Whatever Happened To Jenna Elfman

Jenna Elfman, born Jennifer Mary Butala in Los Angeles, began her career in showbiz not as an actor but a dancer. In addition to appearing in music videos from Depeche Mode and Anthrax, she was also one of the dancers to perform at the 1991 edition of the Academy Awards and was even hired to dance onstage alongside rock trio ZZ Top on tour, one her final dancing gigs before she decided to segue into acting. Her first screen credit, fittingly, was as ballet dancer in a 1992 episode of "Murder She Wrote." Elfman eventually landed her big break as the adorably flaky newlywed Dharma Finkelstein Montgomery in the sitcom "Dharma & Greg," and she has remained a frequent presence on TV screens ever since.

Elfman logged guest-starring roles in various TV series before and after the monster hit "Dharma & Greg." When the sitcom ended its run after five seasons, Elfman went on to establish herself in both comedy and drama. For those wondering what the cast of "Dharma & Greg" looks like today, here's everything you need to know about series lead Jenna Elfman and her decades-long career in entertainment.

It's fair to say that "Dharma & Greg" catapulted Jenna Elfman to instant stardom. Hollywood took notice, and during her five-year stint on the show she launched herself as a movie star. While visions of a film career clearly danced in her head, the movies themselves did little to facilitate that outcome. That was certainly the case with her first big-screen starring role opposite Richard Dreyfuss in 1998's "Krippendorf's Tribe," which was savaged by critics and bombed at the box office, earning a measly $7.6 million.

What you might not know about Matthew McConaughey is that he played Elfman's romantic interest in the 1999 film "Edtv." Sadly, this flick also failed to resonate with critics. Although "Edtv" took in $35 million at the box office, that was about $45 million less than it cost to make — an unmitigated Hollywood disaster. In 2000, Elfman then co-starred with Ben Stiller and Edward Norton in "Keeping the Faith," her first big-screen hit, albeit a modest one. 

The following year, Elfman was unfortunate enough to be part of the ensemble cast of "Town & Country," an ambitious but wildly flawed comedy starring Diane Keaton and Warren Beatty. The film's brutal box-office take brought in one-tenth of its $90-million budget. While it would be unfair to place the blame for those failures on Elfman, starring in two of the biggest box-office bombs of the 1990s is something no actor wants on their résumé.

In 2002, the same year that "Dharma and Greg" ended, Jenna Elfman shifted gears with her next project when she ventured into the domain of made-for-TV Lifetime movies. Based on a true story, the thriller "Obsessed" featured Elfman as a medical writer who falls in love with a handsome neurosurgeon. While that description may sound like one of those romantic Hallmark movies that are totally worth your time, the film instead takes a dark turn when Elfman's character is revealed to be a dangerously obsessive stalker.

"It's a movie about viewpoints — he said, she said," Elfman said in an interview about the film, explaining that her character believes she and the surgeon are in a relationship — a belief he decidedly does not share. Her version of the story, Elfman continued, was of a great romance, like a French film, while his perspective is of an ever-present annoyance constantly following him around. "And it's interesting to see which one really happened," she added.

That following year, Elfman decided to make a mark onstage by taking a role in "Nine," a 2003 Broadway musical. She never actually performed in front of a Broadway crowd, however, as she was unable to deliver onstage the way she had in front of a camera. "She can't cut it," a source told the New York Post. "She's not going to be able to open." While the theater company would neither confirm nor deny that report, two days later, Playbill reported that Elfman had been replaced by another actor.

While Broadway may not have been in the cards, Jenna Elfman's movie career continued nonetheless. In 2003, she was seen in "Looney Tunes: Back in Action," a blend of live action and animation in which she, Brendan Fraser, and Steve Martin co-starred with Bugs Bunny, Daffy Duck, and the rest of the "Looney Tunes" gang. Unfortunately, the big-budget film fell short, leading Elfman to set her sights back on television. 

The result was "Courting Alex," a 2006 CBS sitcom starring Elfman as the titular Alex, a tightly wound New York City attorney that appeared to be the polar opposite of Dharma. When interviewed by TV Guide, Elfman was insistent that she didn't see the characters in those terms — even if TV critics did. "I wasn't specifically looking for something that was totally different [or] similar [to 'Dharma & Greg']," she said, sharing similar sentiments when she spoke with the Associated Press. "I didn't set forth to make sure I did something different from Dharma, because I don't think the creative process lends itself to trying not to be something," she explained.

Reviews were decidedly mixed, but viewership was impressive — at least at first, with 14.9 million tuning in to watch the debut episode. However, ratings began to slide with subsequent episodes, dropping lower with each airing. CBS decided to pull the plug after eight episodes, not even bothering to air four episodes that had already been shot.

Jenna Elfman took another kick at the sitcom can in 2009 with "Accidentally on Purpose." This time, she played a woman who finds herself pregnant after a one-night stand with a significantly younger man. She decides to have the baby and pursue a relationship with her baby daddy. 

Elfman praised the rest of the ensemble cast in an interview with CBS. "I love being surrounded by so many talented comedic actors," Elfman gushed, admitting she herself felt constantly entertained by her co-stars. Interestingly, Elfman's character in the show was a film critic, which meant that movie references permeated the dialogue. "A huge point of reference for her is film, so she's constantly comparing her life to films, and characters in films, because that's her main point of reference for situations in life."

Once again, reviews ran the gamut: some glowing, others scathing. Meanwhile, the show's time slot — in the midst of the CBS Monday night lineup, alongside "Two and a Half Men," "How I Met Your Mother," and "The Big Bang Theory" — was a mixed blessing. On one hand, the enviable time slot certainly drew additional eyeballs, but it also set a high bar. When "Accidentally on Purpose" was moved to Wednesdays, ratings plummeted, garnering nearly half the viewership the show had earned on Mondays. CBS pulled the plug, and there was no second season. If there was a silver lining, it was that life imitated art, as Elfman became pregnant with her second child later that same year. 

Following a brief foray into the online world with the 2011 web series "Matumbo Goldberg," and then a one-episode guest-starring stint in "Shameless," Jenna Elfman decided it was time to take a break from sitcom comedy and dive into some deep, heavy drama. She did just that when she joined "Damages," the legal thriller about a young lawyer (played by Rose Byrne) taken under the wing of an experienced and ruthless attorney (played by Oscar winner Glenn Close). 

Elfman joined the series' fifth season in 2012, playing Naomi Walling, a corporate whistleblower who winds up murdered. "I was excited to work on a well-written show with excellent actors," Elfman said in an interview with SpoilerTV. "Also to change it up and do some drama I thought would be fun." As Elfman explained, when she'd first started acting, she did both comedy and drama, until the success of "Dharma and Greg" placed her on a far more comedic path than she'd originally envisioned for herself. "I got in this business to become other characters and experience the lives of other people," she added. "I happened to get success with comedy and just kind of took that road."

The same year that Jenna Elfman appeared in "Damages," she and her husband Bodhi Elfman launched their own podcast, which they titled "Kicking and Screaming." As she cheekily wrote on Facebook, the R-rated podcast focused on "our 79 years of marriage together." During a publicity appearance on Aol's BUILD Series, the couple joked that their marriage — which, at that point, had reached its 21st year — continued to be a work in progress. "Well, it ebbs and flows," Jenna said of ever-evolving, hills-and-valleys state of their matrimonial union. "It's like the stock market, relationships ... there's weeks where it's about every third day I'm like, nope, that's it."

All good things must come to an end, and in 2022 — a decade after its launch — the Elfmans recorded what appeared to be their final episode of "Kicking and Screaming." Jenna wasn't done with podcasting, however. By the time "Kicking and Screaming" concluded, she'd already started another podcast, "The Jenna Elfman and Heather Dale Show: All the Things," which found her partnering with longtime pal Heather Dale. Together, they comedically navigated the COVID-19 pandemic. "We have fun with our own chats and thought we'd open that up and share our chats with everybody, because sometimes you just need to hear somebody else say it, to know you're not alone," Jenna told Glamour.

Jenna Elfman continued to cast around for her next television hit, which eventually led her to NBC political satire "1600 Penn." in 2012. She played Emily Nash Gilchrist, first lady of the United States, wife of President Dale Gilchrist (played by Bill Pullman), and stepmom to his children. According to Elfman, the role required some research. "Since I've never been a first lady ... and it's not like I can just ring up any old first lady and ask questions, I was reading some books," she told Collider, revealing that research brought about an epiphany about the first lady's role. "I realized that the main thing is that there's just no rule book for the first ladies," she explained. "Any first lady can come in and really create what they wish, so I knew that I was pretty free."

Like Elfman's previous post-"Dharma & Greg" sitcoms, "1600 Penn" was cancelled after just one season. Undeterred, she tried again with the 2014 sitcom "Growing Up Fisher" as a wife and mother in the midst of divorcing her blind husband, played by J.K. Simmons. According to Elfman, this new show marked the beginning of a new era as a woman in her 40s. "'1600 Penn' helped me transition," she told Assignment X. "It's a new era of casting for me and how to go into that gracefully."  Sadly, there was nothing graceful about the end of "Growing Up Fisher." As with "1600 Penn," the show was also axed after its first season.

By 2017, a steady stream of small-screen flops had left Jenna Elfman's relationship with network television rocky at best. "I had written off network TV," Elfman told IndieWire. "I told my agents not to come to me with another network show," she added, insisting that even though she'd worked hard, both on the set and promoting her failed shows, her best efforts ultimately hadn't made a difference. 

However, when she saw the script for "Imaginary Mary," a show about a woman whose childhood imaginary friend returns to her life (as a cute animated creation), Elfman was confronted with a concept unlike anything she'd been presented with before. She also recognized that acting opposite a make-believe creature that would be added later via CGI presented a new challenge, something she was eager to embrace. "I needed to get tools in my tool belt first, which is why this job interested me," she explained. Despite Elfman's excitement over the show, the result proved the be same as it had with every single sitcom she'd starred in since "Dharma and Greg." ABC chose not to renew "Imaginary Mary," which was cancelled after its debut season.

With the cancellation of "Imaginary Mary," Jenna Elfman's instinct that she was no longer a good fit with network television seemed to have borne out, which left her feeling somewhat adrift in her career. "It was a big point of transition for me," Elfman told Glamour, reflecting on how much effort she'd put into the ABC comedy, only to see it fail. "It was a difficult time," she admitted.

Elfman then began casting her net wider, and in some unexpected directions. The results of those efforts became evident just a few months after "Imaginary Mary" ended, when AMC announced Elfman would join "Fear the Walking Dead" as a series regular. In the role of June Dorie, a former ER nurse stabbing her way through a zombie apocalypse, Elfman showcased a far grittier side than viewers had ever seen before — and they loved it. "It was a total blessing for me," Elfman said of her career-reviving "Walking Dead" role. "I really needed it. It helped me rejuvenate my excitement artistically and pump new life into me for a new chapter."

According to Elfman, she adopted a new skillset for the show: convincingly killing make-believe zombies onscreen. The stunt choreography behind the scenes was something she always tried to keep fresh. She was insistent on preventing the process from appearing rehearsed, while also infusing those action sequences with a realistic quality by letter her inner feelings shine through. "These fight sequences, it's always more about the emotional despair of surviving the moment," she told AMC.

Before gravitating toward acting, Jenna Elfman was a classically trained ballet dancer. And while she moved beyond a career in dance, dance had never entirely left her. This much was clear when she was invited to be a guest judge on Fox's dance competition series, "So You Think You Can Dance," and proved so adept at formulating opinions and advising dancers that she was brought back.

Elfman's commitment to dance was also evident in her role as a member of the advisory board of American Dance Movement. In an essay Elman penned for Amy Poehler's Smart Girls, she emphasized that even though she was no longer dancing professionally, she continued to dance for fun. "All the time. I can't not dance," Elfman wrote. The dance training that she undertook as a young person continued to resonate with her throughout her life. "My dance training has given me a strong work ethic, a stable sense of self, determination, a foundation of confidence, self-determinism, persistence, and dedication to goals that I need to succeed in every area of life," wrote Elfman. "And I call upon those skills daily."

Throughout the arc of Jenna Elfman's acting career, from the heady days of "Dharma and Greg" to her two-decades-later comeback in "Fear the Walking Dead," the Church of Scientology has remained a touchstone. In fact, both Jenna and husband Bodhi Elfman have had a long relationship with the controversial church. While some celebrities have broken ties with the church — that's exactly what happened with actor Leah Remini and former Scientology devotee Laura Prepon — the Elfmans have remained loyal Scientologists.

In fact, Jenna credited Scientology with keeping he marriage solid for nearly 30 years. "Well, I've been a Scientologist for 28 years and that's a huge part of what helps us keep our communication going and our relationship," she told People in 2018. According to Jenna, Scientology has also been a huge contributing factor in her successful Hollywood career. "I use it every single day of my life and it keeps me energized and vivacious and happy," she added. 

When "Fear the Walking Dead" ended its run in late 2023, Jenna Elfman found herself in a unique position with her career revived and her services in high demand. Having experienced success in both sitcom fun and dark drama, she decided to keep her feet planted in both when she zeroed in on her next projects.

In 2025, she signed on for a recurring role in "Shifting Gears," an ABC comedy starring sitcom veterans Tim Allen (of "Home Improvement" and "Last Man Standing" fame) and "2 Broke Girls" star Kat Dennings. "I didn't know if I was ever going to come do comedy again, but it feels good and I'm happy it feels good," Elfman told TheWrap about her new role as the owner of a dance studio.

That same year, she also took on a recurring role in "Dark Winds," a dark drama focusing on Navajo police officers — a series that could not be more different than "Shifting Gears." Playing an FBI agent who clashes with one of the cops, Elfman admitted her character is far from likable. "She's just dripping with white entitlement and absolute social blindness," Elfman told Yahoo! Entertainment of her character. "She has something to prove as a woman in this male-dominated environment," she added during a conversation with TV Insider.