Profile No. 7: Mary-Alice
MA: First Tik Tok, then E News, now Best of Grinder - I’m going places girl!
We are referring to Mary Alice’s video, “Meryl Streep in Devil Wears Prada sequel” being reposted by E News.
What has been the biggest change you’ve seen in your audience?
Just having an audience now. I had about six thousand followers but it was five hundred actual people I knew who engaged - and that was really it. And now I have these people who are comedy fans! Who are coming to my page! They’re combing through all my old stuff and appreciating it and engaging with it. And that is such a burst for me. I’ve been joking about this now for years! YEARS! How I would make these videos for no one, but I wouldn’t ever stop. So that’s the big difference; having people. It was like, Field Of Dreams before - this baseball field of no one. But now people are coming!
We kind of have to give kudos to E News for shouting you out like that too. A lot of big companies will just rip artists off their own work - but they promoted you!
It was all thanks to this one woman. She works for E and combs through Tik Tok and finds people. I wrote her after the fact - after I woke up to ten thousand instagram followers! Literally. I wrote to her and was like, “You just gave me my first break in this entire business. I’ve been making these videos for years and no one has ever cared. You’ve changed my life. Thank You.”
That must be a fun job too. Searching through Tik Tok and then changing peoples lives.
Support and spread the love - that’s what she did and it’s friggin’ awesome!
Mary Alice Farina is an absolute beacon of light and merriment. When MAF walks into a room, you are immediately struck by her dramatic entrance, followed by a radiant smile and laugh which lights up her gorgeous face, to then be laughing yourself as she can have anyone in stitches within a minute. She holds a Masters in French and Comparative Literature from Columbia University — But we’re not here to talk about that - this is Hollywood people! We talk TikTok. Two weeks ago an E News social media manager found Mary Alice’s character impersonation of Miranda Priestly telling people to wear a mask and reposted it to their instagram account. It went viral and Mary Alice woke up to her follower count at 16k. We talk about the journey as a performer in Hollywood and what it feels like to have a break, as well as comedy, discipline and drive. This is something that every person living in LA or NYC or London, Vancouver, Toronto - every performer can relate to what she tells herself every day…
To keep hope alive. Stick with it even when you think there is “no way”. When there is no movement — do it anyway. That was kind of this reckoning I had during quarantine. If I’m not doing this for it’s own sake - if I’m doing this for likes and recognition - there’s no point. And there isn’t much of an industry now! So it’s even less of a point now because there’s not many jobs. And that didn’t come naturally. I thought to myself, “Maybe I don’t even want to be an actor.” I had to sit down and write lists about why I love this and what I get out of making fun videos. Just doing stuff for it’s own sake when there doesn’t seem to be any recognition for what you’re doing. I honestly gave up on getting anywhere in this career - I know that sounds really dark!
How long ago was that?
A month or two ago. I told my acting class, “You guys, I think I’m gonna have to do this a third of the time, because it’s just so crazy for me to think it’s gonna go anywhere.” And maybe that’s a darkest-before-the-dawn thing. Stuff happens when you stop having this death grip on it - and you just let it go. Which people have been telling me forever - but you have to go through enough despair and lows to get to that point to be like - EFF IT! SCREW THIS! Unfortunately it is just so grueling. It just feels amazing to feel something shift after just - ugh - so many days where I just thought nothing would ever happen. But it can. Everything can shift in just a week. Suddenly people can care about what you’re doing.
Now that you have an expanded audience, has that changed your work?
It’s been kind of a roller coaster. I’ll go through a little moment where I’ll be like bam-bam put stuff out! Then other moments where I’m completely paralyzed. Where I start thinking, this isn’t the beginning of something cool, it was just a flash in the pan, I’m gonna lose everyones attention and nothings gonna happen so I better make the next great masterpiece! You know what I mean?
Not dramatic at all. The pressure!
Like - if this isn’t a massive hit no one is ever going to come to see my stuff again. So yes it’s been a little up and down.
I’m trying to adopt - thinking about working on social media. I need to remember it’s a persona. I’m creating even the character of this person who is an impressionist, a writer and vaguely glamorous. That’s this persona I want to put out there. It doesn’t have to do with who I am, which is a helpful separation. I’m playing this character - that’s what people want. That’s all they want! This consistency of knowing what they can expect from you. And giving them that. Being consistent and simple. The particularity of the medium has made more sense to me lately. It doesn’t matter who you are -you don’t have to solve racism or post something about it every day or you’re a bad person. {Mary Alice has been very active in the BLM movement as a peaceful protester} That’s not what people are coming to me for. Quite frankly - no one really cares what I have to say about my masters paper - that’s not how I can move the needle actually! If I channel the issues I care about into my comedy, I can move the needle, with satire. That’s been an aha moment. I’m an entertainer!
When did you have this revolution? That you can combine the two to move the needle?
I’ve kind of been doing that subconsciously in everything, it’s always been there. But I haven’t thought about it that much - I just can’t help myself from not making things topical and political - as much as I try not to in a way! It was almost like a dialing down of my actual impulse to make it seem like I’m hitting you over the head with it. I had to make it accessible. And I like doing characters; Oh - do I dare try this Meryl Streep thing? Everyone likes that movie! So it wasn’t quite cerebral but an experiment. I get a lot of ideas from reading the paper, that’s my most fun and productive way to get characters going. This was something I tried and it worked.
What made you fall into your character work?
I’ve always loved doing impressions and character work. When I started at Groundlings back in 2015 when I first moved here {LA} their emphasis is really on character. You never walk into an improv scene without character. You have a literal change of voice, a literal point of view that I filter everything through and a physically - that’s every single Groundlings scene. But I wanted to be better at it, so I do my 30 days of characters every October because it teaches me so much each time!
So you do this every October?
Yeah. Although some have been more successful than others. Always at least twenty! I definitely do it to get better.
How does that discipline make a change in your art? Did it push you forward as an artist?
Absolutely. Of course there’s a lot of craft and technique knowledge gained if you’re forcing yourself to do it every day. And then making a video; sometimes you have a lightning bolt idea where it takes you one hour to shoot and edit. But most days it’s like, three hours to shoot and eight to edit - it’s an all day thing! But when you’re dong it every day - first of all if I’m making myself post every day I had to let go of making it perfect. Some of them were just not good but I knew I had to post for the discipline of it. Letting go might be the most important thing for me. Then a million little craft things; how I look on camera, what I’m conveying. Because I’m editing myself! When you’re editing yourself constantly you learn how to work the frame because you’re seeing exactly what you’re doing. Watching yourself in playback all the time which can be maddening of course! But they are my videos and I have complete control.
I’ve learned if I put a wig on - I get the character from the outfit. A shirt, hat, wig; it brings out the character rather than having some idea. A lot of the times if it starts from an intellectual idea - it’s not very funny. It’s way more fun when starting from the look, then the body and then find the point of view.
In my acting class my teacher would say, “If your head comes up with an idea - forget the idea.” Because it just ends up controlling everything around it. It cripples the actual creativity and expansion of this “person”.
I always say that it’s {30 days of character} been the best thing I’ve done since being in LA. You have to give yourself challenges.
It’s like writers! They make themselves sit down every day and just write even if they don’t know what they’re writing. Or basketball players practices free throws every day. It’s the same thing.
What do you find is a big difference between men in comedy versus women in comedy? I imagine Groundlings is pretty even keeled in the sense, you need men and you need women and you have to work together but I’ve heard terrible stories - more in the stand up world - for women. Did you ever feel out of place and have to rewire your mindset?
I will say thank goodness I haven’t had any traumatizing experiences. But that’s also because I came into it late. I was already in my thirties. I’ve been a fan of comedy forever and going to comedy shows! But I never did stand up for the exact reason you just cited. I knew I didn’t have a tough enough skin to deal with creeps that dominate the stand up world. Even though I loved it. Not to be too judgmental. It can be those things though.
Improv is different. It is still white-straight-male dominated. But not teeming with creeps - from experience. The sensibility of it is very male, the whole idea of what is considered funny is very male. The biggest difference between men and women there, is women aren’t as confident because the guys just - fit in. They all just fit in! Right away - in a way women don’t.
The only difficult moment I had was with a teacher once. For sure she had my best intentions at heart and she gave me really great feedback - but she was hard on me. It broke me! In this way that probably needed to happen - but that stuff doesn’t happen to men in the same way. Even when you have a female mentor, they’ve been through so much to get where they are in the comedy world that they’re so hard on girls because they know you have to be so tough to get to where you are. Ultimately I’m glad she was tough on me because it made me better - but I did have to take two years away from another school because I was scared to go back! I don’t resent it though.
You know it makes sense that these female comedians stick together. I think of Tina Fey, Maya Rudolph, Amy Poehler… they created a posse and a safe space after I imagine having to go through loads of bullshit in this male dominated space. And they are wildly successful! Like - look fifty percent of the world is women so we find female comedy funny!
I have a group of women and we started doing shows together in January. That group of women is literally changing my life. When we did our show together I was like, this is it - this is what I’ve been waiting for. Our show got to be just what we think is funny - and it was so freaking fun to do that! We all clicked, no drama, just so much fun and the best show I’ve ever been a part of. We have a text thread where we support each other and they are all popping off - not just me! That group of women changed the game for me. And you need that!
People who came to our show were like, “This is the funniest sketch show I’ve ever seen!” I don’t know if that’s true or not as it came from our friends — But! I have a suspicion that it was funnier than any other show they’ve seen because it was a different perspective. Because it was all girls.
And it was real and relatable! Well this is so exciting. You’re so hilarious and your comedy is fresh and unique and so much fun to watch! To see you get that break - everyone was just so excited because you need a bigger audience and everyone needs to see what you’re doing! Thank you for chatting with me.
You SHOULD follow Mary Alice on Instagram here.
