tells Liz in one scene that "I can tell from the way he looks at you that he's serious". Colleen Donaghy, Jack's mother, thinks that Liz is a perfect match for Jack.

According to Pete, Liz has had some really terrible boyfriends in the ten years that he's known her. It is implied that she once dated Conan O'Brien when there is obvious romantic tension between them. Conan has told Liz that he wants to forget their brief relationship. Liz was dating Dennis Duffy, her on-again-off-again boyfriend, until she learned that he was an online sexual predator after seeing him on Dateline NBC, where he was caught in one of their hidden camera investigations.In one episode, Liz and Jenna consider hooking up with two men from the building who they've nicknamed "The Head" and "The Hair" (because one is boring and balding, and the other is interesting and handsome, with a full head of great hair). Liz and Jenna both assume, automatically, that the good-looking one (The Hair) will go for Jenna, so Liz, a little resignedly, decides to ask The Head out on a date. On the way there, however, she is stunned to be approached by "The Hair" (whose real name, it turns out, is Gray). After a rocky start, things start to look optimistic for their romatic potential - until Liz and Gray discover that they are actually third cousins. Liz once received an anonymous Valentine that, in a true Charlie Brown twist, turned out to have been sent to her by accident by a man named Floyd who intended to send the gift to his girlfriend, the Liz Lemler ("The Other Liz"). Later, Jack told her to fire the bottom ten percent of her staff and Liz realized that Liz Lemler actually worked for her. What followed was chaos as Liz ended up firing not only Liz Lemler but the entire accounting staff and even Pete. In the end, Jack hired back Liz Lemler but had her transferred to Connecticut. Although she did end up dating Floyd, they broke up when he moved to Cleveland and she decided to stay with her show in New York. It is later shown that she is not over Floyd even though they have officially ended it. According to Liz, the last time they spoke was at 4:17 p.m. on August 9, 2007. At Kenneth's party, a drunk Liz apparently made out with Grizz. Kenneth later mentioned that apparently afterwards, she made Dot Com and Grizz cry. Liz dated a 20 year old named Jamie. He had a mother named Beth who was near identical to Liz.