Jack Donaghy
He is played by Alec Baldwin, who has received an Emmy Award, two Golden Globe Awards and two Screen Actors Guild Awards for his portrayal of the character.
Character history
Jack Donaghy apparently did not have a very happy childhood. In "The Aftermath," he stated that, when he was two, his father lured him to the edge of a swimming pool with a puppy and pushed him in the pool.
In "The Baby Show," he revealed that his mother, Colleen Murphy Donaghy, has nagged him his whole life, going so far as to blame him for John F. Kennedy's death and that, again when he was two, his father left the family.
Young Jack took to calling his collie "Pop" until the dog was accidentally run over by the mailman and "had his balls cut off" and left to die in the street by his mother, which caused him to cry. He also played hockey and the flute as a child, prompting his mother to embarrass him by having him play "The Star-Spangled Banner" on said flute in front of his team.
He was also the captain of the diving team, which prompted her to call him homosexual. In "MILF Island," Jack says that he attended Princeton University to earn his undergraduate degree, working his way through college by working "the day shift at a graveyard, and the graveyard shift at a Days Inn"; Michelle Obama had been one of his classmates there.
In "The Baby Show," one of Jack's phone calls with his mother ended up with him yelling and beating the head of the phone on the receiver until it shattered, prompting him to yell "Jonathan! These cheap phones keep on shattering!"
Post college, Jack worked as an intern for Senator Ted Kennedy, where Jack developed an extremely liberal political world-view. At some point, though as-yet unexplained, he underwent a complete reversal of his philosophy (Baldwin is well known in real life for his avowedly liberal political beliefs).
In the years after working for Senator Kennedy, Jack, in his own words from "Jack-tor," "thrived" on fear, bow hunting Polar Bear, climbing Mount Kilimanjaro, once driving a rental car into the Hudson River to practice escaping, showering with Greta Van Susteren and, in "The Break Up," he claimed to have overcome a peanut allergy through sheer willpower.
Jack married an Italian woman named Bianca, with whom he apparently made love on the floor of the Concorde shortly after their wedding, though he claims his mother deliberately had a heart attack to prevent him from going on his honeymoon. He and Bianca were eventually legally separated in 1989 because, in his words, he "couldn't keep up with her on any level." Though they weren't legally divorced, Jack went on to introduce Bianca as though they were.
After years of market research, he finally made his "greatest triumph" in the form of the Trivection oven, a product he claims to have created at General Electric.
It was on the strengths of the trivection oven that, in mid 2006, he was promoted to his current position, replacing the recently deceased Gary, apparently making his official title the "Vice President of East Coast Television and Microwave Oven Programming". Jack was the catalyst for bringing Tracy Jordan onboard the NBC sketch show The Girlie Show, despite head writer Liz Lemon's objections. In fact, Jack doesn't think of Jenna as a priority to the show, citing her ill-fated stint as a spokesperson for ShopRite, and has gone as far as replacing her appearance on Late Night with Conan O'Brien with Tracy just as she was going to promote her new film, The Rural Juror.
In the "The Baby Show," it is shown that his mother still constantly calls him and that she now wants to move in with him from her retirement home, which has rocks made of foam since she tends to fall down a lot, in Orlando, Florida. However, at the end of the episode, he blackmails Josh Girard into taking all his mother's calls for him for the rest of Josh's life (Jack says that his mother will outlive Josh - "she's like Castro."), since Josh has a flawless "Jack Donaghy" impersonation.
In the episode "Black Tie," Bianca showed up and he passed Liz off as his girlfriend to make Bianca jealous.
When Liz pretended Jack had proposed to her, Bianca attacked her and Jack was finally satisfied that Bianca still wanted him. Jack acquired an Arby's franchise in Telluride, Colorado in the divorce settlement.
In the wake of the fireworks fiasco, Jack was demoted to "Vice President of East Coast Television" when CEO Don Geiss took his "Microwave Oven Programming" duties away from him, although a comment to Liz Lemon suggests that it may have been given back to him.
At some point, he wrote a book entitled Jack Attack: The Art of Aggression in Business.
Acting on Don Geiss's advice, Jack has gotten himself engaged to Christie's auctioneer Phoebe. However, Liz later discovered that Phoebe was actually an unscrupulous gold digger.
Jack refused to believe this since Phoebe had told him that Liz was infatuated with him and he decided to continue with their wedding. Their bliss does not last long as their long-distance relationship begins to negatively affect both their jobs, and they break up.
Banks makes a power grab, convincing the board of directors that the CEO's seat should stay with the family and getting his fiancee Kathy appointed, with Banks as the power behind the throne. Jack is demoted and humiliated, and leaves GE for a position in George W.
This proves to be hopeless, and Jack attempts to get himself fired. He succeeds this by funding a "gay bomb," a weapon that would cause enemy soldiers to "go totally gay bones for each other." The chemical warfare is accidentally released in a secret war bunker, and it is implied that Jack has sex with Dick Cheney.
This is implication is furthered when Jack confesses his sins to an ill-prepared priest in "St. Jack contemplates sleeping with the bizarre Kathy Geiss to save the company from Devon's plan to shut GE down completely for two years, but is able to avoid this with Liz's help.
Don Geiss emerged from his coma shortly thereafter, but stunned Jack with the news that he'd decided to stay on as GE's chairman after all. Jack remains in his position as head of NBC, telling Liz Lemon how many times an episode she can use the phrase "Cat Anus."
After accidentally breaking both of his Mother's hips, Jack is forced to allow her to move in with him.
In "Jack the Writer" especially, he tried to develop a friendly relationship with the writers, particularly Liz, and made it clear that his feelings were hurt when Liz told him to stay out of the writers' room (although he apparently couldn't let go of his pride to say this directly.)
However, he still has distinct personality flaws. For example, in "The Aftermath," he changed the name of The Girlie Show without consulting Liz and then refused to tell Jenna that Liz had nothing to do with it because he thought Liz needed to learn how to handle her employees.
After he discovered that a product he helped create for Tracy Jordan was dangerous in "The Rural Juror," he decided to sell it overseas to get around U.S. At the very least, however, he said he admired Tracy's integrity for choosing to back out of the enterprise.
Jack is a Republican (initially supporting Mitt Romney) and a firm believer in capitalism, stating in "The Baby Show" that "business gets me off" and in "Hard Ball" that negotiation is his favorite thing in the world since it's, in his words, "the essence of capitalism." Jack's business background clashed with the show's staff when he insisted on having the show use product placement (or "product integration" as he calls it) in the episode "Jack-tor." Citing Six Sigma, Jack has also tried to involve himself with the staff.