Interview with Alexi Wasser – actress, model, IMBOYCRAZY blogger
I interviewed Los Angeles-based actress, model and I’MBOYCRAZY blogger Alexi Wasser for NO magazine, a quarterly arts magazine based in Auckland, New Zealand.
Alexi Wasser is an anomaly. The Californian born 28-year-old model, actor, writer, blogger and sometime-musician has built her brand on being many things at once, and retains her kooky charm every step of the way.
Her latest incarnation is as a blogger, documenting in gory detail her forays and infatuation with boys. Acting as a sort of Ellen or Oprah for dysfunctional teens and twenty-somethings like herself, she started posting autobiographical essays, hysterical rants and videos – both of herself and of boys she’s crazy about, just for something fun to do. She also conducts live talkback-style podcasts online where she dishes out advice to callers.
Her website Imboycrazy.com, has gained fans as afar as Egypt, Argentina, Germany, England and New Zealand. When she put out a call for interns she got “50 replies for interns in LA and 150 replies for interns all around the country and the world”. She now has three who look after her social networking sites and street teams.
So who is this girl? The daughter of renowned photographer Julian Wasser and Leslie Knauer, singer in the cult ‘80s band Promises (popular in Australia), Alexi Celine Wasser was born and raised in Hollywood.
“I came from no money, my parents both lived in apartments; they split up when I was six years old. I didn’t do very well in school because I was always forgetting my text books at the other parent’s house. After I barely graduated high school I moved to New York and modelled.” Getting the opportunity to model in Japan, she relocated to live a strict, depressing life of daily weighings (just one of the explicit stories documented on her blog).
Modelling took her further abroad, and after losing her apartment in New York she moved back to LA and started acting in commercials for a living. Naturally funny and extremely confident, she also tried stand-up comedy. “It was fun, but it’s hard. You have to be really passionate and wanna get better at it, and I realised I wasn’t. But from doing that I realised I loved writing and performing… so that’s why I continued acting and writing, those are two things I took from that.”
Alexi believes firmly in life lessons. Philosophical about damaging situations, from cutting herself while trimming her bikini line to a turbulent five-year relationship with the drummer from Jet, she is currently single and revelling in her momentous energy. She even had a music project, Chloe Sebastian Oliver, with OK Go bassist Timothy Nordwind, which she hopes to revive someday.
She has a string of films to her bow, including Hollywood horrors Cabin Fever 2 and Relic of Cthulhu, and a handful set for release next year, including indie movie 0s and 1s, horror Growth, crime thriller Choose and drama Audrey The Trainwreck. But her latest exciting exploit is the evolution of her blog into a TV show and a book, something she says is a dream come true. The book will be a collection of essays and her advice column, ‘the blind leading the blind’. “It’ll be like what you read on my blog… the narrative stories but longer and more fleshed out”. The TV show is in its early stages of development, but if Alexi’s viewing habits and aspirations are anything to go by it could prove to be a sexier, funnier version of The Hills. “I would love to be, in a year from now, playing myself on a scripted TV show that’s really similar to the short films I made.”
Alexi wrote, directed, produced, acted in and cast the five short films that comprised a unique promotional series for her blog. With cinematographer David Lowery she bared herself in multiple ways in uncomfortable situations many of us have likely experienced or are curious about.
“We worked well together, I trusted his vision and his ability as a cinematographer. When you’re working with another person you have to let go and trust that the reason why you hired them or agreed to work with them to begin with is because you like what they do and you know they’re capable. It’s hard working with another person! I’m a control freak so it’s hard to let somebody else take some of the work away from me.”
What could be considered her most challenging role yet though is blogging. She sees her goal not just “to entertain, or inspire” but also “to make somebody feel less alone, laugh, or realise their full potential. To help them be the best version of themselves by being brave.”