LAURA SEAY
Laura Seay is an award-winning director, writer, and actor with a keen eye for performance and a talent for bringing urgency, depth, and precision to any genre.
She grew up moving—an expat kid with a duffel bag of half-understood customs, always adapting. Watching, listening, studying how people carried themselves in unfamiliar places. Measuring the distance between herself and belonging. The movies were always on. Her mother let them play on a loop, indulging Laura’s past-bedtime questions—who wrote this, who shot that, what did it mean when the woman looked away before she spoke? Were they talking about sex? Love? Some buried trauma involving a missing twin? Instead of I’ll tell you when you’re older, her mother shrugged and laid it all out, spoiling Casablanca before Laura even hit double digits. Looking back, she had about as much choice in becoming a filmmaker as a goldfish does in learning to swim.
Her latest short film, The Coupon, a Kafkaesque comedic romp, has earned multiple festival honors, including Best Comedy Short at the Atlanta Underground Film Festival and Best Short at the Tohorror Film Festival. It was also selected for Fantastic Fest, FilmQuest, Telluride Horror Show, and Slash International Film Fest—some of the most well-regarded genre programs in the U.S. and abroad. Another of her works, The Baldwin Archives, a reimagining of James Baldwin’s 1969 BBC interview, was named one of Awards Daily’s “25 Best Shorts at HollyShorts” and also screened at Outfest, NewFest, and Out On Film.
Her directorial debut, Speak, premiered at the Nantucket Film Festival and helped raise funds for Good Shepherd Shelter, a Los Angeles halfway house for survivors of domestic abuse, underscoring her commitment to socially impactful storytelling.
Recently selected for the Ryan Murphy Half Initiative, Laura shadowed Maggie Kiley (American Sports Story, Dr. Death, Pretty Little Liars) on Doctor Odyssey and Monica Raymund (Dexter: Original Sin, The Sinner, Raising Kanan) on CBS’s FBI. She was also a finalist for SeriesFest’s Shonda Rhimes Directing Mentorship Program and chosen for Sundance Collab’s Directing for Television Intensive, where she trained under Dan Attias (The Wire, Homeland, The Marvelous Mrs. Maisel), further honing her skills in episodic storytelling.
With a background in acting and stand-up comedy, Laura is an actor’s director, bringing a sharp understanding of character, timing, and emotional nuance to her work. Her on-screen credits include Steven Soderbergh’s Command Z, Marvel’s Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D., NCIS, and Superbad, alongside performances at The Comedy Store in Los Angeles and the Brooklyn Comedy Collective for the New York Comedy Festival.
On set, she cultivates an atmosphere of humor and goodwill, fostering a collaborative space where artists feel supported to do their best work. She is an active member of the Alliance of Women Directors.
︎ Directing Reel ︎
︎imeo