Emily Maya Mills is a Los Angeles-based comedy creator, originally from San Francisco. A recent graduate of USC’s School of Cinematic Arts, she was selected to direct the university-funded short, Boo Hag or Shadow Man, which won the Audience Award at Seattle SciFi and Fantasy, Best of the Fest and Best Director at WhoHaHalloween, and has been distributed by Fox, AspireTV and Argo. Since graduating she’s directed Arsenio Hall in field pieces for his Netflix is a Joke reboot, a capstone production of the Lee Strasberg Institute, and festival favorite This Actually Happened (per Deadline). Before her pivot to filmmaking, Emily worked as an actor on many of your TV commercials and shows (Orange is the New Black, Marvel’s Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D., Key & Peele, Comedy Bang! Bang!, Parks and Rec, and as a series regular on Disney’s Right Now Kapow!), toured as standup, spokesmodeled for cherry tomatoes, and think-tanked for a VR startup. She now lives in Burbank and plays a fictional version of her husband’s wife on the podcast, Valley Heat (Time’s Best of 2022).