Ally Beardsley | |
---|---|
Born | June 25, 1988 |
Alma mater | Point Loma Nazarene University |
Occupation(s) | Actor, comedian |
Known for | Dimension 20 , Game Changer |
Ally Beardsley (born June 25, 1988) [1] is an American actor and comedian. They are best known for their roles in various Dropout (formerly known as CollegeHumor) productions, such as CollegeHumor Originals, Game Changer, and Total Forgiveness. They are also known for their roles in Dropout's Dungeons & Dragons actual play Dimension 20 , where they have played a variety of LGBTQ+ characters.
Beardsley worked in Amsterdam as part of Boom Chicago for three years before joining CollegeHumor in 2017. They also performed "regularly at the Upright Citizens Brigade Theatre in Los Angeles". [2] Beardsley, with Grant O'Brien, created and starred in the web series Total Forgiveness (2019) for CollegeHumor. Jillian Berman of MarketWatch commented that show is "the latest sign that the ubiquity of student debt has pushed it into the cultural zeitgeist" as Beardsley and O'Brien competed in challenges to earn increasing amounts of "money towards their loans". [3] Berman opined that neither Beardsley or O'Brien are "the most sympathetic characters to illustrate the challenges of the nation's $1.5 trillion student-loan problem. [...] Nonetheless, the show provides a window into a student-loan experience that's likely relatable for many of the nation's 44 million student-loan borrowers". [3] They also starred in the reboot of Troopers (2019) which premiered on CollegeHumor's new streaming service Dropout. [4] [5] In January 2020, it was announced that IAC was selling CollegeHumor to its Chief Creative Officer, Sam Reich, resulting in the job loss of nearly all employees and staff. [6] [7] The restructured company was reduced to seven people; [8] Brennan Lee Mulligan, Dungeon Master of the anthology actual play series Dimension 20 , was the only creative left on the payroll. [9]
Since 2018 [update] , Beardsley has been part of the main cast of Dimension 20; [10] [11] the series survived the "upheaval" at CollegeHumor in 2020. [9] Lauren Coates, for Polygon in 2023, commented that Beardsley is among the Dimension 20 "fan favorites in large part because of their initial inexperience and the new energy they bring to the table". [12] In April 2024, Beardsley was part of the Dimension 20 "Time Quangle" live tour in the UK and Ireland where they reprised randomly drawn characters from previous campaigns. [13] [14] Since 2020, they've also appeared as a guest on various Dropout series such as Game Changer , [15] [16] Very Important People, [17] [18] and Dropout Presents. [19]
From 2018 to 2019, Beardsley hosted Tales from the Closet, a podcast where guests shared stories from before they came out as LGBTQ+. [20] They appeared as a guest on Netflix's The Gay Agenda podcast in 2022. [21] In 2023, they started hosting the podcast Gender Spiral alongside Babette Thomas, where they explore a variety of questions regarding gender and gender presentation. [22]
In 2024, they starred as Glenn in the independent movie The Disruptors by writer and director Adam Frucci. [23]
Beardsley first played Dungeons & Dragons on Dimension 20, as their parents had religious objections to the game while they were growing up. [24] Although raised religious, Beardsley has since left their childhood church. [25]
Beardsley is queer and transgender. [24] [25] When they had just started to use gender neutral pronouns, Beardsley created and played a transgender character in the second season of Dimension 20 "who had transitioned in ways" they had not yet. [26] Beardsley highlighted the fun aspect of fantasy where you get to do anything by "stripping away the crunchy, real-world limitations" and felt that character's story arc was "extremely euphoric". [26]
They also have ADHD. [27] They graduated from Point Loma Nazarene University; the student debt they accrued while attending university was the focus of the 2019 show Total Forgiveness. [28]
Year | Title | Role | Notes | Ref. | |
---|---|---|---|---|---|
Films | |||||
2014 | Pim & Pom: The Big Adventure (Dutch : Pim & Pom: Het Grote Avontuur) | Tracey | English voice cast | [29] [30] | |
2024 | The Disruptors | Glenn | [23] | ||
Web series | |||||
2016–2020 | CollegeHumor Originals | Various | 123 Episodes | ||
2018–present | Dimension 20 | Fantasy High | Kristen Applebees | Main cast | [31] |
The Unsleeping City | Pete Conlan | Main cast | [32] | ||
Fantasy High: Sophomore Year | Kristen Applebees | Main cast | [10] | ||
A Crown Of Candy | Liam Wilhemina | Main cast | [33] | ||
The Unsleeping City: Chapter II | Pete Conlan | Main cast | [34] [24] | ||
Mice & Murder | Lars Vandenchomp | Main cast | [35] | ||
Shriek Week | Megan Mirror | Main cast | [36] | ||
A Starstruck Odyssey | Margaret Encino | Main cast | [37] | ||
Neverafter | Mother Timothy Goose | Main cast | [38] [39] | ||
Fantasy High: Junior Year | Kristen Applebees | Main cast | [40] [25] [41] | ||
Never Stop Blowing Up | Russell Feeld / Jennifer Drips | Main cast | [42] | ||
2019 | Total Forgiveness | Themself | Main role; also co-creator | [3] | |
Troopers | Mara | 3 episodes | [5] | ||
Paranoia | Themself | Host; also executive producer | [43] [44] | ||
WTF 101 | River | Voice role | [45] | ||
2020 | Critical Role | One-shots | AF Flowers | Episode: "Cinderbrush: A Monsterhearts Story" | [46] |
2020–2024 | Game Changer | Themself | 16 episodes | [15] [16] | |
2024 | Very Important People | Pig #2 | Episode: "Pig #2" | [17] | |
Dropout Presents | Themself | Episode: "From Ally to Zacky" | [19] | ||
Dungeons & Dragons is a fantasy tabletop role-playing game (RPG) originally created and designed by Gary Gygax and Dave Arneson. The game was first published in 1974 by Tactical Studies Rules, Inc. (TSR). It has been published by Wizards of the Coast, later a subsidiary of Hasbro, since 1997. The game was derived from miniature wargames, with a variation of the 1971 game Chainmail serving as the initial rule system. D&D's publication is commonly recognized as the beginning of modern role-playing games and the role-playing game industry, and also deeply influenced video games, especially the role-playing video game genre.
CH Media, doing business as Dropout, is an Internet comedy company based in Los Angeles which produces content for release on its streaming service, Dropout, and on YouTube. It was originally founded as the CollegeHumor website, created by Josh Abramson and Ricky Van Veen in 1999, and was owned by InterActiveCorp (IAC) from 2006 until January 2020, when IAC withdrew funding and the website shut down. The current CEO of CH Media is Sam Reich, a veteran performer and former Chief Creative Officer of CollegeHumor, who purchased the company in 2020 from IAC. In September 2023, the company formally dropped the CollegeHumor branding in favor of its Dropout branding, which originated with its streaming service.
Freddie Wong is an American internet celebrity, filmmaker, VFX artist, podcaster, and competitive gamer. Wong has participated in at least three YouTube channels; with RocketJump, his production company's main channel, sporting over 9 million subscribers; BrandonJLa, a channel including behind the scenes videos and other content, which holds over 1.1 million subscribers; and Node, a gaming channel with over 3.2 million subscribers. He is also known for creating the web series Video Game High School.
Dungeons & Dragons (D&D) is a fantasy role-playing game first published in 1974. As the popularity of the game grew throughout the late-1970s and 1980s, it became referenced in popular culture more frequently. The complement of games, films and cultural references based on Dungeons & Dragons or similar fantasies, characters, and adventures became ubiquitous after the end of the 1970s.
Matthew Christopher Miller, better known as Matthew Mercer, is an American voice actor and game designer. He has provided voice work for cartoons, animations, video games, and English dubs of anime.
Critical Role is an American web series in which a group of professional voice actors play Dungeons & Dragons. The show started streaming partway through the cast's first campaign in March 2015. Campaign one ended in October 2017 after 115 episodes, and campaign two started in January 2018 and ended in June 2021 after 141 episodes. A number of one-shots were aired in the hiatus between the two campaigns. After campaign two was completed, the spin-off limited series Exandria Unlimited aired from June 2021 to August 2021. The third campaign premiered on October 21, 2021.
The Adventure Zone is a weekly comedy and adventure actual play podcast based loosely upon the Dungeons & Dragons game series, along with other role-playing games. The show is distributed by the Maximum Fun network and hosted by brothers Justin, Travis, and Griffin McElroy, and their father Clint McElroy. Regular episodes of the podcast feature the family solving puzzles, fighting enemies, and leveling up their characters in a series of cinematic and humorous encounters. The series is often represented by the stone rune ᛥ as a logo, which was the symbol of the Bureau of Balance in the original campaign.
Siobhan Thompson is a British-American comedian and writer. She is known for her work on the CollegeHumor Originals web series and for her roles on Dropout's Dimension 20. She has appeared in other programs such as Adam Ruins Everything and Broad City. She was also a staff writer for Adult Swim's Rick and Morty and as of 2024 a writer on Krapopolis.
Brian Kevin Patrick Murphy is an American actor, producer, and writer. He is best known for his various roles in CollegeHumor videos, his role as Murph on truTV comedy original Adam Ruins Everything, and his role on the Pop original Hot Date, co-starring with his wife Emily Axford.
Emily Joanne Axford is an American actress, writer, and producer. She is best known for her various roles in CollegeHumor videos, her role as Emily on the truTV comedy Adam Ruins Everything, and for her role on the Pop original Hot Date, co-starring her husband, Brian K. Murphy.
Dropout is an American subscription streaming service run by the production company of the same name, founded in September 2018. Dropout streams original programming, and does not run advertisements. Its content is mainly composed of live play, such as Dimension 20 hosted by Brennan Lee Mulligan, and improv comedy and panel shows like Game Changer and Make Some Noise, both hosted by Dropout owner Sam Reich. Dropout's series often feature a rotating cast of regular comedians and performers.
Critical Role Productions, LLC is a multimedia production company incorporated in 2015 by the members of the creator-owned streaming show Critical Role. The first two shows from the company, Critical Role and Talks Machina, originally premiered on Geek & Sundry. The company moved to their own studio space in 2018, and began putting out new shows on their own Twitch and YouTube channels. A split from Legendary Digital Networks was completed in early 2019, at which point Critical Role Productions took over production responsibility and since then has continued to launch new shows independently.
Dimension 20 is a tabletop role-playing game show produced by and broadcast on Dropout, and generally hosted by Brennan Lee Mulligan as the show's regular Dungeon Master. Most of the games use Dungeons & Dragons 5th edition. Long seasons, featuring a core cast of players in seventeen or more episodes, are interspersed with shorter side quests, featuring a rotating cast in ten or fewer episodes.
Brennan Lee Mulligan is an American comedian, actor, writer, and gamemaster. He has worked with CollegeHumor as a sketch writer and performer, and as gamemaster for their actual play web series, Dimension 20 (2018–present). He also wrote the superhero webcomic Strong Female Protagonist alongside artist Molly Ostertag, on hiatus since 2018.
The Legend of Vox Machina is an American adult animated fantasy action television series produced by Metapigeon, Titmouse, Inc., and Amazon Studios, which premiered on Amazon Prime Video on January 28, 2022. The series is based on the first campaign of the Dungeons & Dragons web series Critical Role. It stars Laura Bailey, Taliesin Jaffe, Ashley Johnson, Matthew Mercer, Liam O'Brien, Marisha Ray, Sam Riegel, and Travis Willingham, reprising their roles from the campaign.
Erika Ishii is an American voice actor and host. They are best known as the voice of video game characters such as Valkyrie in Apex Legends, and for their appearances in actual play web series including L.A. by Night and Dimension 20.
Actual play, also called live play, is a genre of podcast or web show in which people play tabletop role-playing games (TTRPGs) for an audience. Actual play often encompasses in-character interactions between players, storytelling from the gamemaster, and out-of-character engagements such as dice rolls and discussion of game mechanics. The genre emerged in the early 2000s and became more popular throughout the decade, particularly with the 2015 debut of Critical Role, an actual play webseries featuring professional voice actors.
Lou Wilson is an American actor, writer, and comedian. He is best known for his work as a writer and his roles on actual play anthology web series Dimension 20 and the creator-owned podcast Worlds Beyond Number. He is also known for being the on-air announcer for Jimmy Kimmel Live! and his roles on American Vandal, The King of Staten Island, and The Guest Book.
Game Changer is an American comedy panel game show on Dropout created and hosted by Sam Reich. The show follows players, typically three comedians, who participate in a new game every episode, with the players usually kept unaware of the premise and rules of the game beforehand. According to Polygon, the show "combines improv comedy, puzzle solving, fierce competition, and a prankster ethos." Game Changer episodes have led to three spinoff shows on Dropout: Dirty Laundry, Make Some Noise, and Play It By Ear. The show has been renewed for a seventh season.
Aabria Iyengar is an American web series actress known primarily for tabletop role-playing game anthologies, streams and podcasts. She was the Dungeon Master (DM) for the first season of Exandria Unlimited. Iyengar has been both a player and a Game Master for multiple seasons of Dimension 20 and a guest DM on The Adventure Zone.
Ally Beardsley, Siobhan Thompson and Zac Oyama have all been ten seasons.
Voice cast (English): Georgina Verbaan, Cari Leslie, Eleanor Hollingsworth, Ally Beardsley, Michael Diederich