Comedian Julia Lindon, AB ’13, crosses effortlessly from writing to television production to podcasting to, most recently, acting and filmmaking. Her latest project, Lady Liberty, is a TV pilot inspired by her own ‘coming-of-age and coming out’ experiences in New York City. It is now streaming on Omeleto. She has also appeared in the Comedy Central TV show Detroiters and the New York Times featured her in its Sunday Routine column. Looking back, she says she did a lot to develop her comedy while at WashU.
“While I was a student, I went back to New York to intern with The Daily Show. Later I made my capstone project at WashU similar to a Daily Show field piece, where correspondents create humorous pieces based on real news item. There was a study published in 2011 that said nice people don’t go as far in their careers. I took the angle that everyone at WashU was so nice, and we should stop being so nice because we were not going to get good high-paying jobs. It was fun to include what I was doing in New York with what I was studying at WashU.”
“After my internship, I joined the page program at NBC [similar to 30 Rock’s character Kenneth the Page]. I had always loved Saturday Night Live so working at the page desk and giving tours was a dream come true. It also gave me the opportunity to meet Jason Sudeikis, who had just left SNL. I became his assistant and was mentored by him the next three years.”
“My latest project, Lady Liberty, has been meaningful because it’s a personal story where I play a younger version of myself. It’s a way to have people share in the heart and humor of coming out. It’s something people are connecting with and seeing themselves in. We’ve been meeting with production companies with the goal of turning it into a full television series.”
“WashU is something I love; my summer camp [Camp Walden in Maine] is another organization I love. Each summer, for my podcast Happy Campers, we [Lindon and co-host Sammy Moskowitz] take road trips to profile camps around the country and bring to light everyone’s stories. People think their camp experience was the best, but the podcast is about the fact that everyone’s camp experience is worthy of celebration.”
