Nominated for her work writing on “The Morning Show,” but breaking out of her shell by starring in an indie movie
I really didn’t want to watch a pandemic movie, let alone a pandemic rom-com.
I even told Ali Vingiano that when we spoke over Zoom earlier this month. And yet, wouldn’t you know it? She’s a delight as the star of The End of Us, as her character deals with her particular pandemic predicament: Breaking up with her live-in boyfriend, only to find out that everyone’s supposed to stay in their homes for the foreseeable future.
In real life, Vingiano has traveled the world and back, participating in global outreach problems as a teen during her summers. She helped build a school in Ghana, worked a childcare internship in Peru, spent time with Tibetan refugees in India, and also studied for a semester abroad in Prague. Filmmaking. After graduating from Bates College in 2011, she moved to New York City, working as assistant editor for a documentary project, while also getting involved in comedy through the Upright Citizens Brigade Theatre. She took the Columbia Journalism School’s six-week Columbia Publishing Course, whereupon she began reporting for BuzzFeed. Eventually, she pivoted to video, making short films and viral videos for both BuzzFeed and Glamour magazine. She also previously worked as a field producer for Comedy Central’s The Opposition with Jordan Klepper. She’s currently a writer and executive story editor for The Morning Show on Apple TV+, for which she has just received her first Writers Guild of America nomination.
If you haven’t listened to our chat yet, this link gets you to all of the appropriate links for your listening pleasure.
Here’s an edited transcript of our conversation!
Last Things First, congratulations! I don’t know what to congratulate you on first. Should I congratulate you on your Writers Guild Association nomination or on your starring in a feature film about the pandemic, The End of Us?
Yeah, I’ll take either first, whichever you prefer works for me. But thank you so much. Yeah, we just got nominated for an WGA Award, which was really cool, for The Morning Show.
And that’s coming right off the heels of the official season renewal for that show from Apple TV+.
Yeah. Yeah. They just announced season three, which is awesome.
What’s your current title?
I was an executive story editor on Season Two.
When you’re in a position like that, are you and the other writers already trying to plot out Season Three, or are you waiting for the official word before you do that?
You’re definitely shaping the story of Season Two, as if it would continue. You know, we weren’t writing to an ending by any means with Season Two. So naturally, when you’re at the end of the season, you’re thinking like, oh, maybe this could happen or that could happen Season Three, but you’re not actively thinking about it, anyway. And you’re not approaching an episode, as if you know, this future exists.
Right. Well, speaking of futures existing. I want to go back in time, to when you’re a teenager in Ghana, helping to build a school.
Oh, my God. That happened.
I don’t know how you ended up doing that to begin with. But when you’re in Ghana, building a school, as a teenager, this was 2005 — and none of the things exist that are part of your life now. Apple wasn’t even making the iPhone yet, let alone original TV shows for Apple TV+. BuzzFeed wasn’t a thing for you to make videos for and write for, let alone make movies for you to star in…So you couldn’t even storyboard this in 2005, right?
No, not at all. I mean, it’s so funny that you bring that up. Like, I think about that pretty often. When I was a teenager, I didn’t really understand TV writing could be a job. I had no connections to the industry. I wanted it very badly. But I had no idea to be a filmmaker, to be a TV writer.
Well, that’s not entirely true. As you revealed on Instagram recently, you were working on a screenplay at age 13 to adapt Confessions of a Teenage Drama Queen, and I want to see that movie.
That was my first screenplay ever. I’d read this book, “Confessions of a Teenage Drama Queen,” and I was obsessed with it. And I went, this needs to be a movie. I wrote 116 pages of the script and then I found out it was already being turned into a Lindsay Lohan movie and I cried. And I wrote a letter to the studio begging them to read my version, which they didn’t. And then I wrote another script when I was 16, before I went to Ghana. This was my first original script. And it was about a woman who goes to try to save the rainforest, and she’s also trying to lose her virginity. I reread it recently. It’s, it’s, it’s bad. It’s not good. But I had the ambition and the desire.
So when you’re a teenager in Ghana, what were you thinking?
In terms of my career?
You were just talking about not understanding that you could have made this your career back then.
Right. And you’re like, the internet really helped me. I spent a summer in Ghana. I lived with a family there. You did like a community project. I’m still in touch with the family. It was like actually an incredible experience in my life, although I do have issues with a lot of the community-service type-of programs that exist and I can get into that another time. But, for me, it was a really moving experience. And I thought I would go into politics. I thought I would be you know, do some sort of social justice work. I wanted to be an international human rights lawyer at one point. Writing was my passion. I wanted to be an actor since I was four. It seemed like a pipe dream. And then after college — I studied politics in college and I minored in film and theater because I just couldn’t like get rid of this urge that I had that this is actually what I wanted. That this was what my passion was and what I wanted to do. And after I graduated, YouTube was blowing up. Broad City, the web series, was gaining traction. It was this sort of equalizing platform, of you can just make something, put it online, and people can see it. And if you’re good, it can help you. People will watch it and it can really kickstart your career. And that’s really what I started to do because I didn’t know how else to — I didn’t know how to move to LA and get a job as a writer’s assistant. I didn’t know how to crack into the entertainment industry. So I just took classes at UCB and started putting stuff online.
How did you find UCB? Is that just from being in New York or what?
Being a New York helped. When I was a teenager, my dad took me there we went to see some shows. I saw ASSSSCAT. I was so intimidated of it. Like I’d never done improv. I was really intimidated. I didn’t do improv in college. But I started going to shows there and then I signed up for a class and I fell in love with it.
OK. And then what are you doing for the job? When you’re pursuing this?
My first job was, I as a legal assistant for a labor rights law firm. And you had to get out at five exactly because labor — you know, labor rights — and they’d have to pay overtime if you’re were a minute over. So it was like as soon as it was five I was out the door. I was on my way to a UCB class or you know, going home to write something or to film something. Then I did this program at Columbia Journalism School, and I was like, OK, I know I want to be a writer. I can be a journalist and then I can get a job and write stuff online and then that will propel me into people knowing me as a writer. It’s insane that this worked. This was like a completely ridiculous idea, but I was like, Nora Ephron did it. Nora Ephron did it.
And Nora Ephron didn’t even have the Internet.
Exactly. I got a job at BuzzFeed. And I was working as a journalist for Buzzfeed News.
OK. Was that when Ben Smith was there?
Ben Smith? Yeah, he hired me….I saw him at The Morning show premiere, actually. And he was like, ‘What are you doing here?’ And I was like, ‘I write for the show.’ And he was like, ‘Oh!’
At the time that you started at BuzzFeed. It wasn’t so clear cut, what path you’re gonna go?
No, not at all. It was very much, I was just trying to do whatever I could to push my career forward and to write and to be seen as a creator in some capacity. I got my job at BuzzFeed. And then, several months later, I made a short film that I’d written and that sort of went viral like pretty quickly, like overnight was like being posted about like Jezebel and Gawker, and BuzzFeed ended up writing about it.
(NOTE: Griffin Newman co-starred with Vingiano in “Exes,” which she also wrote and produced, a Vimeo Best of 2014 pick)
And they were actually at a place where they were very open with me sort of having this day job and making these videos, which I don’t think would happen anymore. But for me, I wasn’t really sure what my career would look like. I remember at some point, I would, I would write down I’d sort of manifest what I wanted. And I would write down what I imagined it to be. And I had this idea that if I worked at BuzzFeed for four years, I could transition into The Daily Show and I could be a writer on a late-night show because those late-night shows had hired journalists in the past and if I could have some experience as a political writer or news reporter than I could work for The Daily Show, so that was sort of the way I envisioned it happening. And strangely enough, it’s sort of did happen.
(NOTE: In 2016, she made and starred in this video for BuzzFeed, “When I Saw Him Again,” which has more than 9.5 million views on YouTube, clocks in at more than 22 minutes, and also deals with darker subject matter, of what happens when she plays a woman who sees the man who had sexually assaulted her back in college.)
Vingiano didn’t quite transition to The Daily Show, as much as to a Comedy Central news satire that immediately followed TDS in 2017-2018.
You got a job with The Opposition with Jordan Klepper. I know you weren’t still working for or with him in 2021, but he was still doing crazy field pieces — he was on the ground last year covering the Jan. 6, 2021, riot at the U.S. Capitol as it happened.
I know. I saw that, which is so insane!
You have this interesting arc, right? Because you’re thinking journalism, you end up at BuzzFeed. They’re cool with you making videos because of course they are because BuzzFeed was really big with videos as well. But in your head, you’re thinking maybe I could parlay this into The Daily Show. And then you get to The Opposition, which is like The Daily Show, but a little bit more bonkers. And now you’re writing and story editing for a show that’s about TV news.
Right. I know, I know.
Which version of this arc felt the most true to who you were? Or have they all been you, just different parts of you as you’ve been growing up and maturing throughout your 20s?
That’s such a good question. The Morning Show — When I arrived on The Morning Show, that first week in the writers room, I felt for the first time in my career, this is where I’m supposed to be. I love writing narrative. I love shaping story. I love being with other people thinking about pitching. It felt so good and authentic to myself. I also really love the process of creating something. Like nothing makes me feel better than being on set. Nothing makes me feel like I know what life is all about than when I’m actually in the process of filmmaking, whether it’s being on set or whether it’s editing something afterwards. That process brings me a lot of joy. The path I took was interesting because the journalism of it felt like a great fallback career. But at some point after I was doing it for a year or two I was not only was a burned out, but I was like, if I could do this for the rest of my life, I’m going to be miserable and it just made my writing bad. It made me not care. I was showing up to my job and I was actually caring about this film I needed to edit and like that’s what I was thinking about and at some point it became inappropriate to be a news reporter writing about serious issues, you know, like the Iran nuclear deal while I was making a sketch video about when you run into your ex. I had to pick a lane. And at some point when I went in to quit BuzzFeed, they hadn’t really launched BuzzFeed Video yet and they were like, ‘Why don’t you move to LA and work for BuzzFeed video?’ And there were times making films there that did feel really authentic to who I am. It’s just that the BuzzFeed voice was not always in line with my own creative voice and so Morning Show felt way better. I shouldn’t say it felt better because when I did get to make things that did feel authentic to me, it was the best experience and then being on The Opposition was hard and being in that job was hard.
Because you’re making things as a field producer or segment producer, but they’re playing with the form of the news. You’re making something but it’s not real.
You’re trying to parody something, which in this case is sort of far-right wing point of view that’s really hard to parody. That takes a lot out of you. And Jordan is a genius. I mean, he’s the best improviser in the world. He was my UCB 101 teacher. He’s incredible.
Did that help or hurt when you’re applying for a job there?
I think neither, because on day one, he introduced himself to me and I was like, ‘You were my Improv 101 teacher,’ and he was like, ‘I thought you looked familiar. And I was like ‘that is so kind of you to say.’ He definitely didn’t remember me. the person who hired me is Ian Berger, who’s the person who now produces all of Jordan’s clips. He was there on January 6th. He’s the one who produces all of Jordan segments on The Daily Show now where he goes and talks to people.
Now you put yourself in front of camera for your shorts, but doing this movie, The End of Us. This is your first leading role. You’re the star of this movie. No offense to Ben Coleman, but you’re the star of this movie.
Is this something that you’ve also been kind of waiting for? Or were you really so content like you said, on your first day at The Morning Show that, if this is what I was doing, staying behind the scenes of The Morning Show for the rest of my life. Or the next show after that, then I’d be good and I wouldn’t need to star in a movie?
So Season One of Morning Show I felt like this is where I’m supposed to be, all my dreams have come true. Like I got to be on set with these people. Season two of Morning Show. I’d grown up a little bit and I felt like, I love writing for this show. I need to write for myself and I need to do something for myself. And that is ultimately — when I was in my early 20s I had this feeling like when I went to BuzzFeed that I was giving up this other thing I could have which was just trying to make short films on my own, trying to get into SXSW or Sundance and try to be a serious filmmaker and move off the Internet, and I think I didn’t do that. So after Morning Show, I thought: This is what I need to do now. I need to try to write something for myself and I really never thought I would act again. I loved acting in those videos. It was fun. I know I’m good at it, but like I guess this is where it ends for me. Getting to be in The End of Us re sparked this whole — It was so much fun. We like got to improvise a ton. I loved doing it. I signed up for an acting class right away. I went to get a manager. It definitely resparked something and now I love it and I want to act more but it was something that I was sort of like accepted that would not be as big of a part of my life as I anticipated it to be.
And it’s all due to the pandemic
Right. And then this pandemic happened and my friends approached me and said we want to make a movie will you star in it? And I said yes. And I think it showed me that I’ve been lying to myself a little bit — that I really did miss this thing and I really wanted this thing and I was sort of afraid to pursue it because I felt comfortable in my job and I felt comfortable where I was. And it can be easy to be like, well, this is how it’s worked out. So you know, oh well, instead of being like, this is where I am now and I actually want this other thing and it doesn’t have to be embarrassing to want to act, which is always how I felt I was so embarrassed to want to do it.
It’s so fascinating because for America, the pandemic lockdowns started in mid-March 2020. And for you in real life, your pandemic experience is so unlike your character’s experience. You know your character has this job and then the job is in peril because everybody’s jobs are in peril. But for you, you were in between seasons one and two of The Morning Show. And then how soon after lockdown do Steven and Henry approach you?
So like the lockdown was March, they approached me, either I would say end of April or early May with this kernel of an idea. It wasn’t even a outline. I basically said yeah, I’d be into it. Just bring me an idea of what you want to shoot. They brought me an outline. I gave him some thoughts and we were shooting by, I think either end of May or early June.
So what was your March and April of 2020 like?
We had just gotten the dog. We adopted a senior dog
You adopted before the rush.
Yeah, so my first day of quarantine was a Thursday when they were like stay home. We adopted this dog on Saturday. Thinking great. We have two weeks. They were like this dog is gonna be euthanized. He’s old. If we don’t get them out of the shelter. I was like I’ll take him for two weeks, no problem. We’ll foster a dog. And then the quarantine never ends. And we fell in love with this dog. We adopted him and my days were like full of — I started to learn how to bake. I would basically make a cake every week. Hang out with my dog. I got into Animal Crossing. I was watching Tiger King. I was just you know all of the classic early pandemic stuff, but I was having an extremely hard time with feeling motivated at all. You know the days were blending together. I was stressed out. I wasn’t writing. Finley, our dog, brought me so much joy. And when I think about the early pandemic, a lot of it was just the dog.
Wait. Finley was the dog’s name in the movie.
He’s the dog in the movie. That’s the dog. Yeah. I forgot that. He’s in the movie. He’s such a sweetheart. And so getting approached by them, it was just like, it was the first time I had felt creative in so long and I was totally thrown into this like extremely intense creative process, which felt really good.
How did you and Ben and then Stephen and Henry and Claudia, how did you all manage to keep the film so light while also like hitting all the relevant notes?
I feel similarly like, I know that nobody wants a pandemic movie. I was seeing the tweets and you know, whenever there was a pandemic thing announced it was sort of like oh shit, well, like, I made this thing and like no one’s gonna want this now and that sucks. But the reality is just like, yeah, it’s opportunistic. Everyone’s like, oh, like people were making these opportunistic pandemic things. And it’s like, people were really depressed. People need creativity to have an outlet. People wanted to get together and make something and like, for me, I just have to look at it as like it was two or three weeks of such joy in the middle of a really hard time. I hadn’t acted a long time and like I wanted to, but I have this writer brain, and we got to improvise so much. So it got it was this thing of like, I really want to make sure that we’re telling a story about a relationship. And like, that’s what this has to be about. Even if the pandemic is happening, like it has to be the story about this couple. And you have to relate to the film because you relate to these characters and not because you’ve also lived through a pandemic. So I think we thought a lot about like how to portray the pandemic in a way that was not overpowering the story. And also it was hard to know, because people were dying, like we didn’t want to make too much light of it. At the same time, we wanted to show an experience that like was sort of what the majority of people experienced, which is just staying home and having a hard time. But the process of the film was that like every morning we would wake up and sort of go over what we’d filmed the day before, and where we need to go from here, and think about like what the characters, the scenes and we would just like, try to film something until we laughed or until we connected with it. And it was important to me to make something that would sort of like, not like stand the test of time but wouldn’t only be relevant for one year, you know?
So I’m gathering that you managed to film that all even before Morning Show ratcheted back up for season two right?
We were at a time of Morning Show where the showrunner sort of wanted to take a beat and figure out how she wanted to do Season Two with the pandemic and if she wanted to include it or not include it so she was like, Let me have a month or two and think and plan and then we’ll start the (writers) room. So it was during that time when I went and I did have like two or three meetings that I was just like hopping on a Zoom and going in the other room to shoot but it was before the writers room for Season Two really started.
So you’ve already mentioned how making The End of Us resparked your passion for acting. How else has this whole process changed what you want out of your career moving forward?
What was really inspiring about the project was how Steven and Henry just did it without allowing the time to doubt themselves. I can get so caught up in the period before when you have an idea, and when you do something with the idea. There’s so much fear and doubt and just going for it and making it and like, sure, not everyone’s gonna want a pandemic film. Even though again, like I think ours is a relationship film that’s during pandemic and also like, it’s actually really fun to see the nostalgia of like, or like all the weird early pandemic things, so I’m always surprised when I see it. But anyway, I digress. Now I forgot what I was saying actually, it resparks that I did used to just go make stuff all time like you know, I would make four videos a month when I worked at BuzzFeed. I’m trying. I’m in the process now trying to make my first feature film as writer/director because I didn’t write or direct The End of Us and seeing the process of trying to get a film properly financed, with a studio and a financier and the amount of time it takes, and the amount of people that have to approve it and although that can be the right path for certain films it has resparked this idea of that I can’t be in control of what I put out and then I can just go make something so I do want to get back to that this year.
So maybe dust off Confessions of a Teenage Drama Queen.
That’s what it is. That’s what I’m gonna do. Because they made that movie but mine was better so I think they need a remake.
You’ve already written it from the teenager’s perspective
Which is why it would resonate so well with the audience.
Right. So now you can just go back and give it a rewrite with all of the professional and technical knowhow that you have now.
Exactly. Change some sluglines. Add few structural fixes and then we’re good.
Exactly. If you had to choose, or do you even think you need to have to choose between TV and film at this point? Because in the beginning your early kind of marker slash inspirational point was Broad City and what Abbi and Ilana were able to do. So now, 10-15 years later, is that still the thing? Or since you’re talking about writing and directing your own feature is that thing? Or can you do both?
I think both is achievable. I think especially because I’ve already worked in TV, getting new TV jobs will hopefully be something I can keep doing. TV is a lot more stable and faster than making film. But my dream is to make films. That is what I love doing. I love making short films was such a special thing to me. I love writing features. I love ending a story. I love the filmmaking process. I want to direct. My dream would be to be able to do both, to make a film, which I hopefully will do this year and continue to work in TV in between. That’s the dream. We’ll see what happens.
I know Apple TV+ also produces and distributes movies so I look forward to them greenlighting your feature. Thank you, Ali. It was a pleasure talking to you.
It was so great. Thank you so much for having me.
From The Comic's Comic 
Leave a comment