From UVA dorms to Hollywood dreams

Arts & Culture

From UVA dorms to Hollywood dreams

Karen Zipor knew she would eventually end up in Hollywood, but her career has still come as something of a surprise.

“If 21-year-old Karen knew what was coming, she would not believe it,” said Zipor, who graduated from the University of Virginia in 2022 with degrees in drama and computer science.

Since graduating, Zipor has worked on productions for Disney, DreamWorks, and Netflix, among other studios. She’s produced the talk show “Brittany Broski’s Royal Court,” which has featured guests like singer Harry Styles, comedian and “Saturday Night Live” star Marcello Hernandez, and Oscar-winning actor Jessie Buckley. She even started her own production company and has made both live and animated short films.

Now, she has a short film screening on Thursday at UVA, called “The Worm’s-Eye View of the Bird.” It will also be shown Friday at the Indie Short Film Festival in Charlottesville. The movie draws on Zipor’s personal experiences and focuses on a young woman whose heart is broken – by a worm. Zipor will participate in a Q&A after the UVA screening.

Portrait of Karen Zipor at a screening of her animation “The Worm’s-Eye View of the Bird”

Zipor, above, produces comedian Brittany Broski’s talk show, “Royal Court.” (Contributed photo)

Before her move to Los Angeles, she was a student in her UVA dorm, cramming in work as a production assistant at an animation company between classes.

“I got my first job in the industry doing the Television Academy Foundation internship program, and I was placed on an animated show. After the internship, they wanted me to stay on as a part-time PA,” Zipor said.

Her response? “Heck, yeah.” She had a block of four hours after her classes that overlapped with the second half of the workday on the West Coast. In that time, she worked on the animated series “ARK,” based on a video game of the same name.

After graduation, she became a production coordinator at Disney, then started working for a creative agency, where she, for example, ran the social media accounts for “Scooby Doo” and “Tom and Jerry,” and did other marketing work for big studios.

In 2023, she moved to LA and started working on “Royal Court” a few months later.

“I was on that project for episode 1 and have been on it ever since. We’re almost nearing three years now, and we just hit a million subscribers, which is very cool,” Zipor said.

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It’s Zipor’s job to interview and prepare guests, as well as coordinate the items guests bring as “tribute,” a regular segment on the podcast. Usually, the tribute object is sentimental. One guest, Tyriq Withers, brought a surprising item.

“Someone brought a rat. They hired an animal wrangler and everything. It’s then up to me to make sure it’s not revealed to Brittany – so we can have this moment of pure surprise when it comes out on camera,” Zipor said.

Zipor is the professional in the room when the show books celebrity guests, but she admits to still getting starstruck. In 2024, the actor Saoirse Ronan (known for movies like “Little Women” and “Lady Bird”) appeared on “Royal Court,” which Zipor called “surreal.”

“After recording, she came up to me and asked if she could give me a hug,” Zipor recalled. “Everyone who comes on is so sweet and lovely.”

“The Worm’s-Eye View of the Bird” is screening at UVA on Thursday. (Contributed photo)

Her computer science degree has come in handy, too. Zipor was hired as a visual effects coordinator to work on “Wicked: For Good” and Christopher Nolan’s upcoming adaptation of “The Odyssey.”

“My parents told me, ‘You need a backup. You can’t just major in drama and call it a day.’ It’s part of the reason why I chose UVA over a conservatory school, because it would give me technical skills, and that helped me stand out in applicant pools of hundreds of people,” Zipor said.

Alongside her various day jobs, Zipor also started her own production company, Zipped Up Films. She has produced a range of short films, from a romantic thriller about a young artist to “The Worm’s-Eye View of the Bird.”

“What I’ve learned is that making one of the big, shiny, $100 million studio movies is not necessarily my end goal,” she said. “My end goal is just to create art. I’d rather be the producer of a small, really well-made indie film than a coordinator on a massive project.”

It’s a busy schedule, but Zipor said she likes it that way.