Get to Know 'Crazy Ex-Girlfriend' Star Rachel Bloom With Her Best YouTube Sketches
As big-city lawyer/obsessive romantic Rebecca Bunch on The CW’s Crazy Ex-Girlfriend, Rachel Bloom is one of this fall’s breakout stars. But if you don’t recognize her, it’s understandable: Outside of a few voices in animated shows (Robot Chicken, BoJack Horseman) and a one-episode stint on How I Met Your Mother, Bloom is a TV newcomer.
To really get to know her, you have to head over to YouTube, where Bloom has enjoyed a number of viral-video hits that show off her wicked sense of humor as well as her musical-theater chops. Yahoo TV sat down with Bloom and got her to pick out her favorite YouTube sketches and explain the stories behind them — including the video that directly led to her first TV starring role.
“F–k Me, Ray Bradbury”
Bloom’s biggest viral hit is a saucy love letter to famed sci-fi author Ray Bradbury… and a reminder that brains are the ultimate aphrodisiac.
“I had actually just gone through a breakup, and I was re-reading The Martian Chronicles, which is one of my favorite books. And the guy that I had broken up with was very smart, but very kind of cold and robotic. Very book-smart, but not very emotionally connected. And I was reading The Martian Chronicles, and I was thinking, ‘This is the type of guy I should be with: someone who’s book-smart, who has these high-concept ideas that are brilliant, but also is clearly so connected to emotion.’ Because his books are lobbing out these high-concept ideas, and then showing how people react, and what these high-concept ideas say about human nature."
"So I sat down at my parents’ piano, and… I was in a sketch-comedy group at the time, and your mind is always trying to think of funny sketches. Because I had to do a new sketch show every month. So when you have to write two new sketches a month, you’re constantly thinking: 'Could this be a sketch?’ And so I sat down and wrote this little song called 'F–k Me, Ray Bradbury,’ and I was like, 'Eh, this isn’t really a sketch.’ And I put it to the side, but I always really liked it. And when I graduated from college, I decided I wanted to be my own sort of solo sketch group, and I had friends that were doing Internet stuff, and I thought, 'Maybe this will be my calling card.’ So I made this music video. And it was awesome. [Laughs.] I made it for about two thousand dollars."
"Historically Accurate Disney Princess”
Here, Bloom voices the type of wide-eyed princess we meet in every Disney cartoon — only her medieval village is beset by plagues and witch-burning, and features a statue adorned with the severed hands of thieves.
“That’s how [Crazy Ex-Girlfriend executive producer] Aline [Brosh McKenna] found me. It’s tonally similar to what I like doing, which is taking a genre which says, 'This is how life is,’ and thinking, 'Well, what’s the flip side to the song?’ So it’s like, Disney princesses are happy, but this is the Dark Ages. It would be horrible if you lived around this time.”
“I wrote the song originally for my solo show that I had at the Upright Citizens Brigade theater, and Dan O'Brien from Cracked saw the show and said, 'Can we please do that song as an animated video?’ So I did that video with Cracked, and that got featured on Jezebel, and that’s how Aline found me.”
“I Steal Pets”/“Pictures of Your D–k”
Two more of Bloom’s personal favorites: “Pets,” an AutoTuned party jam about a cheery high schooler who nabs the pets of all the popular kids; and “Pictures,” a weepy post-breakup lament about a girl getting back at her ex by posting… well, you know.
“I really love 'I Steal Pets.’ Check it out. It’s very much my soul. That’s all I’ll say. And I’m really proud of the songwriting in 'Pictures of Your D–k.’ I’m very proud of the joke structure in that.”
Crazy Ex-Girlfriend premieres Monday, Oct. 12 at 8 p.m. on The CW.
