Rachel Bloom

Bloom was born on April 3, 1987, in Los Angeles County, California, and grew up in Manhattan Beach. She is the only child of Shelli (née Rosenberg), a musician, and Alan Bloom, a healthcare lawyer. She is Jewish. She attended Manhattan Beach public schools including Mira Costa High School, where she was involved in the school's drama program. Bloom has said she used performance as a way to try to fit in. In 2009, Bloom graduated from New York University's Tisch School of the Arts with a BFA in Drama. While at NYU, she was a head writer and director with the school's "premier sketch comedy group", Hammerkatz. During college, Bloom first performed at the Upright Citizens Brigade Theatre in New York with the group, and later on her own at its venue in Los Angeles. She was once roommates with comedian Ilana Glazer after college in Brooklyn.Bloom recorded a video for her original song "Fuck Me, Ray Bradbury" in April 2010 and it was released in advance of the writer's 90th birthday in August that year. The song was inspired by Bloom's re-reading of her favorite Bradbury book, The Martian Chronicles. Done as a parody of teen pop but in tribute to Bradbury, the viral video on her "RachelDoesStuff" Youtube channel had more than 600,000 views in its first week of release and Bloom gained a following from it and her subsequent videos. The video went on to win a Hugo Award in 2011. A photo of Bradbury, posted online Aug. 21, 2010, purported to show him watching the video. She worked as an intern for head writer Seth Meyers at Saturday Night Live and in 2012, she unsuccessfully auditioned for the show. The audition video she submitted included a bit as Katharine Hepburn doing the voice for Bugs Bunny in Space Jam. Bloom released her first album of musical comedy, Please Love Me, on May 13, 2013. It featured the viral songs "Fuck Me, Ray Bradbury" and "You Can Touch My Boobies". Her second album, Suck It, Christmas, was a collaboration with Dan Gregor (her husband) and Jack Dolgen. Released on November 19, 2013, the album is a comedic look at Chanukah with songs including "Chanukah Honey". Bloom provided the voice of Princess Peach in the song "Luigi's Ballad" on Starbomb's self-titled debut album, released in December 2013. Bloom also co-wrote "Super Friend", performed by Melissa Benoist and Grant Gustin and featured on the musical crossover episode of Supergirl and The Flash in 2014. The song was titled "Duet" on the soundtrack released from the episode. On April 25, 2016, Bloom receive the Visionary Award from the East West Players at their annual gala. The award seeks to honor "individuals who have raised the visibility of the Asian Pacific American (APA) community through their craft”; her show Crazy Ex-Girlfriend was lauded for its decision to cast an Asian-American male in a trope- and stereotype-subverting lead role. Bloom also worked as a television writer on Allen Gregory and Robot Chicken. In April 2017, Bloom appeared on "The Sexual Spectrum" episode of Bill Nye Saves the World, performing the song "My Sex Junk", concerning gender diversity. Both her performance and the episode became controversial, garnering mixed responses including backlash from conservative groups and on social media, where Bloom was threatened. The episode received an Emmy nomination. Bloom co-starred in the film Most Likely to Murder, opposite Adam Pally and Vincent Kartheiser. The film was directed by Dan Gregor, Bloom's husband. It premiered at the SXSW Film Festival in March 2018, and was released on Digital and on Demand in May 2018. Bloom and her rescue dog Wiley appeared together in an #AdoptPureLove PSA for the Shelter Pet Project that began airing in 2019. On October 10, 2019, she was featured in a 30-minute YouTube documentary called Laughing Matters, created by SoulPancake in collaboration with Funny or Die, wherein a variety of comedians discuss mental health. The same year, Bloom guest starred in My Little Pony: Friendship Is Magic as the kirin Autumn Blaze. On June 10, 2020, Bloom participated in the #ShareTheMicNow Instagram initiative. Fifty-two Black women took over the Instagram feeds of 52 white women with large platforms, including Julia Roberts, Elizabeth Warren, and Diane von Fürstenberg to draw attention to their work to catalyze change. Bloom's Instagram account was taken over by author Christine Michel Carter. On November 18, 2020, Bloom was awarded the Lifesaver Award from ELEM/Youth in Distress in Israel, a nonprofit aiding youth in distress in Israel, at its Hats off to Heroes virtual gala.