Annoying Actor Friend Reveals Identity! Elaborate Ruse or True Theater Lover?

Following years of mystery surrounding the popular theater-themed Twitter account and blog known as "Annoying Actor Friend", Andrew Briedis has revealed himself to his fans.

BroadwayWorld will have an exclusive, extensive interview with Briedis tomorrow. The writer openly discusses both the creation and future of Annoying Actor Friend, and much more. So, check out that article on Thursday morning.

In a post from @Andrew Briedis, the former actor explains why he gave up a career in theater and decided to create a parody Twitter account:

I can make up any number of excuses as to why I was an unsuccessful actor, but they'd be just that... Excuses. By the time I hit my mid-twenties, I was coming to terms with having fallen out of love with the business. It's fair to say we had broken up years earlier. When it came to acting, I never really had the unique skills that drive actors to get up in the morning-and those qualities have always fascinated me. Maybe that's why two years into flirting with the idea of becoming a writer I was compelled to create a parody Twitter account about the people I had been surrounded by for the greater part of my life. I've never been on Broadway. I no longer pursue acting. I'm a personal trainer at Equinox. Annoying Actor Friend could be viewed as an elaborate ruse, but I wouldn't say that I "pulled one over" on the Broadway community. I just loved writing about them.

My name is Andrew Briedis, and I am Annoying Actor Friend. It's understandable that it might be strange to discover that I am not an actor anymore (I do still pay my Equity dues so I can vote in elections), but I believe that for any of this to work, I needed to have a lack of emotional connection to the subject matter to be able to objectively analyze it. This experiment has, and will always, be about impartial social commentary on a very specific kind of culture.

Explaining why he decided to reveal himself now, Briedis offers:

You might be wondering, "Why reveal your identity now?" While it's no mistake that this was all carefully planned months ago with such close proximity to the release date of my second book, (there's actually a mostly honest 20,000 word semi-autobiography that defines my identity hidden in its 'choose-your-own-adventure' format) the real reason I felt it was time to end the anonymous aspect of Annoying Actor Friend is because I believe that has run its course. Everything I have ever done as this character has been founded upon calculated social media experimentation-and when the timing is right, those experiments take flight. I could feel a cultural shift within social media during the past year not unlike the one that drove me to create the account in the first place, and it led me to believe that for me, this is the right time. Annoying Actor Friend takes a surprising amount of focus to run, and I'd like to redirect my attention to elevating other things I have written (and the many more things I want to write) but I look forward to finding a way to reinvent it. While some people might be upset because they strongly think that the reason my activism works is due to the power in my anonymity, to that I say, "If this community needs an 'anonymous crusader' to ignite and drive conversation, then there is a much bigger problem."?

Click here to read the post in full!

About Annoying Actor Friend: The satirical Twitter account Annoying Actor Friend was created in 2012 to comment on the theater industry. It soon expanded into a blog, a how-to book, and, most recently, a live cabaret at 54 Below in 2014. AAF's #SOBLESSED: The Annoying Actor Friend's Guide to Werking in Show Business debuted at #1 on Amazon's Theatre/Parody list, and the original Twitter account currently has over 19 thousand followers.

Annoying Actor Friend was nominated for a 2015 Shorty Award, which honors the best of social media. [source]

Image courtesy of @Andrew Briedis