Originally published in Entertainment Weekly in January 2003, this feature tracks the unusual genesis of Wigfield: The Can-Do Town That Just May Not, the satirical collaborative novel by Amy Sedaris, Paul Dinello, and Stephen Colbert, accompanied by the vivid character photography of designer Todd Oldham.
From a Pitch About a Worm to a Town in Crisis
When Amy Sedaris and long-time creative partner Paul Dinello first walked into the Manhattan offices of publisher Hyperion Books, they didn’t pitch a complex multi-character satire about small-town American decay.
They pitched a book about a worm.
“Paul and I had done this ridiculous stage piece involving a worm trying to discover its identity,” Sedaris recalls with her characteristic deadpan grin. “So we sat down with the Hyperion executives, completely straight-faced, and explained why the world desperately needed a fifty-thousand-word book about an invertebrate.”
The publishing executives listened politely, waited for a beat, and asked a simple question: “What else do you have?”
Thinking quickly on their feet, Sedaris reached back into her childhood imagination. Growing up in North Carolina with her brother David, Amy had invented a mythical town filled with bizarre, unhinged personalities called Wigfield—named after the ever-changing array of flea-market wigs she would cycle through to perform distinct characters.
“I just blurted out, ‘Well, we also have this town called Wigfield,’” Sedaris says. “And suddenly their eyes lit up. We didn’t actually have a plot, but they bought the pitch on the spot.”
Enlisting Stephen Colbert
Upon realizing the daunting reality of their contractual commitment—delivering a full-length book with real prose—Sedaris and Dinello knew exactly whom to enlist: their former Second City and Exit 57 collaborator Stephen Colbert, then a rising star correspondent on The Daily Show with Jon Stewart.
Colbert initially hesitated due to his grueling daily television schedule, but a lightbulb went off when he remembered a bizarre segment he had filmed for The Daily Show in Jefferson, West Virginia. Jefferson had been incorporated into an official municipality purely as a tax dodge by local strip-club owners and auto salvage yards, leading to two rival city governments attempting to shut each other down.
“Jefferson was an absolute ethical wasteland,” Colbert explains. “It was the ultimate inspiration. We took that premise and cranked the absurdity to eleven: a town so corrupt, toxic, and godforsaken that when a nearby federal dam is scheduled to be blown up to flood the valley, not a single person in the state wants to save it.”
The Visual World of Todd Oldham
To bring the citizens of Wigfield to life, the authors enlisted famed fashion and interior designer Todd Oldham. Oldham packed the trio into a van and headed for the remote backroads of Milford, Pennsylvania, and Port Jervis, New York.
Armed with vintage costumes, thrift-store polyester, prosthetic teeth, and suitcases full of wigs, Dinello, Sedaris, and Colbert transformed themselves into dozens of distinct characters. Colbert famously donned duct tape and makeup to portray multiple female strip club patrons, while Dinello became corrupt local officials and Sedaris inhabited the exhausted exotic dancer Cinnamon.
“The photos changed how we wrote the book,” explains Dinello. “Once we saw Stephen taped into an outfit or Amy in a hideous floral dress leaning against a rusted pickup truck, the dialogue practically wrote itself.”
Published by Hyperion in the spring of 2003, Wigfield proved that the comedic alchemy between Dinello, Sedaris, and Colbert was just as potent on the printed page as it was on television screen.