homework time lyanna kea

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• Film YouTubers
• Australian YouTubers
• Users who joined in 2011
• One million subscribers
• Two million subscribers
• Three million subscribers
• Four million subscribers
• One billion views
• View history

Lyanna Kea is an Australian YouTuber known for her short comedic skits. Her videos and YouTube shorts often consist of her portraying an Asian family member, typically a mother-and-daughter interaction or an aunt, as well as their behaviors and characteristics.

• 5 References

History [ ]

Kea created her YouTube channel on October 29, 2011.

Content [ ]

Kea's first video , titled "Lyanna Kea - Beowulf animation - Voice acting + sound effect overdub", was uploaded on March 30, 2016, and has since been privated. Her most popular short , titled " Asian mom discipline ", was uploaded on May 26, 2022. She has also livestreamed on her channel. [1] [2]

Most of Kea's shorts are skits while her videos are montages of her shorts or short films. She is also well-known for her series Life of Kea .

• Kea is often called by herself and others "Aunty Kea" or "Auntie Kea", due to her impressions.
• She is "100% Chinese Malaysian". [3]
• "I'm your Asian mom. GODDIT??? Good. Now, go drink water. And do your homework. Don't play play."
• "There is usually a plaque of insects that follow witches around."

References [ ]

• ↑ https://www.youtube.com/live/Z-EeKsqXsCY?si=0ZnB1p--qAM4JI7D
• ↑ https://www.youtube.com/live/20bwuYPAaRI?si=mw_T9YgK-_ZHNHoL
• ↑ https://canvasrebel.com/meet-lyanna-kea/
• 3 IamEverything

• Millionaires

Creators on the Rise: Lyanna Kea is starring in her own Screen Australia-funded series

Welcome to Creators on the Rise , where we find and profile breakout creators who are in the midst of extraordinary growth. You can check out previous installments here .

When Lyanna Kea meets people, lots of them tell her they want to meet her mom.

But she wants to make one thing clear: No, you don’t.

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“She’s not the one you want to meet. It’s me. I’m the humor, I’m the funny, not her. Okay?” she tells  Tubefilter , laughing.

If you’ve been anywhere near  TikTok or  YouTube in the past couple years, you’ve probably encountered Lyanna–either as herself, or as  Aunty Kea , the character who’s become a central part of her content and helped build her following to nearly 10 million people across platforms. Aunty Kea is the quintessential Asian mom, so Lyanna gets why lots of people think she must be a fictional representation of her own mother. But, she says, Aunty Kea is more like her grandmother than anyone, and at the end of the day is “an amalgamation of everyone in my family and then also all of the Asian maternal figures that I grew up knowing all my life.”

Lyanna never expected Aunty Kea to become the star she is today. She never expected anything to come of getting on TikTok. She’d just graduated college with a teaching degree and, unfortunately, already knew she loathed teaching as a career. What she wanted to do was act–but in Australia, where she’s based, roles are few and far between in the best of times, and with COVID cases peaking, they were even scarcer. So, she turned to TikTok, and though she’d always done “really heavy drama stuff” as a theater actor, she’d also always felt a knack for comedy. And comedy is what does well on TikTok.

A lot has happened in the past two years–most of which we’ll let Lyanna tell you. We  will say, though, that she and Aunty Kea are gaining even more star power. Lyanna and a crew of friends have been working to bring Aunty Kea to bigger things, starting with a miniseries,  Life of Kea , made with funding they won from  Screen Australia .

The series, which is available now on Lyanna’s YouTube channel, features Lyanna pulling double duty as herself and Aunty Kea, and “follows the story of Aunty Kea navigating romance, financial struggles, and a frayed relationship with her daughter.”

Lyanna hopes  Life of Kea will turn into something even bigger. For now, though, you can check out the first four episodes (and our chat with Lyanna) below.

This interview has been edited for length and clarity .

Tubefilter: Hi! Really excited to talk to you for Creators on the Rise . We speak to people who are growing their contnet and their audiences in really interesting ways, and you’re somebody who’s been on my radar for a long time. I’ve watched, I think, all of your videos.

Lyanna Kea: Thank you.

Tubefilter: I remember the very start, when you first got on TikTok. Your account growth was insane.

Lyanna Kea: Yes, it went from 0 to 100 so quickly.

Tubefilter: Let’s do some intro about you. Imagine somebody’s reading this and they’ve never seen your stuff, they don’t know who you are. Tell me a little bit about you and how you got into acting and then how you ended up on TikTok.

Lyanna Kea: I started out acting in Malaysia. We had a student organization. I think it was called– Wow, my memory is not working.

Tubefilter: It is 9 in the morning.

Lyanna Kea: It is, yes. [laughs] It’s like a student organization for theater that we had in my university. My first university ever. I’ve been to three. My first university had a student organization that was theater. I joined it and I met some of my best friends and that’s how I started. I started to fall in love with it. Then I just kept doing it, I guess. Then I came to Australia and I did the same thing, joined another student organization with my university, met my best friend there.

There’s a bit of a trend. Then I just kept doing it and I had to stop because adult life gets in the way. You have to start asking difficult questions like, how are you going to pay rent? Because student theater, that doesn’t really pay.

Tubefilter: That’s so tragic. That’s the worst possible thing.

Lyanna Kea: It is. It honestly is, because you want to do the things that you love the most, but you also got to eat.

Tubefilter: What was your degree in?

Lyanna Kea: What’s my degree not in? I started out doing media and communications. That was at my first uni. Then my second uni, where I graduated with a degree, was also in media, but I minored in drama and then I did a master’s of teaching.

Tubefilter: Oh, really?

Lyanna Kea: Yes. I’m like a fully qualified teacher and everything, but I’m not doing it.

Tubefilter: You have such a wide range of degrees.

Lyanna Kea: I know. It’s all over the place. I’ve done a lot.

Tubefilter: That’s a good thing, though, especially when it comes to acting.

Lyanna Kea: It is, yes. You learn a little bit more with everything that you do. When I did my master’s of teaching, I was going to teach drama and media. It would be like applying everything that I learned in university and then into the classroom, but I never got that far. I never went on to become a real teacher or anything because as it turns out, I do not at all enjoy it.

Tubefilter: Did you have to do any practicums during school?

Lyanna Kea: I did.

Tubefilter: Did you graduate and then you were like, “Oh, no, I hate this,” or did you have an idea of that while you were still in school?

Lyanna Kea: I did it and then I did the practicums and I was like– When you start out, you’re like, Don’t judge it. You enter it and you think, “Let me just learn something. Let’s not judge it too harshly. Maybe you’ll like it. You don’t know.” Hated it. Hated it. Hated every second of it. I wanted to throw up every day, but you know what? It’s okay. We learned something. I learned that teaching is not for me.  [laughs]

Tubefilter: What did you do from there? Because you still got to eat. You still have to have food.

Lyanna Kea: I graduated. This is how I got into TikTok because I graduated in 2020 in the middle of COVID. There were jobs. I actually did have a job at the time. It was a part-time job as a makeup artist. I could have gotten a job as a teacher, I really could have, but I didn’t want to do that. It was in the middle of COVID and I really wanted to get back into acting and doing the things that I loved, because I had taken a departure from that for so long because I was like, “Got to be an adult, got to get money.” Then I started my master’s, so absolutely no time at all. People don’t tell you this, but every time you take up a degree or any education course, that’s a full-time job.

Tubefilter: Absolutely.

Lyanna Kea: It is a full-time job. All of the course material that you have to read, all the little articles that you have to do, and all the extra homework, they don’t tell you about the fact that it’s going to be your full-time job for the two or three years that you’re there. I graduated in 2020 in the middle of COVID. I didn’t know what the hell I was going to do because I couldn’t go back to my regular job. I didn’t want to do teaching and I wanted to go back to acting.

Tubefilter: Then how did you end up as a makeup artist?

Lyanna Kea: I had a job as a makeup artist, but it was in a brick-and-mortar store. You have to go in to actually do it. Because everything was shut, everything was closed, so we couldn’t go in. I couldn’t go in if I wanted to anyways. Then I really wanted to get back to acting, but all the jobs were being canceled because we weren’t allowed to be on set anymore. Theater productions were being shut because locations were closing down. Nothing was opening. All the cinemas were closed.

It was pretty bleak. I was like, I don’t know what the hell I’m going to do with myself . Then I just started doing TikToks because I really needed to flex that side of my brain and just be creative so I could act, just on a different platform.

Tubefilter: That’s so wild. Were you aware of TikTok before you downloaded it to start making your own stuff?

Lyanna Kea: No, I started on Instagram because I already had Instagram. Then it turns out Instagram is difficult to grow. I don’t know what it is they do with their algorithm over there, but it is not growth-friendly, I’ll tell you that.

Tubefilter: Do you remember the first video of yours that went viral or got a decent following on TikTok?

Lyanna Kea: I think my first really, really properly viral one, everything else was just like, they did pretty well. My first ever super viral one that went absolutely dogshit crazy and was solely responsible for me going from maybe 100,000 to one million in a blink of an eye was a singing video that I did.

Tubefilter: Oh, I can imagine, because you have a really good voice, right?

Lyanna Kea: Oh, thank you. It was a singing video. It was at the time, there was a trend for a specific riff. It was a riff challenge. I did that and it just went batshit crazy.

Tubefilter: Yes, I remember! I feel like every three seconds we’re speaking and I’m uncovering these other skills you have. You’re a makeup artist, you’re a teacher, you can sing really, really well.

Tubefilter:  you said you went from 100,000 to one million. i know you were in this rough place with work, but was there a point where you were like, “this tiktok thing is something i’m going to keep doing. this is actually a thing.”.

Lyanna Kea: Yes, I didn’t want to go back to work because, as it turns out, you’d be really– I was really surprised because I thought that I’d be the kind of person that needs to go back to the outside world to see people, to talk to people to work and stuff. I thought I’d be that kind of person. That’s just not true. I fucking love staying at home. I don’t like leaving the house for anything other than fun stuff. As soon as I had all this stuff going on, for me, I was like, “I never want to leave the house. I never want to go back to work. This is where I belong. I love my home and I never want to leave.” Then I think I got to a certain point– No, actually, I started getting ads for TikTok.

This was before Viral Nation. Before I started working with Viral Nation, before any other agents, I started getting ads just coming in through email and they were offering money for stuff. I was like, “Oh, my god. It’s for real. You actually want to pay me to make stupid videos for your brand? I’ll fucking do it. What else do you want?” It was great. I was like, “I think this is actually something so I’m going to follow that path.”

Tubefilter: We have to talk about Aunty Kea. She’s quite the star.

Lyanna Kea: She is. She’s a star. No, she has her own show. She has her own series now. S he’s absolutely taken over. I don’t mind that. I think she’s great. She has a lot of very strong opinions about life and about her daughter, which I think everyone can relate to. That’s why she’s so big because everyone has that experience in their lives, I think.

Tubefilter: Definitely. Let me think how to phrase this. Obviously she’s become a big deal in your content. A regular feature. Do you feel like you’re constrained to her a little bit or do you feel like it’s a good balance for you?

Lyanna Kea: I think at one point I started to feel like she was taking over everything else a bit. I felt stuck. I couldn’t really make other content because people just weren’t interested in seeing anything else. They were just interested in her. I think I felt that way a little bit, but I don’t mind and I don’t think I mind anymore. I’ll still be making stuff without her. I’ll still be making videos that don’t necessarily have her in it. I will still do that. She is the star of the show and I don’t think I mind that anymore, honestly. It is what it is. People love her for a very good reason.

I think that people sending me DMs and messages and comments on the side telling me about how they really resonated with a video just because she said something that their parents had said or their mom had said or their friend’s moms had said and they reach out to you to tell you how much they appreciate you making that video because it made them feel something on the inside. I think that’s great because, ultimately, I only started making these videos because I wanted a way to connect and to entertain other people. If she’s the reason why people are entertained and she’s the reason why people are feeling something, then I’m doing something right.

Tubefilter: Your videos, not just your Aunty videos, but all of your videos, you have this very comforting vibe.

Lyanna Kea: Oh, thank you.

Tubefilter: You mentioned you feel like she’s really relatable, but everything you make I really feel has just this very homey vibe. I can feel that sense of connection that it helps. I can see how people who are feeling alone or feeling isolated would be comforted by your videos, in particular.

Lyanna Kea: Thank you. That means a lot to me because that’s essentially why I do what I do. I just think that if I can just make somebody smile, I’ve done my job.

Tubefilter: Have you always been interested in comedy or is that something you developed? I spoke to Steven He a couple of times and he told me that he’s a drama actor. He wasn’t into comedy, but he knew comedy would do well on TikTok. I’m curious if that’s your approach too or if you were always interested in comedy.

Lyanna Kea: That’s so funny because I feel the same. I started out doing theater, but lots of dramatic heavy stuff in theater. I’ve done a lot of musical– Actually not that many, but I’ve done musical theater as well. I think I’ve always…My friend calls it the “serious young actor phenomenon” where if you want to be taken seriously as an actor, you have to do these very big sad soppy cry dramatic roles, which–fuck that, sorry. I don’t think that should be the case. I think you should still be able to make it doing comedy and doing things that you love.

Anyways, I started doing that first and I was all about that. I was so besotted with this drama-acting thing. I was like, “I’ve got to be that actor who’s not afraid to let it all go in front of the camera and make everybody cry and shit.” Then I started doing comedy and I was like, “This is so much better .” [laughs] It was so much more fun and so much more engaging and I feel so invigorated doing comedies because dramas, they take out of you. They really do. You put so much into a drama and then it just has to all come out on stage. Then you’ve got to take three business days to recover just from doing one scene.

Tubefilter: Do you enjoy dramatic acting or do you just truly enjoy comedy? Would you want to keep doing comedy in perpetuity?

Lyanna Kea: I would love to keep doing comedy in perpetuity because I fucking love comedy with passion. Now that I don’t have that serious young actor syndrome, I would definitely still do dramas. I think it’ll always have a place in my heart because that’s where I started, but I’m really feeling the comedy.

Tubefilter: Watching your videos, you can tell. Your physical comedy, too, is so funny. You’re so good with your body language. Did you struggle to embrace that at all, to really let go? Because you’re saying you have to let go in front of the camera for drama and be the crying young actor, but was it a process to embrace comedy as your thing?

Lyanna Kea: No, it was part of me the whole time, and I could just do it. Actually, it’s funny, because the Asian mom character, she’s me. No, I don’t think everything that she thinks. She has her own set of values and beliefs that are sometimes in line with mine and sometimes not at all in line with mine but that’s her, that’s her character, but the way that she behaves is she’s already inside of me. I whip her out very quickly. She’s a real person as far as TikTok and social media is concerned because she has such a presence. I think that’s why people like her so much, but I think to say people– I often get a lot of comments about people saying, “I want to meet your mom. I want to meet your real mom, because I want to know if she’s like that. I want to know if–” She’s not.

Tubefilter: Oh, she’s not. She’s just not.

Lyanna Kea: She’s not the one you want to meet. It’s me. I’m the humor, I’m the funny, not her. Okay?

Tubefilter: Okay. I’ll make sure that we keep that. We’re going to highlight that in the story.

Lyanna Kea: I’m not saying that she doesn’t have a sense of humor, it’s just she’s definitely not Aunty Kea, definitely not her. I want to say that Aunty Kea is probably– She is more of an amalgamation of everyone in my family and then also all of the Asian maternal figures that I grew up knowing all my life.

Tubefilter: Perfect. It’s really funny that they asked to meet your mom. I guess it makes sense, though. It tracks.

Lyanna Kea: It does track, but she’s not– Belief system-wise, she is, belief system-wise she is definitely, a lot of things are borrowed from my mom, but behavior-wise, no. My mom would not–She would not do that. She would not do the things that Aunty Kea does. If anything, if you really wanted to compare one person, if you had to be like, “Gun to your head right now, one person in your family, who would that be? Who would be closest to Aunty Kea?” I’d be like, probably my grandma.

Tubefilter: Oh, really? That’s very cool.

Lyanna Kea: Actually, Aunty Kea was supposed to be my grandma.

Tubefilter: Tell me more. She was supposed to be your grandma and then she–what? Evolved?

Lyanna Kea: She was supposed to be like my grandma character, but then it just wouldn’t have worked because I don’t look old enough to be a grandmother.

Tubefilter: That’s true.

Lyanna Kea: Then I was like, “If we can’t do grandma, let’s do mom,” and have her be a mix of everybody in my family.

Tubefilter: But that influence from your grandmother is still there?

Lyanna Kea: Yes, my grandma is definitely very well and present in Aunty Kea’s personality and behavior.

Tubefilter: Duly noted. I would never have guessed that, very cool. I wanted to ask a little bit about the production side of things for you. Do you aim to put out a specific number of videos every day or every week? How much time goes into the average video? Do you script first? That kind of stuff.

Lyanna Kea: Back in the day when I was still starting out doing TikTok and stuff, I was posting a lot more. I posted pretty much every day. I don’t do that anymore because nowadays it just takes a lot more for me. I’m also a lot busier now, especially with the series coming out and everything, and then also now it’s not just TikTok anymore, it’s TikTok, Instagram, it’s Facebook, it’s YouTube. It definitely keeps me busy. That being said, I’m still putting out videos and I also want to try and focus more on long forms as well. Just, I think, the busyness is the reason why I don’t post as regularly as I used to, but I’m definitely still posting so everybody can chill.

As far as the content goes, I definitely script first. I think about what I want to relay in the video and then I script everything beforehand so that when I record it, I’m not just standing there going, “What do I say?” Then, “Oh, my God, is this even funny?” Because that will happen when you’re in front of the camera and you’re just doing you. By the way, now I have help. Now I have someone who films stuff with me and then helps me edit.

We share the load basically, so I’m not pressured to do everything by myself, but before that, I was doing everything by myself. It’d be a quiet ass house in a quiet ass neighborhood, and then there’s me doing crazy shit by myself in front of the camera. At some point, you got to ask yourself, “Is this even funny? I don’t even know if this is funny anymore. What am I really doing here?”That’s why you need scripts.

Tubefilter: You need a support system to tell you, yes, you are funny. You’re still funny.

Lyanna Kea: The script is there to prevent this.

Tubefilter: Oh, prevent the breakdown?

Lyanna Kea: Yes. To prevent the– I call it “the improv shits,” when you are doing improvisation, but you start feeling insecure about yourself because you’re the only person in the fucking room and nobody else can give you any feedback about anything. You have to do everything by yourself. That’s when the script comes in handy because you don’t have to think about anything. You just follow the script.

Tubefilter: I’m so glad you have support now too, because I can’t believe you’re doing all this every day by yourself.

Lyanna Kea: Oh, I think people love to assume that all creators live this fancy ass fucking life that we all just have like–

Tubefilter: The whole team.

Lyanna Kea: Oh, yes. People just love assuming that like, “Oh, you must have a team. You must make all this fucking money. You must this–” No, I don’t. I do everything pretty much by my fucking self, and then if I don’t, I’d have like one person who helps me. That’s it.

Tubefilter: Not that I want to tell you what to do, but are you considering working with a full-time editor or do you not really need one?

Lyanna Kea: The person that I get to film stuff with me, he’s also my editor and we share the load. B ut it’s just us two. I don’t have a team or anything.

Tubefilter: That’s a lot to handle with two people.

Lyanna Kea: Yes, it’s a lot, but that’s why it’s really, honestly, a full-time job. Then people on the internet just want to be like, “You’re trying too hard. You’re not funny anymore.” Okay. Cool.

Tubefilter: The internet’s wonderful and everybody has great opinions that we have to hear all the time.

Lyanna Kea: I know, it’s just amazing. I used to get really shaken by a comment like that.

Tubefilter: Really?

Lyanna Kea: Yes, I don’t know if Steven, he gets this, but sometimes I will have people comment on my stuff saying, “Oh, you’re just another Asian creator who’s stealing other Asian creator stuff. You need to stop taking other people’s content. You need to stop stealing other people’s content,” but they’re Asian and so am I. We have shared lived experiences. Yes, some things are going to be similar, but it doesn’t mean that we are stealing from each other. It’s just means that we have very similar experiences.

And then it’s like, because they’re comedy creators like me, and all of our comedy is so heavily steeped in culture and generational trauma, it can sound similar, but that’s only because we have similar experiences and we’re just sharing our experiences and it just happens to be very similar. It doesn’t mean that we’re stealing from each other.  I think everybody just wants to put all of the Asian comedy creators in a circle and they start comparing people and saying, “Oh, he’s funnier, she’s funnier. You’re just taking content from her. You’re taking content from him.” Whatever. Just leave Asian creators alone. Some things are going to sound a little bit similar, but nobody’s stealing each other’s stuff. We’re all existing in the same space. That’s all it is.

Tubefilter: Especially so many people collaborate so frequently too and I still can’t believe these accusations fly around. Everybody’s pretty friendly and just feels like a collaborative atmosphere and still.

Lyanna Kea: I think it’s funny because all the creators are happy working with each other. I think that most creators are happy working with each other and no creator would really be shitty about if your content sounds a bit similar to something that they made. I think we all understand. It’s just some people, some commenters, and some internet warriors who will say stupid things.

Tubefilter: That’s, unfortunately, the nature of the internet, I think. Do you feel like you’re less shaken by those kinds of comments now?

Lyanna Kea: Yes, definitely.

Tubefilter: Good.

Lyanna Kea: As far as I’m concerned, you’re not doing anything with yourself so you can sit the fuck down.

Tubefilter: Perfect. That’s it. That’s the attitude. I know we’ve already eclipsed our allotted interview time, but I would love to hear about the miniseries, the series that you’re working on. Tell me how that came about.

Lyanna Kea: I was doing a little miniseries just for funsies and then one of my co-actors who is also on this new show, she said, “Why don’t you apply for funding from Screen Australia?” For reference, Screen Australia is a government agency that funds creatives to do movies, TV shows, you name it. She said, “Why don’t you apply for funding? They’re looking for something like this.” We said, “Okay.” We applied for it, and then we fucking got it, which was so s urprising. We got it in December last year so it was like a Christmas present from the universe.

Tubefilter: What was that application process? Did you have to pitch them the show and send clips? How thorough was it?

Lyanna Kea: Oh my god. I was going back to Malaysia and we found out about it three days before it was due. I was going back to Malaysia the day that it was due. That means we only had all this time, three days before and that’s it. You don’t get any extra time, period. Me and my producers and her, we just, I think, lost our minds for the whole three days just try to put everything together. Because you have to put together a draft budget for it, and then you got to put together your pitch video, your whatever. You know how it is. Thankfully, we got it in. We got it in, by the way, two minutes before it was due.

Tubefilter: See, that’s true college attitude still coming through.

Lyanna Kea: Honestly, it really did. it felt like I was doing an assignment all over again. I’m like, “You know what? This feels familiar. It’s weirdly nice.” [laughs]

Tubefilter: We back on the deadline. You just got to do this one thing and submit it and then you’re free. That’s it.

Lyanna Kea: Yes, it’s weirdly nice and I was looking at all of my producers. I’m like, “Guys, do you want to go to the club afterwards?”

Tubefilter: We’re 21 again.

Lyanna Kea: Really pushing through those uni days. We got it in two minutes before it was due and I was like, “Oh my god.” I had to get my producer to send it in, because I was on a fucking plane. I was already on a fucking plane and she told me she send it in two minutes before it was due because we just needed the extra five minutes to tidy up some stuff. I was like, “Okay, but it’s in though, right?” Then we got the call and they said, we got it and I’ve all but screamed into the phone to my other producers. It’s been a really great experience.

I wanted to do it because I think it’s time for Aunty Kea to have her own show. She is so big and she has so much presence on social media and everyone seems to love her so much that I think she deserves to have her own show. People have been screaming about it as well like, “Given her her own show. Make a show about her.” Okay, I did.

Tubefilter: Such a chaotic path.

Lyanna Kea: Oh my god, it’s so chaotic. Then even pre-production for the show was also pretty chaotic because things came in last minute and then we were trying to put everything together for the show. We were so short on time. I still had to memorize all of my scripts because I’m producing the show and I was in producer mode so my brain was trying to sort out things and be organized and stuff. Then the other part of me, it’s just like, “You’re also an actor. You have scripts to memorize. You haven’t done that yet. You should probably go do that.”

Tubefilter: That’s what happens when you have too many skills. This is a problem.

Lyanna Kea: It happens when you have a lot of hats as well. You have to keep putting on new hats for stuff. She has her own show now where she gets to be the star of her own show and this show is going to be like an extension of her social media presence. It’s going to be about her and her life in Australia.

Tubefilter: It’s funny how things work out. Last minute, you’re on a plane, and still.

Lyanna Kea: Absolutely. I’m so grateful. I’m really grateful for my team because if it weren’t for them, I wouldn’t have gotten any of that done and I would not have had the show so I’m really grateful for my team and I’m really grateful towards everyone who made it happen. They’re really good people . There are my producers and also my real-life besties, Taysha McFarland and Tristan Braines. I do everything with them. Then Sasha Leong is the associate producer and also my co-star.

I think it’s really cool that I’m able to do this because I have a lot of friends who are actors and who are a part of the creative industry and they have a hard time getting jobs because it’s so competitive. The market in Australia is much smaller compared to something like the U.S., so they have a hard time finding jobs and stuff. I think with this project, I was actually able to employ my friends and give them the opportunity to be on something with Screen Australia, which is very reputable. I think it’s just incredible, being able to give back to your community and your friends and giving them opportunities instead of all of you suffering and waiting together for opportunities to come.

Tubefilter: Definitely. The gatekeeping, the amount of stuff you have to go through to get traditional roles, and then when you’re able to provide these indie projects where you’re able to work with people that you love and they get to do things they love, it’s really fantastic to see.

Lyanna Kea: Absolutely. I think it was just really rewarding. To see Aunty Kea in a show in a proper series that’s scripted–and it’s a narrative as well, that’s incredible, sure. The other side of it, which is so incredible, I was able to employ my friends, was able to give back to the community. It was just a big student film.

Tubefilter: Absolutely. You really get that college feel.

Lyanna Kea: Yes, it had that vibe. Not the stressy insecure inexperienced vibe because everyone on it had experience. It’s not student filmy in that vibe but the comraderie felt like student film vibes.

Tubefilter: Definitely. Do you have any other projects in mind? Anything else you want to talk about?

Lyanna Kea: I have so many projects that I’m doing at the moment. One thing that I really want to do, and also the producers really want to do, is to turn Life of Kea into a series on a streaming site like Netflix or something like that.

Tubefilter: Interesting. Can you tell me more about that, or are you not quite ready to talk about it?

Lyanna Kea: I think that my main thing for that was that the U.S. and Canada have had all the fun. They’ve had Kim’s Convenience , they’ve had Fresh Off the Boat , a lot of these Asian-oriented series come from them.

Tubefilter: American-oriented.

Lyanna Kea: Very American, very Canadian. We’ve not seen that from Australia. I think that it is time for Australia to have something like that as well, which is why I want to bring it out here. We haven’t really had anything like that and I think it’s time. I think we will get it–and even if we don’t, if one door closes, another one will open. I think we’re good.

Tubefilter: Absolutely. Then that’s the end of me grilling you. Unless there’s anything else you wanted to mention. Anything you want to highlight?

Lyanna Kea: Life of Kea , the first season of Life of Kea , comes out in October. If everyone can just do me a favor, do me a solid and watch it, that’d be fantastic.

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LIFE OF KEA Web series

• Lyanna Kea is an award-winning Chinese Malaysian actor, producer, and director with a great comedic edge. She is a social media heavy-hitter with over 10 Million fans globally who follow her for her relatable comedy skits and singing prowess. The singer, actor, social media star was recently announced Top 5 Australian Breakout Creators on YouTube. Lyanna is also the writer, producer, director, and lead actor of the new series, "Life Of Kea", funded by Screen Australia. She was awarded Best Actress for her performance in "V-Day", and award-winning animations featuring Lyanna's voice acting work were screened at several festivals including the Sunshine Short Film Festival and Los Angeles Horror Film Festival. Lyanna is also an artist in her spare time and enjoys pole dancing, and doing Taekwondo high kicks. - IMDb Mini Biography By: Lyanna Kea

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• Gender / Gender identity Female
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Lyanna Kea is a versatile actor, singer, content creator, and voice actor currently based in Melbourne, Australia. She is passionate about the performing arts, enthusiastic, and unapologetic about her boldness.

As a performer, Lyanna has done both amateur and professional theater, musical theater, music gigs, voice acting, and film projects in Malaysia and Australia. Her  most recent film works, Casual Frenemies and Three Headed Dragons,  written and acted by Lyanna were submitted for TikTok short film competitions. Casual Frenemies was screened during SCREEN FOREVER Gold Coast.   Her Australian solo debut,  Powerhouse, for Melbourne Fringe Festival was a success, and her musical theater performance as Sister Chantelle in Bare: A Pop Opera, was as iconic as it was chuckle-inducing. Lyanna also won "Best Actor" in a theatre shorts competition held in Malaysia. Her original play,  Animal Kingdom , was well-received and quickly became the people's favorite amongst a lineup of plays in Sparties Shorties .

Bonus fact: Lyanna is 'quad-lingual'; speaks fluent English and conversational Malay, Cantonese, and Mandarin. She also loves replicating accents and always has her Malaysian, American, and Australian accents ready to rumble.

Her dream roles include, but are not limited to:- 

> Any Brooklyn Nine-Nine character

> A Marvel superhero or a zany sideckick to a Marvel superhero

> Voicing Rick's sassy long-time secret lover from an alternate reality in Rick and Morty

> A cleaver-wielding, singing Southeast Asian Disney princess

> Literally any role that requires being a bad-ass 

Lyanna is also a full-time content creator on TikTok (3.8M followers) and Instagram (65K followers) where she frequently does character impressions and comedy skits. She adores entertaining her online fanbase with her own brand of comedy and whacky narratives. Lyanna edits, writes, acts, and films her own content and takes great pride in it. She's always open to new ideas and potential colllaborations with brands and other creators. 

In addition, Lyanna has a bachelor's degree in Theatre and Media Studies from Monash University, a post-grad in digital marketing, and a master's degree in Teaching (Drama and Media) from Australian Catholic University. 

Time in Moscow , Russia now

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• Latitude: 55.75. Longitude: 37.62
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In Transit: Notes from the Underground

Jun 06 2018.

Spend some time in one of Moscow’s finest museums.

Subterranean commuting might not be anyone’s idea of a good time, but even in a city packing the war-games treasures and priceless bejeweled eggs of the Kremlin Armoury and the colossal Soviet pavilions of the VDNKh , the Metro holds up as one of Moscow’s finest museums. Just avoid rush hour.

The Metro is stunning and provides an unrivaled insight into the city’s psyche, past and present, but it also happens to be the best way to get around. Moscow has Uber, and the Russian version called Yandex Taxi , but also some nasty traffic. Metro trains come around every 90 seconds or so, at a more than 99 percent on-time rate. It’s also reasonably priced, with a single ride at 55 cents (and cheaper in bulk). From history to tickets to rules — official and not — here’s what you need to know to get started.

A Brief Introduction Buying Tickets Know Before You Go (Down) Rules An Easy Tour

A Brief Introduction

Moscow’s Metro was a long time coming. Plans for rapid transit to relieve the city’s beleaguered tram system date back to the Imperial era, but a couple of wars and a revolution held up its development. Stalin revived it as part of his grand plan to modernize the Soviet Union in the 1920s and 30s. The first lines and tunnels were constructed with help from engineers from the London Underground, although Stalin’s secret police decided that they had learned too much about Moscow’s layout and had them arrested on espionage charges and deported.

The beauty of its stations (if not its trains) is well-documented, and certainly no accident. In its illustrious first phases and particularly after the Second World War, the greatest architects of Soviet era were recruited to create gleaming temples celebrating the Revolution, the USSR, and the war triumph. No two stations are exactly alike, and each of the classic showpieces has a theme. There are world-famous shrines to Futurist architecture, a celebration of electricity, tributes to individuals and regions of the former Soviet Union. Each marble slab, mosaic tile, or light fixture was placed with intent, all in service to a station’s aesthetic; each element, f rom the smallest brass ear of corn to a large blood-spattered sword on a World War II mural, is an essential part of the whole.

The Metro is a monument to the Soviet propaganda project it was intended to be when it opened in 1935 with the slogan “Building a Palace for the People”. It brought the grand interiors of Imperial Russia to ordinary Muscovites, celebrated the Soviet Union’s past achievements while promising its citizens a bright Soviet future, and of course, it was a show-piece for the world to witness the might and sophistication of life in the Soviet Union.

It may be a museum, but it’s no relic. U p to nine million people use it daily, more than the London Underground and New York Subway combined. (Along with, at one time, about 20 stray dogs that learned to commute on the Metro.)

In its 80+ year history, the Metro has expanded in phases and fits and starts, in step with the fortunes of Moscow and Russia. Now, partly in preparation for the World Cup 2018, it’s also modernizing. New trains allow passengers to walk the entire length of the train without having to change carriages. The system is becoming more visitor-friendly. (There are helpful stickers on the floor marking out the best selfie spots .) But there’s a price to modernity: it’s phasing out one of its beloved institutions, the escalator attendants. Often they are middle-aged or elderly women—“ escalator grandmas ” in news accounts—who have held the post for decades, sitting in their tiny kiosks, scolding commuters for bad escalator etiquette or even bad posture, or telling jokes . They are slated to be replaced, when at all, by members of the escalator maintenance staff.

For all its achievements, the Metro lags behind Moscow’s above-ground growth, as Russia’s capital sprawls ever outwards, generating some of the world’s worst traffic jams . But since 2011, the Metro has been in the middle of an ambitious and long-overdue enlargement; 60 new stations are opening by 2020. If all goes to plan, the 2011-2020 period will have brought 125 miles of new tracks and over 100 new stations — a 40 percent increase — the fastest and largest expansion phase in any period in the Metro’s history.

Facts: 14 lines Opening hours: 5 a.m-1 a.m. Rush hour(s): 8-10 a.m, 4-8 p.m. Single ride: 55₽ (about 85 cents) Wi-Fi network-wide

Buying Tickets

• Ticket machines have a button to switch to English.
• You can buy specific numbers of rides: 1, 2, 5, 11, 20, or 60. Hold up fingers to show how many rides you want to buy.
• There is also a 90-minute ticket , which gets you 1 trip on the metro plus an unlimited number of transfers on other transport (bus, tram, etc) within 90 minutes.
• Or, you can buy day tickets with unlimited rides: one day (218₽/ US$4), three days (415₽/US$7) or seven days (830₽/US$15). Check the rates here to stay up-to-date.
• If you’re going to be using the Metro regularly over a few days, it’s worth getting a Troika card , a contactless, refillable card you can use on all public transport. Using the Metro is cheaper with one of these: a single ride is 36₽, not 55₽. Buy them and refill them in the Metro stations, and they’re valid for 5 years, so you can keep it for next time. Or, if you have a lot of cash left on it when you leave, you can get it refunded at the Metro Service Centers at Ulitsa 1905 Goda, 25 or at Staraya Basmannaya 20, Building 1.
• You can also buy silicone bracelets and keychains with built-in transport chips that you can use as a Troika card. (A Moscow Metro Fitbit!) So far, you can only get these at the Pushkinskaya metro station Live Helpdesk and souvenir shops in the Mayakovskaya and Trubnaya metro stations. The fare is the same as for the Troika card.
• You can also use Apple Pay and Samsung Pay.

Rules, spoken and unspoken

No smoking, no drinking, no filming, no littering. Photography is allowed, although it used to be banned.

Stand to the right on the escalator. Break this rule and you risk the wrath of the legendary escalator attendants. (No shenanigans on the escalators in general.)

Get out of the way. Find an empty corner to hide in when you get off a train and need to stare at your phone. Watch out getting out of the train in general; when your train doors open, people tend to appear from nowhere or from behind ornate marble columns, walking full-speed.

Always offer your seat to elderly ladies (what are you, a monster?).

An Easy Tour

This is no Metro Marathon ( 199 stations in 20 hours ). It’s an easy tour, taking in most—though not all—of the notable stations, the bulk of it going clockwise along the Circle line, with a couple of short detours. These stations are within minutes of one another, and the whole tour should take about 1-2 hours.

Start at Mayakovskaya Metro station , at the corner of Tverskaya and Garden Ring,  Triumfalnaya Square, Moskva, Russia, 125047.

1. Mayakovskaya.  Named for Russian Futurist Movement poet Vladimir Mayakovsky and an attempt to bring to life the future he imagined in his poems. (The Futurist Movement, natch, was all about a rejecting the past and celebrating all things speed, industry, modern machines, youth, modernity.) The result: an Art Deco masterpiece that won the National Grand Prix for architecture at the New York World’s Fair in 1939. It’s all smooth, rounded shine and light, and gentle arches supported by columns of dark pink marble and stainless aircraft steel. Each of its 34 ceiling niches has a mosaic. During World War II, the station was used as an air-raid shelter and, at one point, a bunker for Stalin. He gave a subdued but rousing speech here in Nov. 6, 1941 as the Nazis bombed the city above.

Take the 3/Green line one station to:

2. Belorusskaya. Opened in 1952, named after the connected Belarussky Rail Terminal, which runs trains between Moscow and Belarus. This is a light marble affair with a white, cake-like ceiling, lined with Belorussian patterns and 12 Florentine ceiling mosaics depicting life in Belarussia when it was built.

Transfer onto the 1/Brown line. Then, one stop (clockwise) t o:

3. Novoslobodskaya.  This station was designed around the stained-glass panels, which were made in Latvia, because Alexey Dushkin, the Soviet starchitect who dreamed it up (and also designed Mayakovskaya station) couldn’t find the glass and craft locally. The stained glass is the same used for Riga’s Cathedral, and the panels feature plants, flowers, members of the Soviet intelligentsia (musician, artist, architect) and geometric shapes.

Go two stops east on the 1/Circle line to:

4. Komsomolskaya. Named after the Komsomol, or the Young Communist League, this might just be peak Stalin Metro style. Underneath the hub for three regional railways, it was intended to be a grand gateway to Moscow and is today its busiest station. It has chandeliers; a yellow ceiling with Baroque embellishments; and in the main hall, a colossal red star overlaid on golden, shimmering tiles. Designer Alexey Shchusev designed it as an homage to the speech Stalin gave at Red Square on Nov. 7, 1941, in which he invoked Russia’s illustrious military leaders as a pep talk to Soviet soldiers through the first catastrophic year of the war.   The station’s eight large mosaics are of the leaders referenced in the speech, such as Alexander Nevsky, a 13th-century prince and military commander who bested German and Swedish invading armies.

One more stop clockwise to Kurskaya station,  and change onto the 3/Blue  line, and go one stop to:

5. Baumanskaya.   Opened in 1944. Named for the Bolshevik Revolutionary Nikolai Bauman , whose monument and namesake district are aboveground here. Though he seemed like a nasty piece of work (he apparently once publicly mocked a woman he had impregnated, who later hung herself), he became a Revolutionary martyr when he was killed in 1905 in a skirmish with a monarchist, who hit him on the head with part of a steel pipe. The station is in Art Deco style with atmospherically dim lighting, and a series of bronze sculptures of soldiers and homefront heroes during the War. At one end, there is a large mosaic portrait of Lenin.

Stay on that train direction one more east to:

6. Elektrozavodskaya. As you may have guessed from the name, this station is the Metro’s tribute to all thing electrical, built in 1944 and named after a nearby lightbulb factory. It has marble bas-relief sculptures of important figures in electrical engineering, and others illustrating the Soviet Union’s war-time struggles at home. The ceiling’s recurring rows of circular lamps give the station’s main tunnel a comforting glow, and a pleasing visual effect.

Double back two stops to Kurskaya station , and change back to the 1/Circle line. Sit tight for six stations to:

7. Kiyevskaya. This was the last station on the Circle line to be built, in 1954, completed under Nikita Khrushchev’ s guidance, as a tribute to his homeland, Ukraine. Its three large station halls feature images celebrating Ukraine’s contributions to the Soviet Union and Russo-Ukrainian unity, depicting musicians, textile-working, soldiers, farmers. (One hall has frescoes, one mosaics, and the third murals.) Shortly after it was completed, Khrushchev condemned the architectural excesses and unnecessary luxury of the Stalin era, which ushered in an epoch of more austere Metro stations. According to the legend at least, he timed the policy in part to ensure no Metro station built after could outshine Kiyevskaya.

Change to the 3/Blue line and go one stop west.

8. Park Pobedy. This is the deepest station on the Metro, with one of the world’s longest escalators, at 413 feet. If you stand still, the escalator ride to the surface takes about three minutes .) Opened in 2003 at Victory Park, the station celebrates two of Russia’s great military victories. Each end has a mural by Georgian artist Zurab Tsereteli, who also designed the “ Good Defeats Evil ” statue at the UN headquarters in New York. One mural depicts the Russian generals’ victory over the French in 1812 and the other, the German surrender of 1945. The latter is particularly striking; equal parts dramatic, triumphant, and gruesome. To the side, Red Army soldiers trample Nazi flags, and if you look closely there’s some blood spatter among the detail. Still, the biggest impressions here are the marble shine of the chessboard floor pattern and the pleasingly geometric effect if you view from one end to the other.

Keep going one more stop west to:

9. Slavyansky Bulvar.  One of the Metro’s youngest stations, it opened in 2008. With far higher ceilings than many other stations—which tend to have covered central tunnels on the platforms—it has an “open-air” feel (or as close to it as you can get, one hundred feet under). It’s an homage to French architect Hector Guimard, he of the Art Nouveau entrances for the Paris M é tro, and that’s precisely what this looks like: A Moscow homage to the Paris M é tro, with an additional forest theme. A Cyrillic twist on Guimard’s Metro-style lettering over the benches, furnished with t rees and branch motifs, including creeping vines as towering lamp-posts.

Stay on the 3/Blue line and double back four stations to:

10. Arbatskaya. Its first iteration, Arbatskaya-Smolenskaya station, was damaged by German bombs in 1941. It was rebuilt in 1953, and designed to double as a bomb shelter in the event of nuclear war, although unusually for stations built in the post-war phase, this one doesn’t have a war theme. It may also be one of the system’s most elegant: Baroque, but toned down a little, with red marble floors and white ceilings with gilded bronze c handeliers.

Jump back on the 3/Blue line  in the same direction and take it one more stop:

11. Ploshchad Revolyutsii (Revolution Square). Opened in 1938, and serving Red Square and the Kremlin . Its renowned central hall has marble columns flanked by 76 bronze statues of Soviet heroes: soldiers, students, farmers, athletes, writers, parents. Some of these statues’ appendages have a yellow sheen from decades of Moscow’s commuters rubbing them for good luck. Among the most popular for a superstitious walk-by rub: the snout of a frontier guard’s dog, a soldier’s gun (where the touch of millions of human hands have tapered the gun barrel into a fine, pointy blade), a baby’s foot, and a woman’s knee. (A brass rooster also sports the telltale gold sheen, though I am told that rubbing the rooster is thought to bring bad luck. )

Now take the escalator up, and get some fresh air.

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