The last place Taylor Valley expected to be was in the limelight, but when she walks the red carpet for the Indie Series Awards on April 12, that’s exactly where she’ll be.

Valley, a political science doctoral student at Northeastern University, is nominated for best supporting actress in a comedy at the annual web content awards for “Pretty … If You Squint,” a sketch comedy web series she wrote, directed, edited and played every role in. But for most of her life, despite a long-abiding love for acting and filmmaking, she’s struggled with being “paralyzingly shy.” 

Her recent success––and willingness to put herself out there into the world––has changed that. Now, as she pursues both a Ph.D. and more sketch comedy work, Valley has embraced the confident entertainer she has always had inside of herself.

“I’ve struggled with shyness, and I’m very lucky to be at a point where I feel like if I really want to do something, I should just do it,” Valley says. “I spent so much time stopping myself, and it’s just so liberating. I’m glad I just put myself out there because it was really hard.”

Valley grew up in Pittsburgh with a passion for the performing arts, but she always struggled to get out of her shell. She started out making videos with her siblings and cousins before taking part in a musical theater program in middle school where she “never had a real role.”

“I was always in the choir,” she says. “I wasn’t a good singer, I wasn’t a good dancer, I wasn’t a good actress. I was just so happy to be included.”

Coming out of high school, Valley found something else that interested her just as much as acting: international politics. Her Ph.D. in political science at Northeastern, which she started in 2020, is focused on Latin American relations with Russia, China and the United States. Between her undergraduate studies at Miami University in Ohio, a master’s in Russian studies at Harvard University and now her Ph.D., acting fell by the wayside.

At least until 2022 when she returned home to live with her parents for the summer and had an abundance of time on her hands. Valley created an acting reel, something that could showcase her talent, but more than anything it was a chance for her to get in front of the camera and start to stretch creative muscles she hadn’t used for years.

“Pretty … If You Squint” came out of that initial creative exercise. A nine-episode sketch comedy web series, “Pretty … If You Squint” follows a young woman “who lives at home and doesn’t have much going on in her life, and she finds herself in these comedic situations.” For Valley, it was an opportunity to release all the creative energy and ideas she had built up over the years because she was too shy to reveal that part of herself.

“Even before I had the idea to do a web show, I’ve always had a notepad in my phone of jokes I’ve said in my head and never told anyone,” she says. “I relied a lot on that.”

However, unlike the home videos she made with her family growing up, Valley took on every task by herself. From writing the scripts to directing each episode to performing each role, it was a true one-woman show. She had enough confidence to create something but not enough confidence to bring anyone else onboard, she says.

Even after releasing the first episode (“Are Bribes Tax Deductible?”) on YouTube on Aug. 31, 2022, Valley struggled with how much she wanted to put herself out there for the world to see. 

“I did everything under the name Raven Sinclair because I was like, ‘I don’t need this to be traced back to me,’” she says. “I’m wearing a wig. I’m trying to distance myself from this because I didn’t know how it would work.”

It wasn’t until weeks later that she posted about it on social media and started to embrace what she had created and how much she had grown in the process. Even before she learned about the Indie Series Award nomination, Valley says she had started to reach out to other creatives and sketch comedians in the Boston area. Whatever her next project is, she won’t be doing it alone.

“I’ve started to produce more stuff with other people, which is great because there’s so many more things you can do when you have creative minds and capable people in the production process,” Valley says. “I’m really just trying to meet more people in the comedy world, go to more comedy shows, watch more comedy, read about comedians. I’ve actually taken the dive in the last couple of months.”

Her experience creating “Pretty … If You Squint” has also affected how she views her doctoral program. She’s come to realize that the traditional research and dissertation approach is not the only way to “bring your research to life.”

“As I grow more confident in what I’m researching, if I find that value and if it could be a value to others, I would love to experiment in ways that I can showcase it in a way that entertains people,” Valley says. “I love entertaining people––that’s been another realization––and I love education, so I would love to see what I can do to bring those together.”

Cody Mello-Klein is a Northeastern Global News reporter. Email him at c.mello-klein@northeastern.edu. Follow him on Twitter @Proelectioneer.