Shelley Smartly

Shelley Smartly, Owner of Smartly Entertainment -- and Showrunner (Creator, Writer and Actor) in The Smartlys was recently interviewed by Susan J. Farese, SJF Communications.  

SJF: When and how did you get into comedy? 

SS: When I was 64, I began going to live comedy shows, two weeks after I was widowed, because I desperately needed to laugh again. It's such a healing force!

Luckily, San Diego has a world class comedy community with amazing shows nearly every night of the week, and many of the best ones are even free.  So I dubbed myself a Professional Audience Member and jaunted off to shows most evenings, for five years before I took to the stage myself.

I was completely in awe of comedians. I still am! Dat Phan, the very first winner of Last Comic Standing, joked that I was head of the SWAT team of audience members.

I began by enrolling in comedy courses. I studied under Zach Miller, then with San Diego's old Comedy Palace (my home club) and Tony Calabrese at National Comedy Theater. 

Greg Dean (aka 'The Professor of Stand Up Comedy') and Bettina Devin privately coached me, as well.

SJF: Tell us your vision, inspiration, concept and world of The Smartlys and how (and why) you developed it. 

SS: I was gobsmacked with the idea that I wanted to bring back classic comedy from the 50's and 60's, like the old George Burns and Gracie Allen.  But with a smartly twist, of course!

I figured it would take ten years to find comedy stage spouse and hone our act, but I found a partner a few days later, and within the month we filmed our first sizzle clip. 

Later we filmed a Pilot in front of a live audience, which suffered from bad audio. So we staged and filmed another Sizzle clip.

Floyd Strayer and Susan Farese kept The Smartlys flame burning bright as we went into the post-production phase of entering contests and pitching the show.  Our last sizzle clip was accepted into several film contests -- just in time for Covid to shut them all down.

During isolation, I begged Eric to try his hand at acting. But he had no desire to be an actor or a comedian, so he agreed, but only if I wrote the part for a Scottish a**hole (his words, not mine), so that he could just be himself.

When Floyd's grandson, Dominic Strayer, came to town, I wrote some bits for them.  Suddenly it all morphed into yet another version of The Smartlys. 

Our amazing ensemble cast of 14 actors self-filmed in their own home or in Smartly Studios, which is an extravagant name for the storage room off our garage.  

We have 3 comedy pairs who can perform together in isolation. The rest of our cast performed solo, and Floyd and our editors combined their performances digitally.

During lockdown, we produced the entire Season 1 of The Smartlys. FilmHub is our TV distributor. We were selected by several platforms and very quickly began streaming worldwide. 

We are blessed to have the most amazing Director and Producer in Floyd Strayer, and our whole cast and crew is simply out of this world!  

SJF: Thanks so much Shelley, looking forward to hearing more!

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