Lisa Ann Walter’s debut stand-up special, It Was an Accident, will premiere on Friday, May 15, Hulu said, putting the long-touring comic’s first solo special in front of a streaming audience after 20 years on the stand-up circuit. The special was first reported by Deadline last fall and was taped at Helium Comedy Club in Philadelphia.
Walter wrote, performed and directed the special herself, taking on feral Gen-Xers, self-loathing and a backsliding America in material that marks a new step for a performer already known to television viewers as Melissa Schemmenti on ABC’s Abbott Elementary. Sheryl Lee Ralph, Michelle Caputo and Shannon Hartman executive produced alongside Walter, with Art & Industry producing.
The premiere comes as Abbott Elementary is airing its fifth season on Wednesdays on ABC, with episodes streaming the next day on Hulu. For Walter, the special adds a stand-up credential to a career that has already stretched across television, film and publishing, from My Wildest Dreams, Life’s Work and Dance Your Ass Off to roles in The Parent Trap, Shall We Dance, Bruce Almighty, Steven Spielberg’s War of the Worlds and Killers.
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She also published the memoir The Best Thing About My Ass Is That It’s Behind Me in 2011, a book that reached No. 13 on Amazon and Comedic Essays Bestseller List. Beyond the stage and screen, Walter sits on the board of The Entertainment Community Fund, the ERA Coalition and the SAG-AFTRA National & Local organization, won $1 million as Celebrity Jeopardy champion for The Entertainment Community Fund and was recently elected the first vice president of the Los Angeles Local of SAG-AFTRA.
The timing is the point. Walter is turning a decades-long live act into her debut special just as she has become a familiar face on one of ABC’s most-watched comedies, and Hulu is giving that crossover a clear runway in the U.S. and abroad. The question now is not whether she has enough material for a special; it is how much more room this gives her to widen the audience she has been building for years.
