June Diane Raphael wonderful lady
June Diane Raphael (born January 4, 1980) is an American actress, comedienne, and screenwriter. She is best known for starring in the Adult Swim series NTSF:SD:SUV:: and in the web series Burning Love.Raphael was born and raised in Rockville Centre, New York to parents Diane and John Raphael, where she graduated from South Side High School in 1998. After high school, she attended New York University (NYU), where she studied acting at NYU’s Tisch School of the Arts and the Stella Adler Studio of Acting. She has two older sisters, Lauren Raphael and New York-based actress Deanna Raphael. After graduating New York University in 2002, Raphael and her best friend from college, Casey Wilson, began studying improvisational comedy at the Upright Citizens Brigade Theater in New York City, where they would eventually run their two-woman sketch show for a number of years. Performing the long-running stage show opened doors for them as writers, after performing the show at the “U.S. Comedy Arts Festival” in 2005, they were hired by New Regency Pictures to write the film Bride Wars and landed a development deal with UPN to create a sitcom pilot.
Raphael began her comedy career writing and performing with the Upright Citizens Brigade Theatre (UCB) in New York and later in Los Angeles. Among her best known work at UCB, was the long-running sketch show Rode Hard and Put Away Wet, written and performed alongside her comedy partner and best friend Casey Wilson; the stage show ran from 2003 to 2006 in New York and Los Angeles and was an official selection at 2005’s US Comedy Arts Festival in Aspen, Colorado. The two women, who had first met in a clown class during their sophomore year at NYU, went on to win the ECNY Award for “Best Comedy Duo” in 2005. They also performed as members of the UCB improv teams “Mr. and Mrs. All-Star”, “Sentimental Lady”, and “Hey, Uncle Gary!”. Raphael and Wilson’s comedic partnership has since branched out into an active writing career in film and television, they co-wrote the screenplay for the 2009 comedy Bride Wars, which they also appeared in with supporting roles. They had a development deal with the UPN network in 2005 to create a half-hour comedy pilot and in 2007 they worked as writers and story editors on the Americanized version of Creature Comforts on CBS. They also continue to contribute comedic videos to the humor website Funny or Die.
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As a film and television actress, Raphael has made guest appearances on shows such as Party Down, Happy Endings, New Girl, Animal Practice, Funny or Die Presents, Big Lake, and Flight of the Conchords. She appeared with supporting roles in the films Going the Distance, Zodiac, Bachelorette, Forgetting Sarah Marshall and Year One. In 2010, Raphael co-starred as Barb in the improvised comedy series Players on Spike TV. She also starred in all three seasons of the web series Burning Love alongside Ken Marino and Michael Ian Black.Raphael continues to collaborate with writing partner Casey Wilson on scripts for film and television, they have worked on numerous script rewrites for films in development, such as projects with Anna Faris and America Ferrera attached to star. Recent scripts in development they have worked on include the Universal Pictures comedy The Bachelorette Party and the romantic comedy You Complete Us, produced by Endgame Entertainment. In 2012, their scripts for Walk of Shame and The Housewives were sold to ABC and being developed by Sony Pictures with Will Gluck attached as producer. As writer-performers, Wilson and Raphael also continue to generate material for themselves. They most recently wrote and starred together in the raunchy female buddy comedy Ass Backwards, which also co-stars Alicia Silverstone, Jon Cryer, and Vincent D’Onofrio.
The film premiered at the Sundance Film Festival on January 21, 2013.In February 2010, Raphael joined the rotating cast of the Off-Broadway play Love, Loss, and What I Wore (written by Nora Ephron and Delia Ephron) at the Westside Theatre in Manhattan. In January 2011, Raphael and Casey Wilson created their newest comedic stage show The Realest Real Housewives, which they starred in alongside Jessica St. Clair, Melissa Rauch, Danielle Schneider and Morgan Walsh. The show ran monthly at Los Angeles’ Upright Citizens Brigade Theatre throughout 2011. Raphael also contributed short stories to the 2010 book “Worst Laid Plans”, based on the long-running stage show, which she frequently performed in.In 2013, Raphael signed on to play the lead role of Donna in the pilot for the American remake of Pulling for ABC.Raphael currently stars with Paul Scheer in the Adult Swim action-comedy series NTSF:SD:SUV::, which began airing on July 21, 2011. The second season began airing on August 9, 2012.
Raphael lives in Los Angeles and is married to actor/comedian Paul Scheer. They began dating in January 2004, after first meeting when the artistic director of Manhattan’s Upright Citizens Brigade Theatre brought Scheer in to offer advice to Raphael and her comedy partner Casey Wilson on making improvements to their two-woman sketch show. They moved from New York to Los Angeles in 2005. In 2009, they married in a smallish affair at the Santa Barbara Museum of Natural History. In December 2010, they began hosting the comedy podcast How Did This Get Made? along with comedian Jason Mantzoukas. The podcast is a roundtable discussion where Scheer, Raphael, Mantzoukas and other special guests discuss bad films that make absolutely no sense. Raphael also currently co-stars in Scheer’s comedy-action series NTSF:SD:SUV:: on Adult Swim. Raphael and actress/comedienne Kulap Vilaysack are the founders and directors of the Upright Citizens Brigade Theater (UCB) associated “UCB Corps” community, a volunteer charity organization. Raphael and Vilaysack organize charity events and projects to help improve the community, with the help of volunteers and other UCB performers “who want to make our world a better place”.
