A Friendly Chat: Molly McAleer on Blogging, Auditioning, Videoing, Making It and Networking In Los Angeles

Molly McAleer has about sixty million projects going right now, and one of them is going to lead to something that is going to make her rich and famous-famous, as opposed to Internet famous. Her current renown stems in some part from the irreverent and often bonkers videos she made for Defamer, as their employee in 2008. Her current projects include: her blog (Molls She Wrote), her Twitter (Molls), her web series (The Molls Show, produced by Justine Bateman's FM78.tv), a reality show she is pitching with friend Chuck McCarthy (Boy Meets Blogger), guest blogging stints (including gossip blog Evil Beet), PR work for one friend's makeup company (Marakele Minerals) and another friend's movie (Stuntmen)-and most recently, auditioning for TV commercials (spots she is particularly interested in: personal lubricants, tampons). She spoke to me on a Wednesday afternoon from her new, smaller apartment (across the hall from her old, larger apartment), in Koreatown, Los Angeles.

THE AWL: Hello! How are you doing this day?

MCALEER: I'm doing great! I just got an email saying that they want me to go in for a 4 o'clock audition today and I'm freaking out. I don't know if I can do it!

THE AWL: You want to reschedule?

MCALEER: No. Let's do this, they gave me no notice, and I have to write all afternoon anyway for this gossip website I fill in at. So let's just do this first and then I'll tackle the rest of it.

THE AWL: And this is the commercial agency?

MCALEER: Exactly. I just signed with them on Monday, but they know I have to pay my bills in other ways. I'm totally available but just not today. I really hope I don't piss off these people because it's a new contact, but I really cannot burn the bridges I have with people that are paying my bills.

THE AWL: What website are you blogging at today?

MCALEER: Today I'm doing something for Evil Beet. It's a gossip website. I do every other weekend there, and every now and then I do occasional fill-in days, because the woman who runs the site is a mom, with kids and stuff, and I just have a Chihuahua.

THE AWL: How do you structure your days?

MCALEER: I start with whatever meetings I have that day. So if I have to shoot photos with my friends or do a video with Chuck or go to VH1 and pitch, I base my day around that meeting. So I wake up between 7 in the morning and 10 and sometimes even noon, let's be real, and then I usually work until about 3 in the morning. So it's like nonstop. I try to take a break to eat lunch and have a cocktail. I always have my afternoon cocktail. I try and also go out every night, too. Networking is a huge part of living in L.A., and the more I go out, the more people I meet in the industry who might be able to hook me up or someone who I might want to work with.

THE AWL: It sounds really exhausting, but really fun.

MCALEER: It is exhausting. Every time I go home to Boston I'm just totally lame and my parents are like, do you have friends? Don't you still keep in touch with people from high school? And I'm like, well yeah, but I go out every night in LA, and it's a fulltime job to do everything that I do. I mean, I don't have a lot to show for it, but I feel like I put a lot of effort in.