Anna Drezen is an American writer, actress, and comedian. Since 2016 she has been on the writing staff of Saturday Night Live.
Personal life
A native of Long Island, Drezen grew up in Massapequa, New York and has identified herself as "half-Jewish." She graduated from New York University's Tisch School of the Arts in 2010 where she studied drama. She subsequently earned a certificate in Shakespeare in Performance from the Royal Academy of Dramatic Art. Her mother Irene is a nurse and her father Warren is a pharmacist and the retired Director of Pharmacy at South Oaks Hospital in Amityville, New York; he accompanied her to the 2019 Emmy Awards show. Her older brother is comic artist Rich Drezen. She has a dog named Lady Bird, a Chihuahua-Terrier mix named after the former first lady Lady Bird Johnson. Drezen is a sexual assault survivor, but prefers not to address the trauma she experienced from acquaintance rape in her stand-up because it "is not the most interesting stuff that I’ve experienced and I don’t feel like talking about it." She is a recovering alcoholic.
Career
Drezen is an editor at large of the feminist humor site Reductress and has co-written the book How to Win at Feminism: The Definitive Guide to Having it All—And Then Some! with the site's founders Beth Newell and Sarah Pappalardo. She has also coauthored the book How May We Hate You? with Todd Dakotah Briscoe. The latter book began as a blog inspired by Drezen's time as a hotel concierge in New York City. She was editor and writer at humor website Cracked.com until 2016. She is a member of the Upright Citizens Brigade Theatre. Together with fellow UCB performer Taylor Moore, Drezen hosted the podcast Ten Ideas from 2013-2016. Drezen was hired as a staff writer on Saturday Night Live before the start of that show's 42nd season. She has toured college campuses with cast members Alex Moffat and Melissa Villaseñor. and has been a supervising writer on the show since season 44, episode 16, which aired on 30 March 2019. Drezen shared nominations for a Primetime Emmy Award for Outstanding Writing for a Variety Series with the SNL writing staff in 2017, 2018 and 2019. Previously she has written and performed on Manhattan Neighborhood Network's The Special Without Brett Davis. In 2019, she performed on The Late Late Show with James Corden on 24 September 2019 and was a guest on the Drunk Women Solving Crime podcast. At the 2019 Edinburgh Festival Fringe, Drezen premiered Okay, Get Home Safe, a one-woman show inspired by her obsession with true crime podcasts.
