Meet Jen Zhao | Filmmaker & Actor

We had the good fortune of connecting with Jen Zhao and we’ve shared our conversation below.

Hi Jen, can you share a quote or affirmation with us?
I stumbled upon this Paul Gauguin quote recently—meaning, it showed up on my Instagram feed—and I keep coming back to it: “With practice, the craft will come almost of itself, in spite of you and all the more easily if you think of something besides technique.” It hit me at a time when I really needed it. I’d been in a weird place with my audiobook work, obsessing over technique—like I was playing some strange version of Guitar Hero, where diction replaced notes. I couldn’t turn off the critic in my head that was judging every syllable I spoke—needless to say, this headspace did not help my performance. The quote helped me reset and reminded me that the narrator’s job isn’t to obsess over enunciation, but to act as a vessel for the story, and to focus on what truly matters: bringing the words to life.

Let’s talk shop? Tell us more about your career, what can you share with our community?
I’m still figuring this out, honestly. I don’t feel like I’ve “arrived” anywhere yet professionally — I’m still an embryo.

But I am making progress. The thing I’m most proud of at this point is my short film, “Finding Nathan Fielder (With Jen Zhao)”, about this Canadian MFA film school graduate in LA whose visa is about to expire, and, desperate to avoid going home, latches onto this delusion that if she can find her idol, Canadian filmmaker Nathan Fielder, he will solve everything for her — her immigration woes, her career, her whole existence. The reality is, her parents are begging her to go back to Canada so they can mourn the loss of her brother as a family. It’s about impossible dreams, parasocial relationships, and avoiding what hurts most by focusing on anything else.

When I went to UCLA for my MFA in Screenwriting, I assumed there would be a school-to-job pipeline. I don’t think I would have gone if not for that. I may have even been explicitly told by the faculty at UCLA that this would not be the case but it was just so incomprehensible to me that I must have put it out of my mind. I grew up in a very different environment, where it was like: you go to school for engineering, you become an engineer. You study accounting, and become an accountant. My family and I couldn’t comprehend a world where people just went to school for… “craft”? Fun? And left with no expectations of it directly leading to new employment opportunities. Anyway, when I graduated, it felt like I was released into the void. I had no roadmap, no connections, no idea of what to do next. I’d also just lost one of my closest friends to suicide, and I didn’t have the energy to fake it, to network my way into something, to be “on” in that way. When my visa expired, I had to move back to Canada.

Being home gave me the space to think things over. I’d been sitting on this idea for a short film for a while, but I’d always imagined it as something I’d make One Day—when I had a budget, the skills, collaborators, or some mythical “green light.” But eventually, I realized none of that was going to magically appear. I had to make it happen. So I treated my time home as a boot camp, and wrote, shot, and edited the film myself. That’s the biggest lesson I learnt: nothing will ever feel ready. You just have to do it, and the process will teach you what you need to know.

Now the challenge is figuring out what to do with the film. It’s been at a few festivals, but I want to find a permanent home for it. I had always thought about just putting it on YouTube, because the short was truly made with the internet in mind. But without a following or platform (hi, reader) it felt like shouting into the abyss. And here’s the embarrassing part that I had to admit to myself: I want people to see it. Not everyone, but the few people who might resonate with it, I hope they can find it somehow.

One idea I’m playing with is doing a small tour with my friend Allie Kiekhofer. We’ve kind of tested the waters — we screened the short at Junior High LA, followed by a live Q&A session where Allie, in Marc Maron drag, interviewed me and did random bits. It was surreal and fun and exactly the kind of weird, intimate connection I want to create with this project.

So yeah: nothing just happens. No one is coming to save you. And that’s freeing in a way, because it means you don’t have to wait for anything. You can start…. Now! And if you do, you’ll see that the act of doing — especially when it’s messy and uncertain — that’s where the real magic is.

Any places to eat or things to do that you can share with our readers? If they have a friend visiting town, what are some spots they could take them to?
I’ve been living in Canada for the past two years and will be moving back to LA next year, so I’m looking forward to getting re-acquainted with the city.

When my friends come to visit, they usually want to see what my day-to-day life is like. So in that case, we may make a stop at Tap Dance With Howard, dig through the free bin at the Cliffs of Id, find garage sales and talk to strangers, check out the Philosophical Research Society, and get to know the local clowning and filmmaking scenes.

I don’t eat out that much, but I do like Wanderlust Creamery, Sunny Blue, MIZLALA, and Leo’s Taco Truck.

Shoutout is all about shouting out others who you feel deserve additional recognition and exposure. Who would you like to shoutout?
I want to shout out Junior High Los Angeles, a nonprofit that’s equal parts gallery, events space, and community hub. They uplift marginalized voices and make space for emerging artists in a way that feels genuinely inclusive and refreshing—not performative. Earlier this year, they gave me a place to screen my short film, and honestly, I don’t know if it would have happened otherwise. Junior High isn’t just a venue; it’s a rare, affirming space where you’re encouraged to be as weird, vulnerable, and creative as you want to be.

Instagram: therealcosmicsoup

Image Credits
Allison Seto, Trina Pham, Caitlind Brown, stills from “Finding Nathan Fielder (With Jen Zhao)”