Actress Anna Chlumsky AB 02 Announced as 2024 Class Day Speaker – Chicago Maroon

On March 19, actress Anna Chlumsky was announcement the speaker at the University of Chicago's Class Day 2024 ceremony, held during graduation weekend on Friday, May 31.

Best known for her role as Amy Brookheimer in the HBO comedy series Veep, Chlumsky was a child actor before attending the University of Chicago and graduating in 2002. She took a break after graduating and moved to New York, first working as a fact checker for the restaurant rating organization Zagat, then as editorial assistant for the publication. HarperCollins company. She returned to the screen in a 2007 episode of Law and orderand with VeepChlumsky continued acting after UChicago in projects such as the Armando Iannucci film In the loop and the Netflix miniseries Invent Anna.

Chlumsky sat down with the Bordeauxto talk about the unique path she took to the University of Chicago, how her fame as a child actress affected her career, and her favorite places on campus as a student.

“I was honored and very surprised,” Chlumsky said of receiving an invitation to speak at the class day. You don't think every day that you're qualified to talk to a group of accomplished strangers about anything.

Originally from Chicago, Chlumsky grew up in the Proviso Township area. She had played roles in television and film for nearly ten years as a child actress, but when she paused her acting career to attend UChicago, she discovered that her on-screen success had a undesirable side effect on attention.

Either way, the attention was not wanted. It's one of those things that makes a professional childhood not recommended. Regardless, it was still surprising, and at the same time not surprising, that people were anticipating my appearance on campus, she said. But I was totally excited to come to school because, number one, I'm just totally excited to leave my mom's house and get on with my own life, and number two, I got to do things that n had nothing to do with it. with this job that I had known all my life. I had to write essays and was able to be graded on my own merits. It was fantastic.

Chlumsky graduated from the University of Chicago in 2002 with a degree in international studies. She named John Mearsheimer, her dissertation advisor, as one of her favorite professors and remembers spending time at a few special places on campus, like Pick Hall and Cobb Café.

His favorite order at Cobb Café? A blueberry Pop Tart and a cup of milk. That was my life my freshman year, Chlumsky said.

It was during her time at UChicago that Chlumsky decided she wanted to quit acting and pursue a career in government, a decision she would return to years later.

When I was in school I thought I was going to apply [to work] for the State Department. I had the [Foreign Service Officer Test] exam study packet and I looked at it and it sucked my soul. “That was probably my first moment of existential crisis, because I really thought that was what I was going to do,” she said.

Fast forward, I'm in New York for various reasons and I decide I want to be an actor, but with a career and for all the right reasons. Kind of like how a University of Calgary student would have approached the issue, instead of being forced into it, Chlumsky said. So I pursued that. I went to the Atlantic [Acting School] and they had a very interesting application to the University of Calgary in that they didn't ask you to write about acting. And then I act again and do theater.

Chlumsky mentioned the Armando Iannucci film In the loopas a project she was particularly associated with due to her studies at UChicago and her career goals at the university. In the film, Chlumsky plays Liza Weld, an aide to the U.S. Assistant Secretary of State for Diplomacy.

When I got [to the cold read]I saw that [my character] Was this girl from the State Department writing an article and I'm like I got it. It's good. This is my alternative[ernate] life. And a lot of it was about the threat environment within the State Department, which was legitimately the subject of my dissertation on the threat environment around the world and how it affects policy. So it was a major moment to let go and go with what you already know.

Chlumsky commented that the time she spent portraying government figures on television, coupled with her years studying international relations and government at the University of Chicago, had an impact on her view of government and people hiding behind him.

In the loop “It was about satire and how ridiculous it is that human beings make all these decisions for people, and that human beings are extremely flawed and that's fine,” she said . And to this day, that's a huge problem in today's world, the concept that there are gods and monsters that we vote for. I mean, what do we do? We used to think there was a divine right to kingship, and then we thought, fuck it, and enlightenment happened, and here we are again! Like, Oh, this person I'm voting for can't do anything wrong. It was exactly the kind of story [In The Loop] I was saying stop pretending that this is somehow a comic book and that there's good and evil, because it's really these assholes who just got out of college.

And it's there Veep comes from Armando Iannucci wrote VeepAlso. And that was kind of my position, and it's still my position, that I wasn't in a democracy to understand what happens after death. There is a separation between church and state, and we're not getting fancy here. This is actually real life. It's definitely a position that I always had at school and that I developed even more when I left school.

And as for what she wants to convey to the audience during the class day, Chlumsky mentioned two ideas. One was finding your way as a post-college individual.

In school, we all come from this world where if I work hard and succeed, I'll get an A, or if I don't get an A, I'll tell the teacher, he said. -she declared. There is a system in academia that, once the code is cracked, seems quite reliable. And I think what scares people is that the world outside of academia isn't necessarily as systemic as that, and that can be very scary. So the only thing you can do is suggest what you can do. If you're interviewing for a job, or if you're like me in my profession, doing 100 job interviews a year because we're always auditioning, you can't get inside the person's brain. You can not do that. And if you try, you're not presenting yourself, you're presenting this stupid idea that you have of what they want. And maybe it will hit the mark, but not at a reliable rate. So you just have to do it.

Chlumsky also said she hopes to convey to the public that while it is easy to trade self-care for more hours spent studying and working as a student, that mindset can end by doing more harm than good.

“I really want to make sure that at the end of my little speech, people know that it's really important to just brush your teeth,” Chlumsky said. There's that virtue to cramming that we all come out of school with, but just make sure your rent is paid, you sleep, and you get your meals right.