The making of a sitcom star

Lauren Ash has gone from Second City to TV comedy

- MAX GAO

Canadian Lauren Ash went from being the youngest woman hired for the Second City touring company to one of only four Canadians chosen to perform on the Second City Chicago stage. She is also a sitcom star on shows like "Superstore" and "Not Dead Yet," at left, in which she plays a bad newspaper boss.

Lauren Ash was always destined for a career in comedy.

After six seasons of playing the no-nonsense assistant manager Dina Fox on the NBC workplace comedy “Superstore,” Ash has stepped into the role of a new kind of bad boss on the ABC newsroom sitcom “Not Dead Yet,” which recently returned for its sophomore season and airs on CTV in Canada.

Adapted from Alexandra Potter’s novel “Confessions of a FortySomething F**k Up” by “This Is Us” co-executive producers Casey Johnson and David Windsor, “Not Dead Yet” follows Nell Serrano (Gina Rodriguez), a once-promising journalist who moves back to Southern California after a bad breakup and returns to her old newspaper job. Tasked with writing obituaries, Nell soon discovers that she can see her subjects, who don’t hesitate to give her advice from the afterlife.

Ash plays Lexi Rhodes, Nell’s hilariously out-of-touch (and uberrich) boss, who still longs for the affection and approval of her domineering father, Duncan (new cast member Brad Garrett), the owner of the paper.

It’s a particularly meaty role for the Canadian actor, who said she wanted Lexi to feel like a real person and not like a caricature of wealth and privilege. “Lexi is not a sociopath; she’s not a bad person in my opinion,” Ash, 41, said in a recent video interview from her home in Los Angeles.