Leah Rudick struggled for years in New York City and Los Angeles trying to stand out in the competitive worlds of sketch and stand-up comedy.
But in 2022, she found a haven in TikTok, where many comics have developed followings by creating funny characters in 60-second bits. Her breakout character goes simply by Wealthy Woman, who is both perpetually cheery and utterly clueless.
Wealthy Woman offers brief, fast-paced reviews of déclassé places like Waffle House, Dollar Tree and Spirit Airlines with wide-eyed wonder and a true lack of self-awareness.
Rudick last year taped and released her Amazon stand-up comedy special “Spiraling” and is now on tour building her next hour of new material.
“I love that character,” said Rudick in an interview with The Atlanta Journal-Constitution. “She’s very fun to write. Her energy is based on my mom. She is the most positive person you’ll ever meet. People like how delighted she is about the most boring, mundane things that we regular people experience every day and don’t think twice about.”
At the Dollar Store in one video, Wealthy Woman was shopping for her friend’s 13th bridal shower (“13th is the charm!”) and told worker Carol she was working with a budget of $500. “She gasped and said $500? I said my God, no Carol, $500,000. How embarrassing! She must have thought I was such a cheapskate!”
Accidentally high on pot gummy bears, Wealthy Woman describes Waffle House as a “brightly lit prison kitchen” where the staff cooks her hash browns in front of her like a “Benihana for degenerates.”
On a trip to Hooters, she at first thinks it’s a place to buy a pet owl but eventually finds out “it was a store for perverts — even better!”
Her Cracker Barrel video from 2022 is the one that she said first went viral.
“I think it’s called that because it’s full of white people who look like they live in barrels,” Wealthy Woman proclaims. “It’s like this speakeasy for hillbillies where you walk through this store full of quilts to get to this secret restaurant.” She later adds, “The best part of the experience is every table comes with this peg game that’s very fun but very different from the one I played with my ex-husband.”
Rudick, who grew up in Ohio, said those viral videos “completely changed my life.”
She recalled going to the Funny Bone in Columbus, Ohio, soon after Wealthy Woman became a thing and selling out the room. “After the show, there were lines of people wanting to take my picture,” she said. “It was so surreal. Such a pinch-me moment. I remembering sitting there welling up with tears, after all this was happening. I held on to that moment.”
Her longtime manager encouraged her to tape the special available on Amazon, which features her joking about her marriage, a family psychic and anxiety attacks.
“My first hour was like a culmination of years and years of material,” she said. But creating new material, she said, has gotten easier as she spends more time onstage.
