April, 2026.- In the 2026 advertising landscape, where laughter is often fleeting, Eliza Hooper stands out by finding the “truth” behind the joke. With a career forged in the trenches of sketch and improv at the Upright Citizens Brigade (UCB), Hooper has developed a unique creative muscle: active listening. For her, directing is not about imposing a static vision but a fluid process where instinct—calibrated after years of watching live audience reactions—dictates when a moment moves from being merely funny to emotionally resonant. As both a writer and director, Eliza approaches every brief through the lens of story structure, searching for the conflict and specific details that invite the viewer into the joke. Her work for brands like Purple and Farm Rich proves that “weird and silly” can actually be a brilliant positioning strategy.
In this exclusive interview with Roastbrief, Eliza Hooper reveals how the flexibility of improv allows her to navigate onset challenges with a collaborative openness that enriches every project. For Hooper, cinematic direction in an age of digital saturation requires logical and detailed world-building, where parody feels authentic and humor is born from the everyday and the human. Discover how her joining the Even/Odd family has amplified her vision of a production without rigid hierarchies, where “what if…” replaces “no,” and where success is measured by that satisfying laughter that arises when the audience recognizes themselves on screen.
1. The Comedy-Heart Balance: Your work is described as balancing “spontaneity with authenticity and heart,” using humor to foster human connection rather than just landing jokes. How do you know when a comedic moment has gone from funny to emotionally resonant? What’s your process for finding that balance?
In my early career, when I was doing a lot of live sketch comedy, I’d stand backstage and peek out at the audience. Should I have been paying attention to the stage? Sure. Probably. I mean, yes, absolutely. But, I wanted to see the audience’s reactions, not just hear them. Reception is a really important part of comedy. What are we doing this for if not to make people laugh? And observing others experience laughter is both soul-affirming and a crash-course on what actually resonates and what doesn’t.
Today, I’m more focused (I do not stare at client village while shooting, thankfully) but that instinct-calibration shaped the way I see and make comedy. For me, life experience plus truth gets the biggest laughs. Like the kind of laughter that ends with a satisfying, “Ahhh” because something about it is especially relatable. That doesn’t happen all the time, of course, but that’s the emotional airspace I’m trying to reach, and that’s usually when I know a moment has become something bigger.
2. From UCB to Commercial Directing: Your background in LA improv and sketch with the Upright Citizens Brigade shaped your “process-heavy approach.” How does improv training inform your work as a commercial director? What do you bring to a set that someone who came purely through traditional advertising might not?
Sketch and improv require active listening or things will fall apart fast! In improv, especially, you experience the consequences of not listening in real time – your scene is not funny and/or a total dumpster fire. Of all the skills I’ve acquired, this is the most valuable. From briefing calls to creative notes to on-set questions, listening always shapes the response – the next step. It is the process.
There’s also an inherent flexibility that stage comedy builds in you. The ability to roll with the punches; set up or alley oop a joke for someone; the constant heightening. I built up a very specific set of muscles that is unique to the improv/sketch environment but extremely useful in the commercial space.
3. The Writer-Director Advantage: You’re both a writer and a director. How does that dual skill set change the way you approach a commercial brief? Do you find yourself rewriting on set, or does having written the material give you a clearer vision for how to direct it?
I was a writer first, so that is where my brain tends to start when I dig into a brief. I’m thinking about it from a story perspective, thinking about the characters and their goals, and looking for the conflict. And of course, I’m always looking for ways to refine the humor and make it specific to the characters and situations. There’s comedy in the details and while I use my director brain here, it’s my writer brain that helps me hone in on these smaller observations.
That said, when I’m writing a script, commercial or narrative, I am simultaneously building out the visuals and approach. I see and hear everything as I’m writing it, and even if it doesn’t all make it onto the page, I have a pretty good idea of what everyone is wearing, where they’ve entered from, where the camera is, and so on. When I’m writing a treatment, I’ll always start with the script, even if I’m just doing a light pass. That’s where the vision comes together.
When I’m on set, I’m always pitching jokes. Not in, like, an annoying “listen to this” way (I hope), but more of a “let’s have a little fun” way (I hope). I usually come with a few lines that I want to try, and then I’ll toss a couple of new ones out depending on where the performance is landing. But, generally, I don’t like to do any structural rewriting on set. I just think it can get messy and eat up your day. Instead, I like to get the script super tight beforehand, including any alts, and save room for improv.
4. Weird, Silly, and Smart: You’ve said you love when “weird, silly ideas can also be really smart—finding ways to build worlds that invite everyone in on the joke.” Can you give an example of a campaign where you achieved that? What made the silliness work without undermining the smart strategy?
I directed a campaign for Purple in which we reenvisioned classic fairytales around their mattresses. Humpty had something to break his fall; Sleeping Beauty just wanted to keep sleeping. We got to build these sort of classic TV fantasy-meets-sketch-style sets with familiar characters lounging on actual, modern mattresses. All of these things – the costumes, the situations, the dialogue – individually verged on ridiculous and were definitely weird, but together they all worked. Whether or not you know the specifics of each fairytale doesn’t matter; the reference itself puts everyone on equal footing, where we all get to laugh at this thing we’re familiar with, intimately, distantly or somewhere in between. And by positioning a modern product within a stylized world, Purple’s mattress was the focal point of each spot. That juxtaposition was simultaneously silly and powerful. In this case, I think the smart was born of the silly.
5. The Farm Rich Talkshow Campaign: Your work for Farm Rich featured a tongue-in-cheek daytime talkshow characterization. How do you build a comedic world like that from scratch? What goes into creating characters, tone, and a visual language that feels both satirical and authentic?
I try not to overthink when it comes to comedy – there’s a lot of instinct at play – but I do like building out the logic of a world, as that can inform everything from set design to camera movement. I really am always asking myself that classic improv 101 question, “If this, then what?”
When it’s satire or parody, it goes without saying (but I’m going to say it anyway) that you need to establish what you are satirizing or parodying. So, I like to build my visuals on that foundation. If it’s a talk show, let’s bring in some familiar connection points, like a wandering audience camera or clever chyrons; visual cues that bring everyone in on the joke.
In the case of Farm Rich, we were lucky to have genuinely funny boards. “Who’s been stuffing my potatoes, Jan?” was such a good line and summed up the tone for me. It sparked conversations with actors that led to all of these emotional micro-moments on screen. The performances amped up the comedic tension in a way that really affirmed the satire.
6. Even/Odd’s Collaborative Spirit: You noted that Even/Odd’s collaborative spirit made you feel at home, especially coming from the world of improv and comedy. What does genuine collaboration look like to you as a director? How do you create space for collaboration without losing your creative vision?
I think, like all things, it starts with a great idea; something about the story you’re telling has to excite those involved. Maybe it’s topical or thematically resonant. Maybe the process requires something fun, stunty, or different. When we pushed a man in a giant egg costume off a wall – it was indeed all of those things. When something about the creative or process lights us up individually, we feel it collectively as a production. There’s an eagerness to ideate, to pitch more jokes, to troubleshoot together. Constraints become exciting, and we end up using “what if…” far more than we use “no.”
I know what I want, and I tend to know what a project needs to thrive creatively, but I also know that there are production designers, DPs, creative directors, etc., whose insights and experience might unlock something specific, something incredible. So I always build in lots of conversation. Talk to the whole team. You don’t have to love every note, but let yourself think about it. Let the experience grow your creative vision. That’s what makes the work interesting.
