Life, Values & Legacy: Our Chat with Christian Anderson

We recently had the chance to connect with Christian Anderson and have shared our conversation below.

Good morning Christian, we’re so happy to have you here with us and we’d love to explore your story and how you think about life and legacy and so much more. So let’s start with a question we often ask: Are you walking a path—or wandering?
I felt I was walking a path, I set out to walk a path, but I feel like I’ve been wandering a little lately.

Can you briefly introduce yourself and share what makes you or your brand unique?
My name is Christian Anderson, I’m a Puppeteer and Puppet Builder. I make puppets for me, my own content of which I really need to make more of (see above) and I make puppets for clients. Most recently I made a static Coyote puppet/prop/thing that can move via remote control for a reading/workshop of a new play at the Getty Villa. Prior to that I built pieces for a play at LMU and I’ve been doing some ongoing work for these great guys who make widely seen comedy videos on YouTube/Tik Tok/Instagram, etc (goodboy.noah). I make puppets for stage, tv, film, YouTube, you name it. I call my company ‘Pandersonium’, a mix of my last name and the word pandemonium. An old friend made me a mix tape years ago with that word written on it and it stuck.

Almost without exception every single job I do takes a different approach. While there are similarities, unless I’m building multiples, each piece is unique. that challenges me. I find myself way out of my comfort zone frequently. I always try to stay open to new techniques and materials in order to accomplish what a client is asking for. Because every piece is unique and made by hand, I’d say that qualifies them as special. right?

I’ve always been fascinated by puppetry, puppets and what makes them work. Growing up my Mom was really into musical theatre, so I fell into that pretty easily and just continued to pursue that line of work in my 20’s and 30’s. I got a role in the 1st National Tour of ‘RENT’, with which I also made my Broadway debut. Then ‘The Full Monty the Musical’ National Tour as “Jerry”, then when that tour ended I got an audition for ‘Avenue Q’. I thought I was going in for the Vegas production, but ended up getting the job and replacing the original “Nicky/Trekkie” on Broadway and focusing my efforts on all things puppet from that moment on. Performing them and making them. I’ve been on the last two seasons of Comedy Central’s ‘Crank Yankers’, played “Sy the Wide Eyed Fly” on both seasons of Showtime’s ‘Kidding’ with Jim Carrey, played multiple characters on Robert Smigel’s ‘Let’s Be Real’, did ‘a Big Mouth Christmas Special’ and a bunch of other stuff including a few seasons of ‘America’s Got Talent’ with my own puppet creations (Ira the Singing Puppet and Puppet Simon and the Cow Belles a few seasons later).

If you need a puppet or something puppet adjacent, check out my website www.pandersonium.com. If you like what you see, please hit me up.

Appreciate your sharing that. Let’s talk about your life, growing up and some of topics and learnings around that. Who taught you the most about work?
I have a friend named Patricio Wolovich. He’s an amazing fabricator who runs a shop in Buena Park, CA (Encirco Studios. They do incredible work with an incredible attitude). I met him maybe 10 or 12 years ago. We were both brought on to help a mutual friend (Toby Chi) with an anti-smoking campaign he was working on. Patricio and I hit it off and started a friendship. I was just beginning to take clients as a puppet builder. I was very green and had no idea what it took to run a business or how to deal with a client’s needs, how to experiment and the importance of making a mock-up, etc. He was a great sounding board for all my questions, but I think the most important thing he taught me was how important failure is. Not to sound like a self help book, but I always saw failure as a bad thing and it was the way I was viewing it. If I failed, that was the end. I didn’t grow, I didn’t learn anything except that I couldn’t succeed at what I tried that one time to do. I moved on to the next thing and tried that. Watching Patricio work I saw how often he failed, but then I saw how he viewed failure and what he learned from his failures and how he took what he learned from them and used those lessons to try again and maybe fail again. After every failure he learned something and always tried again and again and again until he got it right. That taught me to never give up and that I didn’t need to know everything going into a project, that I could try different things and learn a ton as I went along, That has made me more patient in my work and more confident in my abilities and I think more successful overall.

Do you remember a time someone truly listened to you?
Yeah, I remember a time when someone truly listened to me. It wasn’t a specific conversation. It was all of them. It was about 17 years ago. I was living in New York, happy professionally, my personal life upside down in a lot of ways, when I met the most incredible woman. So beautiful. Men literally stopped in their tracks, mouths open, stupefied as she walked past. So smart and funny and weird and sexy and capable and selfless. I was introduced to her by a close friend and the fact that I needed to know this woman was undeniable. We flirted and got to know each other over the next few weeks and months and she listened, not just listened, but heard, took in, processed every single thing I said to her. I have never felt so seen and heard by anybody ever. Not even close. I hope I’m a fraction of the person she is. I’m lucky enough to now call that woman my wife and the mother of my daughter Coco. You can call her Camille. Camille Chen. She’s a very talented actor (look her up) and acting coach, a new baker, a remarkable Mother. She’s the best friend anyone could ever have. Still remembers all those things we talked about in the early days. Still sexy AF!!

So a lot of these questions go deep, but if you are open to it, we’ve got a few more questions that we’d love to get your take on. Is the public version of you the real you?
I would say you’re getting mostly the public version of myself if I’m being honest, which I guess I’m not, right? As I get older I find I’m less confrontational, than I used to be (and more filtered, thank you Adderall!?) , which is a good thing, but maybe less authentic than I could be. I joke around a lot in most public situations, keeping things light and noncommittal for the most part. I like to be at home and focused on work and family, I think all the hiding behind the funny guy persona has me missing out on some genuine connection, that I could really benefit from. Working on it.

Okay, we’ve made it essentially to the end. One last question before you go. Have you ever gotten what you wanted, and found it did not satisfy you?
Yes. As I stated earlier I have always been fascinated with puppets and how they work. My first dream was to be a puppeteer. That morphed into wanting to become an actor. My mom was directing musical theatre and putting my brothers and me in all of her shows, so it seemed logical that I would be an actor. I wanted to be the next Gary Oldman. I wanted to be a serious character actor in film, but that since I was doing a lot of musicals and no where near as talented an actor as Gary Oldman, that morphed into me wanting to star on Broadway in some cool musicals and that actually happened. I got exactly what I wanted. Now, I don’t want to sound ungrateful. I LOVED my time on Broadway and consider myself extremely lucky to have gotten the chance to perform in some amazing musicals with some of the best performers, directors, designers and crews in the business, but something was missing. The shows were great, but ultimately they weren’t mine. I wanted to make something of my own, so I left Broadway behind and decided to go all in on this puppet thing and it’s been very satisfying. I haven’t done all I’ve set out to do, which goes right back to me finding myself wandering off the path I was taking, but I’m finding my way.

Contact Info:

• Website: https://www.pandersonium.com
• Instagram: @pandersonium
• Twitter: @Pandersonium
• Youtube: @pandersonium88
• Other: Tik Tok: @pandersonium

Image Credits
These are mostly pictures of my work except the one with the furry brown monster which is a promo picture of me and fellow cast mate Jennifer Barnhart in Avenue Q. The picture with the Santa Claus puppet is a picture of puppets I built for an original Christmas show I wrote and directed for The NorthPark Center in Dallas, TX. the picture with the multiple puppets (one of them is a Simon Cowell puppet) is from one of my appearances on America’s got Talent.