Today we’d like to introduce you to Gerald Grissette. We interviewed Gerald as part of our collaboration with Platonic. You can learn more about the cast and crew here.
Gerald, we’d love for you to kick things off for us with a bit of background on yourself (personally and professionally) and how you got to where you are today.
I’m from Seattle, the neighborhood where I grew up is affectionately referred to as The South End. I’m an actor, rapper/singer, cartoonist, & writer. I wouldn’t be anywhere if it weren’t for my mom and dad. They always encouraged me and still continue to.
We’d love to hear about you experience working on Platonic. How did you connect with Moni and why did you decide to work with her on Platonic?
Working on Platonic was oh so incredibly LIT!!! I loved being on set with so many young black film makers, and other really talented folks. We had a lot of fun while filming, which is a great sign, because the end result came out amazing! I met Moni through the UCB LA comedy scene. When she told me she was working on something I literally jumped at the chance to be a part of it b/c Moni is so talented, and I just knew that anything that she was putting together was gonna be great.
How has your standup career influenced you as an actor and how has acting influenced your standup?
Standup allows you to be yourself, and it really helped me craft my voice as a comedian and actor. It made me focus on things that I find funny, and gave me that discipline to be unique in how I write my jokes. I honestly don’t do it as much as I’d like to because I’ve been busy with writing and acting projects. But that’s the other thing, it turned me into a writer. When you’re really hitting the standup grind hard you gotta write, write, write!
What can you tell us about Arcade Currency and any other projects you are working on and excited about?
Arcade Currency is an all male all black improv team, made up of me and my six brothers: Aman Adumer, Dane Troy, Ayinde Howell, Kingsley Pascal, Edgar Momplaisir & Kalle Pascal. These were the guys I really connected with when I first got into the UCB comedy scene. We’ve worked so hard together and it’s so dope to see that we’ve all been able to harness that and create successful individual careers for ourselves. We perform regularly at UCB LA, you just gotta check the UCB Sunset or UCB Franklin calendar ;)… I’m also really excited about an animated web-series that I wrote, animated, and did music for, called Monster Cash coming out on Nerdist’s streaming platform called Project Alpha. It’s about a monster world where every monster wants to be a rapper and/or is affiliated with the music industry somehow. I’ve got another cartoon series coming out as well, but you’ll have to follow me on twitter @GeraldGrissette for more updates, and commentary about rap music & sports, ya diiiiig?!
