In her senior year, Spivey undertook an independent study with Fragola to work on a feature-length screenplay.

Fragola recalled that the story centered around characters based on her family, friends, and acquaintances from High Point.

"I admired the way she captured the idiosyncrasies of her characters, accepting them in all their humanity with their foibles in a warm, respectful, yet comedic way," Fragola said. "She had always shown talent and an original voice in my other classes, but it was with this screenplay that her comedic abilities were so poignantly apparent."

After graduating from UNCG in 1993, Spivey moved with Philbrook to Los Angeles. There, Spivey earned a master of fine arts degree from Loyola Marymount University.

She joined The Groundlings, an improvisational and sketch comedy troupe and school that attracted comic actors such as Will Ferrell and Melissa McCarthy, as well as the women in “Bless the Harts.”

She wrote comedy for the comedy-sketch show “MADtv” and “King of the Hill.”

“Saturday Night Live” hired her friend Maya Rudolph. Fox let her out of her “King of the Hill” contract so that she could become a staff writer for “SNL.”