Biography:
Stephnie Weir was born on November 28th, 1967 in Odessa, Texas. In the early stages of her life, Stephnie's influences were her family, and particularly her father, who was a car salesman and according to Stephnie, a "Man's man", but who also had an artistic side and acted in community theatre. She describes her childhood as "untraditional", and credits a lot of her character and sketch material to her unique upbringing. From an early age, Stephnie was interested in acting and pursued traditional theatre. While in Texas, she attended Odessa Junior College, where she studied Theatre and Broadcast Communication, while working as a mail carrier, and performing in plays including "Oklahoma!" and "The Firebug" at Odessa's Globe Theatre. In 1989 she met and married Sean Benjamin, and together they moved to Edwardsville Illinois where Stephnie attended Southern Illinois University and took classes in women's studies and anthropology. It wasn't until 1993 that Stephnie discovered comedy and improvisation. 1993 was also the year that she divorced her first husband, and it wasn't until 1999 that she married Robert Dassie. Stephnie went through the Second City Training Centre, and had the chance to perform and test new works at the ImprovOlympic on teams like "Armando Diaz", the all-female "Jane", two-person improv "Naked" and three-person improv "Trio". Impressed by Stephnie's immense talents, Improv instructors Noah Gregoropoulos and Mick Napier encouraged that Weir audition for the Second City Mainstage. Her audition was successful and Stephnie wrote and performed in a number of Mainstage reviews including "Promise Keepers, Losers Weepers" (1997), "The Psychopath Not Taken" (1998) and "Second City 4.0" (1999). In July 2000, she was invited to audition for MADtv, and commenced her time on the show as a Featured Player in episode #607, which originally aired on the 18th of November 2000.