Early life

Cummings was born and raised in Georgetown, Washington, D.C. Her mother is Patti Cummings, a former public relations director at Neiman Marcus at Mazza Gallerie. Her parents divorced when she was 5 years old. She has an older half-brother named Kevin Cummings, and an older sister, Ashley Cummings.

She went to high school at St. Andrew's Episcopal School, Potomac, Maryland, graduating in 2000.

She interned at local NBC news affiliate WRC-TV (Channel 4) as a journalist. She studied acting at Washington, D.C.’s Studio Theater.

Cummings graduated from the Annenberg School for Communication at the University of Pennsylvania, magna cum laude in 2004 with a degree in Communications.

Career

Acting

Cummings moved to Los Angeles after college and worked on Punk'd on MTV in 2004 and the same year starred in a low-budget thriller, EMR, which was screened at Cannes.

Stand-up

She began performing stand-up in 2004. In 2007, Variety named Cummings one of 10 Comics to Watch in 2007. In 2008, Cummings appeared in the San Francisco audition for Last Comic Standing, although she didn't pass the showcase. She performed on The Tonight Show with Conan O'Brien, and Last Call with Carson Daly.

She co-starred on The Tony Rock Project and appeared in the 2008 movie Made of Honor. She has also made several appearances on the E! show Chelsea Lately on its round table. She hosted the 2008 Sundance Film Festival Dailies. She was named one of 12 Rising Stars of Comedy by Entertainment Weekly in 2008.

Her television appearances have included Comedians of Chelsea Lately, Live Nude Comedy (which she created, starred and wrote for), The Very bad Show, truTV Presents: World's Dumbest..., and the Comedy Central Roasts of Joan Rivers, David Hasselhoff, and Donald Trump. She released her debut stand-up album, Emotional Ninja. In August 2010, her first one-hour special, titled Whitney Cummings: Money Shot, premiered on Comedy Central. In 2010 Cummings went on tour with Denis Leary and the Rescue Me Comedy Tour to promote the show's sixth season. She also appeared with Leary on Douchebags and Donuts.

In June 2014, Cummings did her second hour-long special, I Love You, on Comedy Central.

Television

In 2011, two multi-camera, live-audience sitcoms Cummings created were picked up by broadcast networks: 2 Broke Girls (which Cummings co-created and executive produced with Michael Patrick King) and Whitney (which Cummings starred in, executive produced, and created). Whitney was not received well by critics, and Cummings acknowledges it was a learning curve for her. 2 Broke Girls was continued, and in March 2016 was renewed for a sixth season; Whitney lasted only two seasons, and was cancelled in May 2013.

Cummings had a talk show, Love You, Mean It with Whitney Cummings on E! in 2012, which was cancelled after 11 episodes.

She appears in Season 3 of Undateable.

Influences

Cummings has described her comedic influences, beginning with Paul Reiser, who she said "made these hysterical, brilliant commentary about the most mundane things and open it up to a hysterical world." Other important influences for her were George Carlin, Bill Cosby—whose show she says she watched regularly "because so much of that was based on his stand up...". Later influences were Dave Attell—"a legend now but he’s very edgy", Lenny Bruce and Bill Hicks.

Filmography

Film

Year	Title	Role	Notes
2004	EMR	CyberBunnyLilly
2007	7-10 Split	Whitney the Waitress
2008	Grizzly Park	Tiffany Stone
2008	Made of Honor	Stephanie
2009	Why Men Go Gay in L.A.
2012	3,2,1... Frankie Go Boom	Claudia
2015	The Wedding Ringer	Holly Munk
2015	The Ridiculous 6	Susannah
2016	Unforgettable		Filming

Television

Year	Title	Role	Notes
2005	Half and Half	Woman	1 episode
2006	Fire Guys	Ponytails Pi	1 episode
2006	Trapped in TV Guide	Series regular	Unknown episodes
2006	What About Brian	Sally	1 episode
2007	Tell Me You Love Me	Louise	3 episodes
2008	Turbo Dates	Sandy	1 episode
2008-09	The Tony Rock Project		4 episodes
2009	House	Courtney	Episode: "Here Kitty"
2010-13	Whitney	Whitney	38 episodes, also creator, writer, and executive producer
2011	Dave's Old Porn	Guest host	1 episode
2012-13	Love You, Mean It	Host	11 episodes, also executive producer
2014	Comedy Bang! Bang!	Herself	1 episode
2015	Maron	Herself	2 episodes
2015	The Jim Gaffigan Show	Herself	1 episode
2015-16	Undateable	Charlotte	5 episodes
2016	Workaholics	Juliette	1 episode

Short films

Year	Title	Role	Notes
2006	Hooked	Vanessa
2006	Life Is Short	Natalie
2007	Come to the Net	Whitney
2010	Successful Alcoholics
2010	In Fidelity	Cindy

Comedy specials

Year	Title	Notes
2010	Whitney Cummings: Money Shot	Premiered on Comedy Central
2014	Whitney Cummings: I Love You	Premiered on Comedy Central
2016	I'm Your Girlfriend	Premiered on HBO

[ Source: Wikipedia ]