A Glowing Star
Alison Brie is a natural in front of the camera. She shines brightest when on TV like in her popular shows Community, Mad Men, and GLOW, but don’t underestimate her in film either. This year she wrote the screenplay for the chilling Horse Girl and starred in holiday rom-com Happiest Season.
Alison Brie was born on December 29, 1982 in Hollywood, California to Joanne Brenner, a worker at a non-profit child care agency, and Charles Terry Schermerhorn, a musician and entertainment reporter. Brie always knew she wanted to be an actress; as a child she would often put on performances for her family and would take part in drama and acting classes. Her very first known acting role was as Toto in The Wizard of Oz, where she performed at the Jewish Community Center’s theater in Los Feliz, California. She graduated high school in 2001 and then got her BFA in acting at California Institute of the Arts. She pursued a further education at Royal Scottish Academy of Music and Drama in Glasgow, Scotland.
Her first on-screen appearance was in the popular Disney Channel show Hannah Montana in a 2006 episode. She then landed her first movie role in Born (2007), a horror flick about a 21-year-old virgin who wakes up pregnant with a demonic fetus. Brie has since laughed about this role, referring to it as “totally hilarious, like so bad it’s a good horror movie.”
However, even though she was only cast in two roles that weren’t necessarily impressive, Brie managed to land one of the most important roles of her career as Trudy Campbell in the long-running TV series Mad Men. The show lasted from 2007 to 2015, with Brie appearing in every season as the recurring character. She played the housewife of Pete Campbell, an account executive at an esteemed ad agency during 1960s New York City. She originally was only supposed to appear in one episode, but the producers loved her so much that she became a mainstay character. “Mad Men was meant to be one episode, with the possibility of becoming a recurring character,” Brie said. “I was like, ‘That’s fine, I’m excited.’ But by the end of that episode, they had asked me to come back for the next. Then I did every season of the show.”
About two years into filming Mad Men, Brie picked up another life-changing opportunity: she was cast as Annie Edison, an overachieving student at a community college in the NBC show Community. The show began filming in 2009 and didn’t end until 2015. Brie was simultaneously juggling these two very different roles on two successful shows. As composed wife Trudy in Mad Men she was “silent and professional” but then as Annie on Community she was “jumping around making fart jokes.” But still, even while being immensely busy filming two shows, Brie found time for much, much more. She starred in small movies occasionally, such as 2011’s Scream 4 and 2012’s The Five-Year Engagement.
Her personal life was also keeping her occupied, as she had just begun dating actor Dave Franco, brother of James Franco of 127 Hours, Pineapple Express, The Interview, and more. Dave Franco was also an actor trying to get noticed at the time, having starred in Superbad, Fright Night, and as a recurring role in the TV show Scrubs. Brie and Franco met in March of 2011 while at Mardi Gras, where they were introduced through mutual friends. “[My friend] had invited him out to dinner with us there …. he was sitting next to her across the table and … my friend texts me under the table and was like, ‘You should hook up with Dave.’” Brie responded with “Yes please” and the rest is history! It didn’t take long for the two lovebirds to tie the knot—in August of 2015 they got engaged and then in March of 2017 they were married in a private ceremony.
The two are inseparable and have since worked on three films together. The first was 2017’s The Little Hours, which is about three emotionally unstable nuns fighting to resist temptation. The two then appeared together as love interests in The Disaster Artist, James Franco’s film about The Room star Tommy Wiseau. This year, Alison Brie starred in Dave Franco’s directorial debut, The Rental, a horror flick about two couples that rent a vacation home when things start to go wrong. Although Franco himself didn’t star in the film, he wrote and directed it.
“…BEING ON SET WITH [DAVE] WAS JUST, I CAN’T EXPRESS QUITE HOW MUCH IT WAS THE MOST WONDERFUL EXPERIENCE FOR THE TWO OF US—IT WAS A NEW WAY FOR US TO COLLABORATE CREATIVELY TOGETHER,” BRIE SHARED.
Besides working with her hubby through film, Brie has also seen additional success in the area of TV. After finishing up with the fruitful shows Mad Men and Community in 2015, she jumped right back into television with BoJack Horseman and GLOW. Bojack is an animated Netflix show about a failed ‘90s sitcom star, who just happens to be part-human, part-horse, trying to make a legendary comeback in Hollywood. Brie plays Bojack’s ghostwriter, Diane Nguyen.
GLOW, which first premiered in 2017 and ended in 2019, consisted of three seasons and centered around the personal and professional lives of a group of women who perform for a wrestling organization in Los Angeles during the 1980s. Brie played Ruth Wilder, a struggling actress who eventually gets hired as a wrestler for The Gorgeous Ladies of Wrestling. Brie was nominated for two Golden Globes for her work on the show.
“I FEEL TOTALLY DIFFERENT AS A PERSON SINCE WORKING ON GLOW. THE SHOW HAS BEEN COMPLETELY EMPOWERING…IT’S OPENED ME UP IN A LOT OF WAYS AND ALSO SORT OF RELAXED ME AND SETTLED ME INTO MY OWN POWER. AND IT’S ALL BEEN VERY EXCITING!” BRIE EXCLAIMED ABOUT THE SHOW.
Unfortunately, Netflix cancelled GLOW after season 3 largely due to the COVID-19 pandemic, but Brie remains “forever grateful to my GLOW family for changing my life forever,” as she posted on her Instagram.
This year though, Brie hasn’t let the pandemic stop her drive as she has released four films, with the last one having debuted last month! One of the highlights was February’s Horse Girl, which was Brie’s first time writing a screenplay. Horse Girl follows Sarah, a socially isolated woman that finds her increasingly lucid dreams trickling into her waking life. The movie comments on mental health and what could happen when people don’t have the resources needed to get better. It was partially inspired by Brie’s childhood, as she grew up with a grandma suffering from schizophrenia. “My grandmother thought that the house was bugged and that her children were spies…She was medicated by a doctor who gave her uppers to wake up in the morning and downers to go to bed,” Brie explained.
Despite the sensitive and emotional material, Brie thoroughly enjoyed getting to write a screenplay for the first time. She was inspired to do so by hubby Dave Franco’s writing of The Rental. “Horse Girl is an idea I’ve probably had in my head for 10 years, but I felt so self-conscious about saying it aloud to anyone. I started to take control of my own career, which is a little bit addictive,” Brie said.
Happiest Season, which just debuted in theaters on November 25, is Brie’s latest film. It’s a holiday rom-com featuring other esteemed actors Dan Levy, Aubrey Plaza, Kristen Stewart, and Mackenzie Davis. Its premise revolves around a young woman with a plan to propose to her girlfriend while at her family’s annual holiday party, only to discover her partner hasn’t yet come out to her conservative parents yet.
With an undeniably intense work ethic and an easygoing demeanor, Brie is an absolute joy to watch on screen. Be sure to keep up with the talented actress to catch her in even more fantastic projects!
By Selene Rivera