Funny Story
I tried to break into acting for years. I auditioned for everything and sold shoes or bartended to get by. Then I blew up on YouTube
IN 2008 , when I was 18, I decided I wanted to become an actor. I’d been the improv captain at my high school and acted in school plays, and I loved the idea of making people laugh. So I turned down an engineering scholarship and moved from Calgary to Toronto to go to acting school. When I told my parents, both accountants, that I wanted to pursue the arts, my mother said, “If you think you’ll love it every day, that’s what you should do.”
I got an acting degree from York, found an agent and started auditioning. When I was 21, I landed my first paid gig, playing an interviewee in a mock trial for a law school. I made $110 and used the money to buy a Tiffany bracelet to commemorate the moment. I didn’t need to become famous—I just wanted to make a living as an artist.
Sadly, that gig turned out to be an anomaly. I auditioned once or twice a week, usually for one-liners in shows like Rookie Blue or Suits, but couldn’t get my foot in the door. I would study each role, present myself in front of casting directors and respond to prompts like Show us your hands. How much do you weigh? How old are you? Then I’d wait for callbacks that never came. I had a good agent, but when months of fruitless auditioning turned into years, he dropped me. I couldn’t blame him, but it hurt.
Still desperate to make it, I enrolled in expensive acting classes, which I funded by moonlighting as a customer service rep at the now-defunct Nike store in Yorkville and as a bartender at Scallywags in midtown. I worked long hours, but money was tight. I saved on rent by living in an apartment near Black Creek with a bad cockroach infestation. Meanwhile, I stashed all my cash tips in my freezer and put them toward more acting classes.
By 2014, I’d run out of money, but I refused to quit. I believed I’d eventually find a way to make a living doing what I loved. Around that time, I started dating Samuel Larson, a director who was also struggling to find work. We thought, If nobody will hire us, maybe there’s something we can make together. “YouTuber” was not a common term at the time, let alone a career. There was a stigma in the acting world about being a YouTube creator because it signalled that you couldn’t make it the traditional way, but I had nothing to lose.
Sam and I started making videos every week, with him behind the camera and me in front of it. The channel wasn’t lucrative: we earned just enough in ad revenue to sustain it. To supplement our income, I got a corporate job at a private equity firm, and Sam worked for a video production company that filmed commercials. We also took on a variety of other video projects. It was an exhausting few years.
By 2016, we’d landed enough creative work to quit our day jobs. We spent the next two years posting videos and growing our channel to 50,000 subscribers, but we struggled to find something that really stuck. Finally, in April of 2020, we caught a break. In our series “Explaining the Pandemic to My Past Self,” I tell a pre-pandemic version of myself what’s in store for the spring. Making it was like tap dancing through laser beams. I was thinking, How can I bring comedy to a situation where people are losing their jobs and even their lives? I was stepping outside of my comfort zone, addressing serious themes like illness and, later in the series, racial injustice and vaccine hesitancy. But the reaction was huge. People were looking for something to make them laugh, and it resonated with them. That first video racked up more than 21 million views, and the series catapulted the channel to a new level: we shot up from 50,000 subscribers to 700,000 in nine months. I didn’t know what going viral would be like, but it felt amazing.
Eventually, someone from the CBC reached out and asked me to write for a not-yet-greenlit show that eventually became Run the Burbs. When it got picked up, I auditioned for—and landed—the role of Sam. It was a full-circle moment, and it made me realize that the perception around YouTube had changed. Now, casting directors want to hire actors who already have audiences because it brings more attention to their shows. That exposure completely transformed my financial reality. As a member of the YouTube Partner Program, I earn a percentage of ad revenue from my videos. I make enough to run the channel and help support my family. Last year, we bought a house in Dovercourt Village. We also had our first child, and I was able to take a two-and-a-half-month maternity leave. Our channel has become a real business: an incorporated company with accountants, taxes and overhead.
I’m encouraged by the culture shift around online creators. Breaking into acting is incredibly tough—only five people in my graduating class at York, which started with 100 students, are working actors. So many talented Canadian actors decamp to the States because they can’t make a living here. I’m glad that my channel allowed me to stay in Toronto and tell Canadian stories and that I didn’t give up on myself when it felt like every door was closing on me. I don’t think I’ll have to work at a bar or a shoe store ever again. Making my own content was always the dream—I just needed time to realize it.
I saved on rent by living in a cockroachinfested apartment