Christy Knowings, an actress who played absurdist characters on the ’90s sketch comedy show “All That,” died on Tuesday in Long Beach, Calif. She was 46.
Her death, in a hospital, was confirmed by her father, Charles Dunn, who said that she went into cardiac arrest after experiencing a severe asthma attack.
“All That,” a Nickelodeon show, was a PG version of “Saturday Night Live” featuring a diverse cast and musical performances by hip-hop and R&B stars such as TLC, Aaliyah and Usher. Its joyful silliness made it a major children’s television hit. The weekly show aired for 10 seasons and helped start the careers of Nick Cannon, Amanda Bynes and Kenan Thompson, who is the longest-tenured cast member in “S.N.L.” history.
“I think what made it special was really the tone that was being created and maintained,” Ms. Knowings said in a 2019 interview. “This tone that was equal parts funny in a very slapstick but also really smart way.”
Christy Lorraine Knowings was born Feb. 25, 1980, in the Bronx, and attended the Professional Performing Arts School in Manhattan. She loved to sing and dance from an early age, but her father said that it was not until high school that she realized a career in entertainment was possible.
When she was 17, a casting agent spotted her when she was appearing as an extra on a Nickelodeon pilot hosted by Rosie O’Donnell, “And Now This!” While on set, her twin brother, Christopher Knowings, pushed her to show off her talent, including some accents and voices she had practiced.
“And I just busted out like a bunch of them, back to back,” she later recalled.
Her father said that “shortly after that, she was on a plane to Los Angeles.”
Ms. Knowings joined the cast of “All That” in 1997 and stayed for three seasons. She was best known for playing eccentric characters, including Brenda Stone, a news anchor with an exaggerated accent; Jessica, a boy-crazy TV host who talked like a Valley Girl; and her personal favorite, Gloria Bankhead, who Ms. Knowings described in 2019 as “an over-the-top Martha Stewart.”
She would receive the next week’s script each Friday and spend the weekend creating the characters. “I would just look at the script and be like, ‘OK, well, who am I going to be here?’” she recalled. “What kind of voice would match this personality that the writers have in mind?”
“I did do impersonations,” she added, “but my thing was really creating new characters.”
She described “All That” as a show that gave its young actors of varied backgrounds the creative freedom to put their own spin on characters.
“The diversity in the cast made a huge difference because there were things that the writers just couldn’t write in,” she told the news site Bustle in 2019. She added: “I’m from the Bronx and Native American Afro-Latina, so I was able to bring so much to the table. We would bring cultural nuances and it was celebrated.”
Ms. Knowings also appeared with her twin brother in episodes of “Sesame Street” and guest-starred on the ’90s police show “New York Undercover.” Aside from her television roles, Ms. Knowings was a musician and a singer. She also did voice-over work for commercials and digital books.
In addition to her father and twin brother, Ms. Knowings is survived by her mother, Rénee Knowings Dunn, and her siblings Charles Dunn Jr., Ashley Dunn Ledger, Yavonka Vega, Tamea Dunn and Lee Elder.
Though “All That” went off the air in 2005, Ms. Knowings said in recent years that fans of the show would reach out to her on social media to tell her what she and the show had meant to them.
“I’ve had people tell me they had a hard childhood, but then they would turn the show on,” she said. She said that some fans had told her that they would “specifically look for me and I would bring them a lot of, you know, joy.”
“And that’s really amazing,” she said.