Renee Young Explains How She Came Up With Her On Screen Name

Renee Young recently appeared on Chasing Glory with Lilian Garcia to talk about a number of topics. Below are the highlights.

Being inspired by female comedians:

“My biggest pull as soon as I got out of high school was just trying to figure out what exactly it was that I wanted to do and I knew that I wanted to be a performer. I knew I wanted to entertain, but I was always drawn to more to the likes of a Gilda Radner, Carol Burnett, Tina Fey, Chelsea Handler was such a big one for me, and Sarah Silverman. I used to study their stuff all the time from watching “Chelsea Lately” and watching “The Sarah Silverman Program”, and I was trying to figure out how I wanted to navigate being a TV host because it really wasn’t something that spoke to me. I wanted to be an actress.”

How she coped with stress and her parent’s divorce growing up:

“Whenever I was going through the times of feeling stressed out, or nervous, or not sure of what was going on with my mom, my dad, these extra marriages, etcetera, I would always think, “You know what, all these people are successful and great actors and comedians, they always have a great story. Everybody had this weird childhood. Maybe that’s what this will be for me and I’ll be able to write about it someday!” It’s funny because I haven’t talked about any of that stuff in so long, so I mean those are just little nuggets and little patches of things just because I really feel like I pushed that aside and tried not to make it stuff that I dwell on because it’s in the past and I had a good childhood.”

Moving to Los Angeles at 19:

“I just packed up one day and I knew that I wanted to go, I knew I just wanted to get out there. I think it’s like that stars in your eyes thing that seems like the natural thing. That’s where you have to go to try to figure some stuff out, but I hadn’t really worked as an entertainer, I’ve only taken classes. I had taken acting classes and did the improv stuff so I was like, “Alright, I’m ready! I’m ready to go do this!” But going there as a Canadian, I didn’t have any work papers, so I couldn’t get an agent, I couldn’t get any meetings, and I also just didn’t know how to do that. I had no idea what the steps were, what I needed, I was definitely in over my head a little bit.”

The story behind the name, “Renee Young”:

“I sent them a bunch of alliterations, which truly I thought were better. I had Renee Ruston, which is Aubrey Hepburn’s real last name. I had Renee Rogers which is Prince’s real last name. I had Ryan which is my closest aunt’s married name. And then I did Young for Neil Young. I was literally flipping through my records, I was like, “Oh, that could be cool.”