We’re excited to introduce you to the always interesting and insightful Emma Pope. We hope you’ll enjoy our conversation with Emma below.

Emma, appreciate you joining us today. If you could go back in time do you wish you had started your creative career sooner or later?

I think about this question a lot! There is a big part of me that wishes I had started my performance/comedy career earlier in life. For the record, I started doing improv when I was about 24, and moved to Chicago the day after my 26th birthday to study and perform at the theaters there. After 11 years in Chicago, just before turning 37, I moved to LA,

The messaging within our youth-obsessed culture (especially pointed in Los Angeles) has played a big part in my fear of aging out or being too old to accomplish my dreams. The other part has to do with my own fictional narrative of what I would have been capable of had I been clear about my goals and desires super young. I was incredibly shy growing up, self-conscious of taking up too much space or voicing my wants at all. If I hadn’t felt that way, if I hadn’t been waiting to be “asked” to join in on the fun, would I be much further along in my career today?

I’m in the process of challenging that narrative, and there are some key points that have been helpful to focus on. The first is simply that I don’t actually know what would have happened if I had done things differently. There are no guarantees in alternate universes.

I also want to honor my younger selves by trusting that I did the best I could at my various different ages. If I wasn’t emotionally ready, or mentally strong enough to push myself into the world of auditioning, rejection, bad shows, bad reviews, I must’ve known that on some level and acted accordingly. My slow step into the world of comedy feels protective, and I’m glad for the protection it gave me, and thankful to be here now.

Lastly, a creative career path is not linear. Being “farther along” is a construct that makes sense on road trips, not when you’re working in the arts. I would like to push myself to enjoy the personal successes (making cool card for a friend, taking a painting class, making someone laugh during a tough moment) as much as the big scale, public ones. When I think like this, there’s no end goal, and there are not stairs that only go in one direction. The path is winding and changes all the time.

Great, appreciate you sharing that with us. Before we ask you to share more of your insights, can you take a moment to introduce yourself and how you got to where you are today to our readers.

I am a comedian/actor/writer, and as with a lot of creatives, I wear many hats. I love acting. I love getting cast in a role and having the chance to dig into that character and move around in their skin. I currently play a nurse on NBC’s newest comedy “St. Denis Medical,” and she’s grumpy as heck, which is a blast. The biggest compliment I can think of it “I wrote a part and it has to be played by you.”

One of my favorite things to do is create characters that I write for and perform as. This comes in the form of improv shows, comedic videos on social media, web series, live character performances, among other things. Coming up in the Chicago comedy scene, ensemble work was so important, so I love collaborating with other creative and funny people to bring something heartfelt to life with comedy.

My background is in improv and sketch, which gives me the ability to find what’s funny about a situation, and stay flexible about where it goes. I’ve been hired to create comedic videos for companies- either as ads or internal training, or sometimes straight up for social media.

I’m really proud of the audience I’ve built on social media over the last few years, just by making videos that make me happy. I get to play characters that illuminate the many sides of who I am, and humanize even the strangest of behaviors. People responding to it has been the icing on the cake.

Any insights you can share with us about how you built up your social media presence?

During the height of lockdown, I taught myself to edit videos using iMovie. I tend to resist learning new skills because of the discomfort of being *bad* at first, but the fish tank life of quarantine forced me to step out of my comfort zone and try some new stuff. I loved the response that I got on that first video, but more than that, I loved the video itself. I still watch it and it still makes me laugh. So that’s my north star on these things.

I also love being able to comment on my world/feelings/politics through character and comedy, and I find the solo endeavor of these videos means I can go as slowly or as quickly as my creativity allows. I’m really grateful for the reminder that you can try something, see what happens, and then try something else. I feel like I’ve learned (for real) that my ideas are infinite, and another will always come along.

My audience on social media has grown a lot over the last few years (not without thanks to collaborations with great friends like Rachel Samples and Aliki), and I keep being reminded of that first lesson: I have to love the video myself first. So that’s my advice there- you have to love it. People may or may not respond, but that’s not up to you.

In your view, what can society to do to best support artists, creatives and a thriving creative ecosystem?

Free, quality healthcare.

I think needing health insurance is one of the biggest reasons people need to stay in or join jobs that make them unhappy and suck the creativity out of their eyeballs. We live in a society that values creativity when it earns big money, but other than that- it’s seen as a disposable hobby.

Without the time and space to move through your days creatively, life really feels more like survival.

Contact Info:

• Website: https://www.emmapope.com
• Instagram: @emmerpope
• Facebook: Emma Pope
• Twitter: @emmerpope
• Youtube: Emma Pope

Image Credits

5) photo of my sitting on stage- taken by Monique Hernandez

Other performer in (8) is Nnamdi Nngwe