June Diane Raphael

June Diane Raphael writes as much as she performs, and the writing explains the performing. With her creative partner Casey Wilson she wrote and starred in Ass Backwards, a 2013 Sundance film about two friends with no discernible talent and total confidence, which is the comic engine she keeps coming back to: the woman who is certain, loudly, and wrong.

Television found the right use for her in Grace and Frankie, where Brianna Hanson is rude to everyone, unapologetic about it, and never made to learn anything, which is a rarer thing for a woman on a long-running comedy than it should be.

Before that she built a reputation in the improv-comedy pipeline: Burning Love, a dating-show parody, and NTSF:SD:SUV::, an Adult Swim police spoof, both made with people who went on to run their own shows. In film she plays the friend, the rival or the wife and routinely walks off with the scene, whether it is a political operator in Long Shot, one of the parents in Blockers, or her part in The Disaster Artist.

She also co-hosts How Did This Get Made?, a long-running podcast about bad films made with Jason Mantzoukas and her husband Paul Scheer, and The Deep Dive with Jessica St. Clair. The podcasts are not a sideline; they are where a lot of her audience actually knows her from, and they run on the same instinct as the acting, which is that total conviction is funnier than doubt.