Annie has an epiphany at a “Fat Babe Pool Party,” where she sees women of all shapes, sizes, and colors enjoying themselves without a care in the world. It leads to one of the most poignant monologues in the show. “I’ve wasted so much time and energy and money…for what? For what?” Annie says to her roommate, Fran (Lolly Adefope), and a new friend they meet at the pool party. “I’m fat. I’m fucking fat. Hello? I’m fat!”
Bryant experienced a similar “a-ha” moment in her own life. “At a certain point, after all the dieting, weird exercise programs, or Weight Watchers—all these different things that I had tried—I didn’t look any different,” she says. “I didn’t super care, but people were telling me that I was supposed to. So I was like, ‘I’m going to wash my hands of this.’ I just started trying to be healthy for myself and put all that energy into trying to achieve my dreams.”
The pursuit of those dreams first took Bryant to Chicago, where she attended Columbia College and became a member of the famed Second City improv group (Tina Fey, Amy Poehler, and Stephen Colbert are also alumni). The change of scenery—Bryant grew up in Phoenix, Arizona—did wonders for her, both personally and professionally.
“I went to a sporty high school with a lot of very thin, very athletic girls. I always felt like, ‘I don’t fit in, and I should, and that’s what matters,'” she says. “Then I went to Chicago and met these girls who were big, like I was, and fashionable and had boyfriends. They didn’t seem encumbered by their own thinking of themselves. I remember being like, ‘Well, I want to be like them.’ That was a big game-changer for me.”
Not everyone in Chicago was enlightened, of course. Bryant says the first few talent agents she met had limited ideas about where her career could go. “They were basically like, ‘Look, you know, there’s not a lot of roles for your type,'” she says. “At the time, I think I was 21 or 22, they would send me out for mom parts in, like, Walmart commercials where it was like, ‘This is a mom with three kids.’ I think because of my body type they were like, ‘Oh, she’s a mom,’ which is wild.”
