Anna Kay Napualani Akana is an American YouTuber, actress, singer-songwriter, filmmaker, producer, author, and comedian.
Early life, family and education
Akana's father was an officer in the United States Marine Corps, including during her childhood. Anna's ethnicity is part Japanese, Filipino, Hawaiian, Irish, German, Spanish, French, and 56% English. Her family moved every few years to a new state or country. On Valentine's Day 2007, Akana's 13-year-old sister, Kristina, committed suicide. Several months after her sister's death, Akana watched Margaret Cho perform on a Comedy Central special and laughed for the first time since the suicide. She began to see laughter as a means of trying to move on with her life and decided to seriously pursue comedy. Akana has been vocal about her sister's suicide and is a strong advocate for suicide prevention. In 2013, Akana uploaded a YouTube video, "please don't kill yourself", in which she explains how it felt for her to have a family member die by suicide. In that same year, she released a book Surviving Suicide which contains her journal entries from the two years after her sister's death. In October 2018, she came out as bisexual.
Career
Akana first started performing comedy at age 19 but switched to YouTube video performances in 2011 after experiencing panic attacks and anxiety before going on stage. She later resumed performing stand-up onstage.
YouTube
In 2014, Akana formed a comedy music duo, Cat Benatar, with fellow comedian and writer Megan Rosati. Akana creates both comedy and documentary YouTube videos. In 2014, Akana was listed on New Media Rockstars Top 100 Channels, ranked at #72. In that same year, Akana decided to focus more on her skills as a director and attempted to make one short film a month. While she did not reach her goal of twelve short films, she did make six short films which were received well by her YouTube audience. Akana starred in all of her short films and has starred in various other short films, and she has since continued to create short films. One of her short films, Miss Earth, was partially financed by Brian Grazer and Ron Howard's production company, New Form Digital. It was part of the 2014 Incubator, a series to showcase and produce original stories by YouTube Creators and filmmakers. Miss Earth was later adapted into a web series, Miss 2059, and released on Verizon'sgo90 app in June 2016, with a second season released in late 2017. Akana executive produced and starred as the lead role in the original comedy-drama web television series Youth & Consequences, created by Jason Ubaldi and released in March 2018 on YouTube Red. She is also the host of the web series Crash Course Business: Entrepreneurship beginning in August 2019. On October 10, 2019 she was featured in a 30 minute YouTube documentary created by SoulPancake in collaboration with Funny or Die wherein a variety of comedians discuss mental health called Laughing Matters.
Film and television
In 2011, Akana appeared in the TV seriesAwkward. In that same year, she also appeared as an extra in Katy Perry's "Last Friday Night" music video. In 2015, she appeared in the films Ant-Man and Kids vs Monsters. Akana starred in SnapperHero, a scripted video series distributed via Snapchat. The series was sponsored by AT&T. In 2016, Akana appeared alongside Sally Field in the indie comedy filmHello, My Name Is Doris, written by Michael Showalter. That same year, she also appeared in a short Star Wars fan film, Hoshino as well as the comedy film Dirty 30. She has a recurring role in the Comedy Central show Corporate. She also has a recurring role as Gloria in the Disney Channel show Big City Greens. In 2019, she announced on Ryan Higa's Off the Pill podcast to be part of the Netflix original Jupiter's Legacy. Akana also hosts the podcast Explain Things to Me with fellow comedian Brad Gage where the two interview experts in various fields about their work.
Other ventures
In 2015, Akana released a clothing line, Ghost & Stars, which features several cat-themed designs as well as formal dresses, leggings, and a variety of T-shirts. In 2017, Akana's book So Much I Want to Tell You: Letters to My Little Sister was published. The book describes Akana's struggles and experiences growing up and offers advice to her late sister. In 2019, Akana released her debut single, "Intervention". Its music video was directed by Auden Bui. She has since released two more music videos, one for "Pretty Girls Don't Cry" in July 2019 and "Not My Proudest Moment" in August. She continued to release music videos for songs named "Alone Together", "Disappointment" and "Let Me Go". Her debut albumCasualty came out in October.
Critical reception
In reviewing her video, "Why Guys Like Asian Girls" Cate Matthews of The Huffington Post wrote: "A step-by-step takedown of 'yellow fever' or the desire to date Asian women often accompanied by bizarre, offensive attempts to do so, could start the healing. Luckily for us, YouTuber Anna Akana was more than up to the video-making task." In reviewing her video, "How to Deal with a Breakup", MTV wrote: "In this sketch, comedian Anna Akana envisions the flurry of activity inside the cranial command centre of a newly single dumpee." Deadline referred to Akana as "a prolific online creator whose channel boasts 60 million views and 900,000 subscribers, and last year wrote and starred in her own narrative feature Riley Rewind, scoring a none-too-shabby 20M views online."
