Meet April Walterscheid: Comedian

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

Hi April, do you have some perspective or insight you can share with us on the question of when someone should give up versus when they should keep going?
You have to decide for yourself if you want to keep going. I think about it CONSTANTLY. At this point in life, I’m 36-years-old and can’t keep a regular day job after like 15 years of having 3-4 day jobs. So I have nothing to fall back on and I keep going automatically.

Let’s talk shop? Tell us more about your career, what can you share with our community?
I got here by waking up everyday. Plus, I am 100% fueled by cafe mocha boba tea with 50% sugar and Oreo crumbles. (Shoutout to It’s Boba Time!) This career (if you can call it that during Covid-19) was not easy and still isn’t easy. I have heard that even when you make it (whatever that looks like to you), it is not any easier. You still have to audition and put yourself out there to get booked on comedy shows, and experience more rejection than acceptance (it’s nothing personal). The rejection part I have been used to since I was 19-years-old when I auditioned for college plays, so that’s all fine and dandy.

I overcome the challenges of this life path by just refusing to be anyone but my anxiously opinionated self and realizing that that alone garners more exposure and respect than anything else in the world. For example, as soon I open my f*cking mouth and say my world view online, people want to pay me to do movie reviews and book me on comedy shows! Who woulda thought that’s how it works, HUH? I am always astonished that’s my superpower — using my words and sometimes doing a very spot-on Gilbert Gottfried impression.

I’ve learned that being different is the best thing in the world and if people think how you do something (like audition) is weird or how you do comedy is weird, well keep going buttercup. I’ve had people try to fix my style of how I do things and make it more “acceptable” and that still got me nowhere. In fact, it made me feel sad because I wasn’t being myself.

If you’re a character’y person, just stay that way, ok? Don’t settle for less.

If you had a friend visiting you, what are some of the local spots you’d want to take them around to?
Hmmm…

Did I mention It’s Boba Time? I thought it was a very silly Los Angeles area boba tea chain and was turned off by that. But now? Oh now! One hundred boba tea purchases in one year, and I am addicted.

Let’s go there first then uh… go for a walk by the beach afterward? Get germ-free massages at a place that takes walk-ins? Um, contribute your own ideas here? I’m open! When Harry Potter World reopens, wanna go there? I’ve never been though I had the chance a few times, like every time I saw it in passing on the 101 Freeway and thought to myself “I should go there. Meh, not today.”

(Please note: I am a very boring person and this is a pandemic when you are reading this interview.)

Who else deserves some credit and recognition?
There are several people to thank (too many to name without leaving someone out). I want to thank everyone who has ever messaged me or called me up on the phone to tell me to keep going, and helped me physically to keep going by letting me stay with them on their couch, floor, extra bed, and giving me half off rent. I’m also grateful for comedy bookers who have put me on their comedy shows and movie writers who have written acting roles for because they were like, “Hmm, we want her in this, but her audition was interesting and we just don’t know exactly where to put her in this movie. Ok, let’s rewrite or make a new role for her! Yay!”

Website: linktr.ee/aprilwalterscheid

Instagram: instagram.com/apriloneil

Twitter: twitter.com/aprilwaltershyd

Facebook: facebook.com/aprilwalterscheid

Youtube: youtube.com/aprilwalterscheid

Image Credits
Chris Jon, George Tenney