Portraits
Alia Janine
Alia Janine is an American comedian, writer, producer and podcast host from Milwaukee. After an earlier career in adult entertainment, she moved to New York in 2013 to pursue comedy and college, building a working life around stand-up, shows and conversation.
Alia Janine
The person behind the name
Alia Janine’s route to comedy included factory work, restaurant management, security and armoured-car driving. She had spent time around comedy clubs before making stand-up her focus, including a job behind the bar at a club in Florida. The stage eventually became the next chapter in a career already marked by changes of direction.
In New York, she combined formal comedy training with university study and performing. Her projects include Hardcore Comedy Entertainment and several generations of podcasts, from the Misfits Network and Whormones to How to Do Drugs. She draws on an unusually varied working life while treating joke-writing and audience response as skills that take practice.
Writing for the roomMilwaukee and a varied working life
Janine was born and raised in Milwaukee, Wisconsin. Her jobs before comedy ranged from bar and restaurant management to data entry and factory work. In interviews, she has also described concert security, driving an armoured car, gaining a private-investigator licence and working in loss prevention.
She studied while working and has spoken about initially considering police work. Moving away from Wisconsin took her first to warmer places, including Florida and California. In a later interview she joked about disliking Wisconsin winters, while acknowledging that New York’s changing seasons offered something she had missed in those warmer climates.
A career before comedy
Janine spent around four years performing in adult films, within a longer period working in adult entertainment as a dancer and model. She has explained that she initially wanted film credits to support bookings as a featured dancer. What began as a plan to try one film became several years of work.
Comedy was already nearby. She had worked at a Florida comedy club and spent time around a comedy venue beneath a Milwaukee dance club. Her first publicist encouraged her to try stand-up. Although she had performed sketches, she described learning that holding the stage alone demanded its own preparation and commitment.
Portraits
Starting again in New York
In 2013, Janine moved from Los Angeles to New York to pursue comedy and attend college. Her training included courses at Upright Citizens Brigade, Manhattan Comedy School and Rick Crom’s Comedy School. She was entering another profession while also returning to structured study.
A Gotham Comedy Club performance led into a Vice interview in 2014. The following year, she received an AVN nomination for Mainstream Star of the Year for her move into comedy. She continued using the name audiences already knew, explaining that some followers from her earlier career became supporters of her stand-up.
Radio and a network of conversations
Janine has taken part in radio programmes including Sway in the Morning, The Karen Hunter Show, The Bennington Show and Tell Me Everything with John Fugelsang. Her podcast appearances include YKWD and The SDR Show, while her own projects have changed over the course of her comedy career.
In 2015, she described the Misfits Network as a year-old project carrying eleven shows, including Kevin Bartini’s Movie Preview Review and her own Whormones Podcast. She wanted to help smaller programmes find listeners. Her later biography identifies her as host of How to Do Drugs, adding another chapter to that podcasting history.