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Laughing for a living

Laughing for a living

Danielle Damon '18 April 23, 2019

Dinnertime is unique to every household. For Jo Redlingshafer, the table was a stage for jokes and laughs.

“My whole family is very funny,” Redlingshafer says. “We were always fighting for attention at the dinner table.”

It turns out, however, more people than just her family think she’s funny.

Redlingshafer came to UD wanting to write and study journalism and political science. After realizing news wasn’t her niche, she turned to jokes. A summer internship before her senior year with Panay Films on the Disney lot in Los Angeles solidified this path.

Soon, Redlingshafer realized she didn’t want to just be reading comedy scripts but writing them too.redlingshafer_edit_img.jpg

After graduation, Los Angeles continued to call her name. She moved first, then landed a job. Today she is the right hand to comedians Nick Kroll and John Mulaney.

“Moving to L.A. was a transition, and the first year was very hard, but now I want to stay here forever,” she says. “I am so lucky I get to work with the funniest people in the world.”

Redlingshafer collaborates with the professionals she has looked up to since she was young by writing for Kroll’s Netflix series Big Mouth and producing Mulaney’s stand-up show.

Passion, good grammar and being a nice person are what Redlingshafer says got her to where she is today.

“Talent and drive is what will inevitably get you where you want to be,” she says. “You can be the funniest person in the writers’ room, but if you turn something in with bad grammar you will never get hired.”

Redlingshafer hopes to one day be a showrunner where she can create her own shows, run the writers’ room and make the important creative decisions. But, when it comes down to it, her goal is simple:

“I just want my whole job to be writing jokes.”