Alana Johnson

Alana Johnson is a NY-NJ bred (great! now she’s hungry) Puerto Ridiculous actor, comedian, hip hop improviser and mini-beast. More self-proclaimed titles could be added, but her opposable thumbs are like “nah.”

She grew up humbly on Manhattan’s Upper East Side, and was raised by several doormen, a maid and Zoloft®. People are often confused by this given that she’s quite obviously (½) Puerto Rican (and ½ ridiculous, aka ½ mind ya business and just respect that shorty has races in rotation, nosey). In those days, she was simply confused about where Puerto Rico was on the map of Mexico.

Alana fell in love with being the center of attention during her brief stint as a competitive figure skater, during which she fell a lot in general.

Oh! Pero what happened? You never heard of a (½) Puerto Rican on ice?!

Neither did she, considering she was still wondering, like, what kind of White “Puerto Rican” like, even was even.

She learned eventually, after a fellow Latin-o at her overpriced grammar school - why do they even call it that? She learned other things there too, like how to rock a sweetass eating disorder, gosh! - started speaking to her in Spanish, and, whence she couldn’t respond, ran off yelling “Alana’s a fake Puerto Rican! Alana’s a fake Puerto Rican!” How he knew before her, she still dost not knoweth.

After her family relocated from the humble Upper East Side to a modest mansion in Bergen County, New Jersey, sh*t got real. With her newfound brownness, she mobilized all the way upward to join her high school step team.

Ever since then, desperation’s been her name, and validation’s been her game. She doesn’t want you to put her in a box, but it would be nice if she fit somewhere, ya dig?

She went on to attend Rutgers University on a full academic scholarship, where she graduated with a B.S. in Flip Cup and Keg Stands (jajaja), but on paper, a B.A. in Economics and Journalism & Media Studies. At Rutgers, her alleged face for radio and her love of Mad Dog 2020 inspired her to get into, well, radio. With no radio job opps post-graduation, she expanded her horizons and earned employment at the refined nationally-syndicated daytime talk show, the Maury Show. It was there that she fell in love with the idea of never working in entertainment again.

She dallied in staffing sales, waitressing, copywriting, waiting tables, receptionist-ing, bottle serving, sushi serving, blah blah blah blah-ing until on the eve of her quarter-life crisis, at the suggestion of a complete stranger who was a white man, she decided to take an acting class.

Boom! She ain’t choose this life, this life chose her!

Okay, what else do you want? Isn’t mental instability and a perpetual identity crisis enough to understand how she non-linearly got into comedy? Geezus, stop being so nosey! Now, let’s end this thing.

Today the multi-hyphenate can be seen performing all over the country with her hip hop-improv squad DMXX and with the all-women comedian collective Comedy Derailed. Alongside her creative partner, Jourdan, she is the creator, Executive Producer and star (pero like, duh) of the comedic web series Two Grown - like “girl, we too grown for that” but it’s T-W-O because there’s two of them. You’re mindblown, they know.

Two Grown is currently streaming on BET Digital, with all new episodes being released every Wednesday at 6PM.

Alana was a US Finalist in the 2018 ABC Discovers Digital Talent Competition, and is represented by Prevail Artist Management.

She sleeps in New Jersey with her mother (relax), and attends group therapy every waking hour in New York City. By group therapy she means improv and stand-up performances, acting things, the gym and, no, for realz group therapy. She is doing just fine.

Right?