On Tuesday, October 6th, 2026, Angela Giarratana visits Northern Michigan University and sits down with a freshman student who is a member of the university’s events group to talk everything from creative process, to imposter syndrome. She spoke for a packed crowd of about 1,000 attendees – a fully sold out house.

Some highlights from Angela’s advice throughout the evening. (For the question portions, Angela took the time to very thoughtfully answer each one, and I’ve attempted to transcribe, rote, what she responded):

1. A student asks: “How do I deal with rejection?”
   Angela answers:
   “Don’t go into it expecting rejection. The rejection hasn’t happened yet. What you should do is get a good support system and take care of your body in the meantime and just know that it will be okay. Plan for what you’ll do if it doesn’t work out, and plan for what you’ll do if it does work out, also. Just be open to other avenues. We aren’t going to worry the whole time about the rejection. Just plan and be open to other avenues if it doesn’t work out.”

2. Angela talks about game changers in socializing, networking, and championing others.
“In my twenties, I started going out and doing the social things I didn’t want to do. Like, I always wanted to go to the movies and say hi afterwards *Angela gets up and exemplifies the freeze experience she’d have* and it’s just going up and saying hi to people afterward and not acting like they’re big name stars. A lot of my friends are huge names in comedy, and we just …still hang out. Like I went to the Dropout Auditorium and I was literally just invited; I wasn’t there for a show; one of my friends invited me. And it’s this huge auditorium back behind the Dropout studio. And I wanted to just stay home and rest, safe and alone, but I went. And so it’s sometimes just going to grilled cheese night at Dropout.”
“Just talk to people and lead with yes. Be safe and be careful with iffy projects; talk about it with your safe, trusted circle, and don’t take super iffy ones. But just lead with yes. Like, I took a kind of iffy, tiny role in some dinosaur film and that’s where I met Jaime Lynn Beatty, one of the original StarKid cast. And then when Mariah Rose Faith took a role in Mean Girls and had to drop out– if you don’t know she’s an actress and she was playing this role in a StarKid show and she dropped out to take a big role in Mean Girls — and it was Jaime who mentioned me and put my name in the room and I ended up taking this role as a depressed, stoned, teenager. *crowd goes absolutely wild* So it’s just leading with ‘Yes’.”
“I just talk to people and say yes and then we work together and that’s how you make connections, and then they bring my name into rooms, and then I bring their name into rooms. And sometimes, people only want you to succeed until it gets in their way. *crowd agrees* Because they want the spotlight, but really there’s not just that one spotlight, but they’re afraid of not being the best. They want the best spotlight, as if it’s a competition, when really we’re all side by side. And we just have to help each other and bring each other into rooms because there are enough spots, even if it doesn’t feel like it. And it doesn’t feel like that a lot of the time. But we have to remind ourselves that there isn’t just one spotlight, even though we feel like that’s the case. We just have to keep wanting the best for each other and lift each other up instead of competing, because there is enough room for all of us, no matter what it feels like in that moment. One of my best friends is on SNL *crowd cheers* but I can’t let that make me not cheer him on and want him to succeed. We need to want each other to succeed.
It’s not a competition and it makes me sad that like, when I used to do sketch, we all really competed with each other, trying to push each other out of the spotlight, because we wanted to be the best sketch team in the house, and we wanted the spotlight. But we have to just realize that we all are always going to just share it. There isn’t one spotlight, even if we really feel like there is.”

3. “If you want to get into the industry, be a PA – that’s a Production Assistant – and they do the worst jobs on set, but they’re on set. Like, I did a ton of short films with my friends right out of college, and we were working with someone who was a set designer, and I was a PA, and literally, our job was to take out the trash. And when you rent out homes for short films, you can’t always use their trash, so you gotta just take the trash – but you have to drive it. In your car. That’s why you see so many “no dumping” signs now, because we were young, twenty-something PAs with all this trash in our backseats, making our cars disgusting with all this crafty and catering from lunch just absolutely all over our back seats, and we just didn’t know what to do with it, and we’d ask, and they’d be like, ‘I don’t know, you figure it out.’
And in college I was like, ‘I’m gonna get out of here and not know the difference between a lighting technician and a grip.’ Especially for us women, imposter syndrome is just so human and so natural. But you just gotta fake it til you make it! Fake it til you make it!”

4. A reiterated point that Angela said maybe 20 times: “Just do it with your friends.”

5. “In college, I always felt like I needed to be perfect or I couldn’t do it at all: to make the perfect joke or the perfect character, and then I learned, when I started working for Smosh, that honestly, the best stuff is when I’m messy and imperfect and just being myself. What people are looking for these days is genuineness and honesty, so when I’m myself, that’s when it does the best. And, yeah, sometimes that means looking ridiculous or stupid, because what you see on screen is just my reaction to what’s going on. And it’s like, it’s not a big crowd like this where you can see all the people you’re performing for. And this crowd is huge! I’m actually overwhelmed. Okay. But like, on the internet, it’s like this *holds her hand in front of her face* you have just like a few cameramen, and you don’t see the people you’re making the jokes for. They’re not in the room. So you- I don’t think to control an outburst like I would here. And that’s just natural, the way things go. But the internet is amazing like that. Anyone can just get on TikTok or Twitch and just put out a video and have tens of thousands of impressions from it. But I’d say just, it’s because I do it with friends – and that’s hard! It’s honestly the hardest thing to do it with people you like and are friends with, but it makes it genuine, and that’s what people are looking for in media these days, is genuineness and honesty, and when I’m myself and genuine, is when bits perform the best. When I’m trying it’s like, ‘yeah that wasn’t good’ but- and not everyone is that way! Some people are always just confident, like ‘yeah, I’m gonna be funny no matter what’ and they are! Like Shayne Topp *crowd cheers* is always confident and he is an incredible comedian. Some people, you meet them and you’re just like, ‘you don’t have one imposter-syndrome bone in your body, do you, girlie?” But you should do it with people who make you feel safe and make you feel like a kid, because that’s what will make it the best.”

6. Angela shares what makes the chemistry work:
“I’ve found that the best thing to do to make the onscreen bits work is to hang out outside of work. And that’s what we do. We all hang out outside of work.
When me and Chanse came to smosh *crowd cheers* we- Me and Chanse had a sketch team that we created together and we always, the whole team, would do our show and then go out afterward to eat and hang out, and we found that that’s what worked. It made it good. The better you know someone, the better you do on-stage with them. So when me and Chanse came to Smosh, and we were like, after our first day, were like, ‘Hey, can we cook for you guys? Let’s all hang out!’ and they were like, ‘…Umm, sure. When?’ And we were like, ‘how about tonight after the shoot day?’ and they just looked at us funny and said, ‘That’s not how we do things around here.’”

7. A student asks: “How do you rest with your busy schedule, or how do you handle being that busy?”
Angela answers: “Aw, thank you so much for asking! Umm, to be honest, I’m kind of in a place in my life where I have to reach burnout and then I know how to get out of it. Does that make sense? Like, burnout teaches me what I should maybe change so that I’m not not happy all the time.
What I like to do is, after months where I was very busy but not really happy, I look over my calendar and look at where I maybe did something that made me not happy, and then I look at what I can maybe clip off.
I also kind of have to trick myself into resting; I’ll add blocks – and I hate doing this – but I’ll add blocks to my calendar that are just nothing. I actually have one this Friday. And I’m always in my calendar, so I look at it and I’ll go ‘what’s that thing?’ and it’s just nothing. I just block off a chunk of time to rest and chill and take care of myself. I schedule it in and then I have that time, otherwise I’m just always in my calendar. Sometimes, we just have to trick ourselves into taking time off and resting.
I heard someone say once, and it’s so perfect: We need to schedule our priorities, not prioritize our schedule.”

8. Friend Groups & ‘Fake it til you make it’.
A student asks: “What do you do when you feel like you can’t take the character off backstage after the show?”
Angela answers: “Ooh, this is a good question. Let me think about this for a second so I can give a good answer. (one moment later) First, look inside of yourself and see where that pressure is coming from. Is it coming from them or is it fear? Because clearly there’s something in there that’s not feeling safe or is afraid. What I like to do when I feel this way, is I ask myself: ‘if I weren’t funny right now and I were just myself, would these people still hang out with me?’ and if the answer is no, then they aren’t my people, but if the answer is ‘yes; they would still hang out with me and I feel safe’ then, what I would say is ‘get over it’. And that’s SO much easier said than done! But if you have to not be yourself to be liked by them, then they aren’t your people and you should find new people. But if you look inside yourself and you realize ‘these people could like me if I were just myself’ then you gotta just tell yourself you’re the shit; you’re incredible; you’re amazing; you’re cool and just give it a chance. Just see if they would like you. Be yourself and see if they like you. You just have to try. And then if they don’t like you, find new people.

9. Angela teased a big huge new show at Smosh, and all she said (twice) was, “There’s a big new thing coming to Smosh, and it’s gonna be big. I’ll just tease that.”

10. “I’m going to start uploading more to my YouTube. I have some things that I’m going to be posting, and I’ll maybe post later this week? I don’t know. But they’re maybe crazy. And now that I have a following on YouTube, they can’t fail. And comments are always part of it, and if they hate it, then, that’s that.”

11. Angela mentioned a collab with Maya Higa and something about an animal cartoon. She teased nothing else about it, just, “I’m collaborating with Maya Higa” … “and I’m just like, let’s make a silly animal cartoon!” And that’s it!

I will try to add to this if I remember anymore big highlights. For now, I hope you enjoyed a tiny overview of this roughly hour-and-a-half interview. Ang even got up for a second and switched places with the interviewer as a bit and asked her a question!

The crowd loved Angela, there were so many people that lined up to ask questions and not everybody got to, but the room was alive and awake and so excited for Angela to be there and Angela told the crowd that they were so sweet for being there; a very supportive crowd warmly welcomed Angela. The roaring sounded so thunderous, I’m surprised the roof stayed on.

Anyhow, Michigan did a pretty good job showing you how loved you are, Angela, and I hope the crowd blessed you just as much as you blessed us all with your heart, wit, and wisdom. Thank you for making our lives better 🩵

Take care, y’all! And remember to get out there! And share the podium, we’re not in a competition ❤️