Anna Roisman [Interview]

My first paid gig in the world of comedy…that wasn’t a drink ticket… hard to remember! I actually got a job making a music video for a comedy youtube channel a long time ago and they gave me an awesome budget. I had produced and written a few sketch videos of my own with a comedy partner, so having a company trust me with a budget to make them something that I pitched was very exciting!! I had a friend help me who worked at the time for College Humor because I knew he had contacts and we put together an awesome shoot. It was 3 locations, a full shoot day, I wrote it and starred in it, and it felt like a dream?! And I even walked away with a paycheck. I learned quickly that those experiences don’t happen all the time!! I thought, oh I’ll just continue producing these videos and then I will be able to quit my restaurant job! Nope, that was naive. I learned a lot about what it takes to produce a music video and I’ve made some since, so it was a really cool experience.

I thought standup was like, over forever, after the first month or so of the pandemic. The Zoom shows weren’t the same vibe. Then I did a standup show at a drive-in diner place in Astoria and it was the most fun I’d had in ages. Maybe that was because I hadn’t left my apartment? But it was a really fun time and cars would flash their lights everytime they liked a joke of mine, and it felt amazing to be up on a stage of some sort. It kind of opened my eyes to *new spaces* if that makes sense. Also, I used to do my show The Unemployed Show from my couch in the ‘before times’ like 3 years ago, and this couch has been an amazing stage for me then, and now! So yes, my couch.

Sure! We just dropped our 50th episode, which is hard to believe! So back in 2016 I lost my very cushy day job of 4 years at a Venture Capital firm and they gave me a severance package which I had never heard of before. So I was still being paid, and had all this free time. Life was glorious! (Sort of.) So I started a fully produced live stream show from my apartment called “The Unemployed Show.” It was mostly Thursdays at 3pm and we wore pajamas and drank alcohol and I interviewed other unemployed creative people. We played games, we did segments, it was amazing and it became a huge part of my life. After doing 50 live episodes (you can see them all on Facebook!!) I decided to end the live show because, surprise, I got a job hosting HQ Words, the new show on HQ Trivia and I was working 7 nights a week. I knew I didn’t want to give up on the brand of Unemployed because it was something I created and loved. But I was working too much to produce it. So I decided to launch it as a podcast, a few months later. It’s more tamed, we’re not drunk in pajamas, but it’s a space for me to get to know people through the jobs they have worked over the years. It’s fun to hear about people’s stories of getting fired, quitting, crazy co-workers and bosses, and anything else they want to share! Sometimes we have strangers call into the podcast who are unemployed and we give them a pep talk. It’s so much fun and it’s so interesting to hear about people’s journeys and how they handle times of unemployment. You don’t have to be unemployed to be on or listen to it! But if you are? Welcome to the club, we got you.

Hahaha wow I didn’t think this would make it into the questions! Love it. At the beginning of the pandemic I really wanted to buy all of the tie dye sweat suits I was being targeted on Instagram. The issue was I had no job then and they were all like $300. So, I was like, maybe I can just do this myself. I am very crafty and I draw and stuff. I knew I could do it. So I tested out a few different sweatshirts for material, and found the one I like, and I made myself some stuff! Then I made my mom a sweatsuit, and my sister, and before I knew it people were asking if I was doing this for other people. So I thought it has to be called Anna Dyed because that’s just funny to me, and I made a little instagram @AnnaDyed and I take orders through DM. I can only do so many at once because I live in a small apartment in Brooklyn. So I do them as a “drop” and fill the orders. It’s been too cold to dye now and I duno how much longer I’ll love the trend, but maybe I’ll do some fun pieces this spring?! We shall see…

The future is something I try not to think to hard about. If there’s anything I’ve learned from this year, it’s that anything can be swept up from under you. So I try to make sure I have multiple projects going at once, and I pray that some of them will sell and get made!!! I’d love to plug a few things – please check out the podcast!!! “Unemployed with Anna Roisman” wherever you get podcasts! Subscribe to it, and I promise you’ll find something you love about it. Also you can watch me hosting HQ Trivia or HQ Words on Wednesday nights at 9pm ET where you can win money. Lastly, my boyfriend Jared and I have produced a bunch of shot-for-shot movie parodies in the pandemic that we’re really proud of. We did The Notebook in our bathtub. It was insane and almost broke us up! The latest one is the movie Seven, but we called ours Eight. So definitely check them out, alongside my soup recipes all on my Instagram: @AnnaRoisman.

The last thing that made me smile was this sour cream & onion dip I made to go with a bag of kettle chips. Remember sour cream and onion dip? I’m talkin’ the shitty like powder kind. It’s glorious and it made me smile, and that’s important to remember nowadays!!!