Renee Young Speaks On How She Came Up With Her Name, Growing Up, More

Renee Young recently made an appearance on Chasing Glory with Lilian Garcia to talk about various topics. Here 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.””