Anastasia Washington is a filmmaker, comedian, actress, singer, and curve model with an irreverent sense of humor. The LA native has been described as the female W Kamau Bell and Jordan Peele for her knack for observational storytelling that infuses humor and love into sometimes controversial commentary on subjects like eating disorders, colorism, dating, and more.
Her latest project, Grind, is a 4-part anthology in which she plays multiple roles alongside James Paxton, Christopher Marquette, James Urbaniak, and Rob Huel, and it debuts at SXSW, with showings at other festivals coming up this year. Grind follows four interconnected stories that center around hustle culture and the dangers of late-stage capitalism.
EBONY magazine caught up with the multi-hyphenate to discuss her love of comedy and horror, how the genres are more similar than people may think, her approach to tapping into Black female rage in storytelling, and more.
EBONY: Your work and interests sit at the intersection of comedy and horror, and I’ve always felt like there’s a thin line between both, but it can be hard to articulate. What do you make of that connection?
Anastasia Washington: Borrowing a statement from Jordan Peele, the difference between comedy and horror is music, and I love that. Because I do think both art forms, comedy and horror, are all about beats. They’re all about timing, and if you know timing and beats, you’re good in both of those art forms, in that you have to have set it up, and there’s different timing for a scare in the same way with a joke, or they don’t land with the people that you’re trying to get that emotion across. Both of those vehicles, comedy and horror, are amazing ways to just deliver messages sometimes without people even realizing it, and start hard conversations and really cool conversations that change things.
Horror and comedy have both broken out and changed society in so many ways. We had our first leading man who wasn’t a Black man in Night of the Living Dead, and that was amazing, and then comedy. How many barriers have people of color and women broken in comedy? I think it’s pretty fun, and I do think that’s why they play well together.
I would love for horror genres to lean more into women’s rage, especially Black women’s rage.
Same! I have some scripts ready. And it’s funny, a couple of years ago, I wrote and starred in a movie called He Said/She Said. It’s a short film about a sexual encounter from a man’s perspective and a woman’s perspective, very different experiences, same experience. And we see one side, and then you go forward and see another side.
And it was funny when people were reading the script or seeing the movie, they would say stuff like, well, I don’t know, I would want him to be more evil and I was like, “Not all men are 100% evil, but they do bad things.” This conversation is exactly what I wanted. I wanted you to come up to me and talk to me. I want to hear your side. I want to have this conversation. That is why we make movies, right? I want to start conversations.
Let’s segway into Grind. Tell me about it and how it was premiering at SXSW?
It started as a short film called MLM, and we did the festival circuit with that, and it was more about, I don’t know if you ever saw the documentary about LuLaRoe?
The leggings company scam that was kind of like a cult, right?
This is like a mockery of that. It was really fun to do that one. It did very well at festivals, and the producers, writers, and directors decided to make an anthology of the different gig jobs many of us have had. So, we have a barista one. We have content control, which I kind of knew was a job, and then a delivery driver, like what that’s like, and how awkward and weird that can go.
And you play different roles in Grind. Tell me about them.
One of the roles is a cult follower, like part of this bigger corporation, and then, I’m a very Karen-esque host in one of them. I was actually in all the segments, but some didn’t quite make it. I was a really cool zombie for one. So, hopefully one day they just release some of that zombie footage, because it was so cool. I get to play throughout this anthology and be a through line, and it’s pretty fun. And there are some pretty epic comedians in this, too.
What are the plans for Grind beyond SXSW?
We are in a couple of other bigger festivals that I’m super excited about. I know Panic Fest is coming up, and then there’s one more horror fest that I’m not sure I’m allowed to announce, but it’s a big one. It’s a good one. I’m hoping to go to as many as I can. Grind is doing well, and hopefully, after that festival run, it will reach the masses.