Leah Rudick: A Wealth of Comedy

Con­tin­u­ing on with our fan­tas­tic Moon­tow­er Just For Laughs Austin 2023 series, we sat down with actor, writer, and come­di­an, Leah Rudick. After spend­ing a short amount of time with Rudick, I was left with the impres­sion that she might’ve been vot­ed ​“Most Like­ly to Win an EGOT,” in her grad­u­at­ing class. 

Rudick has the poise of Anne Hath­away, but with the like­abil­i­ty of Tom Han­ks (don’t come at me, Anne, I’m just say­ing she’s very nice). Her dis­arm­ing charm, paired with a major sense of who she is and what she wants out of a career, give you the sense that she’s an unstop­pable force. A force that quick­ly rose to become a Tik­Tok sen­sa­tion in recent years. Some of her Tik­Tok videos have gar­nered views top­ping 1 to 2 mil­lion. To Rudick’s fans that obsess over her char­ac­ters like The Goose and Wealthy Woman her star­dom prob­a­bly seems like it came out of the blue, but that rise was paved with years, a life­time, even, of hard work and dedication.

Born in Youngstown, Ohio, Rudick grew up in Cincin­nati. She had a keen sense that she want­ed to act, start­ing as ear­ly as ele­men­tary school. She act­ed in ele­men­tary school plays, then high school the­ater, and joined the per­func­to­ry dra­ma club, With this lev­el of com­mit­ment, you would­n’t be sur­prised to learn she was the Pres­i­dent of the dra­ma club would you? Per­form­ing felt like a nat­ur­al fit. Rudick describes, ​“I just I knew from a very young age that I want­ed to per­form. I did­n’t know that com­e­dy would be the route I would go, but I knew that I want­ed to be onstage per­form­ing.” Despite being incred­i­bly shy child, Rudick remem­bers feel­ing that spark adding, ​“I was very, very intro­vert­ed and for what­ev­er rea­son, I dis­cov­ered at a very young age, that being onstage was the thing that brought me out of my shell.” 

After grad­u­a­tion, Rudick con­tin­ued that pur­suit, mov­ing to New York City to study the­ater at Sarah Lawrence Col­lege, just out­side the city. Soon she land­ed in Brook­lyn where she con­tin­ued pur­su­ing dra­mat­ic act­ing (insert the prover­bial starv­ing artist wait­ress job in between audi­tions imagery in your mind here). Born out of her time in col­lege, Rudick formed a strong sketch duo with best friend, Katie Hart­man. She still want­ed the seri­ous act­ing roles, but sketch com­e­dy pro­vid­ed that beau­ti­ful auton­o­my to cre­ate with­out bound­aries. New York brought many suc­cess­es, includ­ing the web series Made to Order, but as many actors dis­cov­er, Los Ange­les is where the act­ing roles hap­pen. After ten years and a lot of act­ing expe­ri­ence, Rudick and her hus­band moved to LA. 

Act­ing was still her prized pur­suit, yet that cre­ative com­e­dy itch was still very much ris­ing to the sur­face and after hav­ing such an amaz­ing sketch part­ner in New York, the thought of try­ing to recre­ate that with some­one new seemed fruit­less. Enter stand up com­e­dy. No stranger to the art­form, Rudick’s broth­er Andrew is a stand up com­ic. She made a plan and put it into action: tak­ing a (gasp!) class and get­ting stage time both in LA and dur­ing vis­its back home in Cincin­nati. Already com­fort­able on the stage, Rudick had an edge on a lot of new comics. 

Cut to the end of the pan­dem­ic (don’t we wish that had been an option), Rudick’s broth­er encour­ages her to get on Tik­Tok and she reluc­tant­ly agrees. From her days in sketch, char­ac­ter work was a nat­ur­al skill in her toolk­it. Her char­ac­ters (Love Coach, Mom, and Wealthy Woman to name a few) start to go viral and the rest is his­to­ry. Rudick uses viral clips to help pro­mote her standup tours and might even throw in a few char­ac­ters in her sets to keep the hard­core fans appeased. Wealthy Woman might just be the mod­ern day Free­bird. Now very much a stand up, as much as an actress, Leah Rudick does some shows along­side broth­er Andrew on the Rudick Sib­lings tour. They also start­ed a new pod­cast, The Rudicks Are Home. She has a spe­cial, Every­thing is Fine! out on Seed & Spark stream­ing plat­form and a new spe­cial on the way.

To hear Rudick talk about her career path, you would think it was an easy breezy time, but she’ll share the strug­gles along the way, if asked (remem­ber: poised, charm­ing, and lik­able). Those strug­gles seem to be lost in the focus of her long-held dream of per­for­mance … just the cost of chas­ing your vision. Lucky for us, that chase took a detour down the com­e­dy road. 

A spe­cial thank you to Omnipop Tal­ent Group

Fol­low Leah

• Web­site — www​.leahru​dick​.com
• Tik­Tok — @leahrudick
• Twit­ter — LeahRu­dick
• Insta­gram — @leah_rudick
• Youtube
  • Leah — Youtube​.com/​@​l​e​a​h​_​r​udick
  • The Rudicks are Home Pod­cast — Youtube​.com/​@​t​h​e​r​u​d​i​c​k​s​a​r​ehome
  • Made to Order Web Series — Youtube​.com/​@​S​k​i​n​n​y​B​J​e​s​u​s​M​e​eting

Leah can be seen and heard:

• Spe­cial — Every­thing is Fine (Avail­able on Seed & Spark)
• Pod­cast (avail­able on Youtube and your favorite pod­cast play­er) — The Rudicks Are Home
• Tour­ing across the coun­try — check her web­site for cities and dates