Abbi Jacobson
Abbi Jacobson is an American comedian, actress, writer, producer, and illustrator. She co-created and co-starred in the Comedy Central series Broad City with Ilana Glazer, based on the web series of the same name. She is a writer and co-creator of the Amazon Prime series A [League of Their Own |A League of Their Own], in which she also stars as Carson Shaw, a baseball player in the Girls Professional Baseball League">Girls (TV series)">Girls Professional Baseball League. Her other roles include voicing Katie Mitchell in The Mitchells vs. the Machines, Nya in The Lego Ninjago Movie, and Princess Bean in the series Disenchantment, in addition to appearing in the live-action films Person to Person and 6 Balloons.
Jacobson founded production company Tender Pictures in 2020, and co-founded fellowship program Prelude alongside Mieka Tennant. She has published two colouring books of her own illustrations, and published a book of personal essays, I Might Regret This: Essays, Drawings, Vulnerabilities and Other Stuff.
Early life
Abbi Jacobson was born in 1984 in Wayne, Pennsylvania. She is the daughter of Susan Komm, an artist, and Alan Jacobson, a graphic designer. She is Jewish, attended Hebrew school and had a Bat Mitzvah. She was raised in Wayne, Pennsylvania, where she attended Valley Forge Middle School and Conestoga High School. She also participated in Birthright Israel, a free ten-day trip to Israel for young Jewish adults between the ages of 18 and 26.She studied fine arts and video production at the Maryland Institute College of Art, graduating in 2006 with a B.F.A. in General Fine Arts. While at MICA, she studied stand-up comedy for one year with poet Jeremy Sigler, having transferred for a term to study acting at Emerson College.
Jacobson moved to New York City after graduating from MICA. She began taking classes with the Atlantic Theater Company and the Upright Citizens Brigade Theatre, where she met Ilana Glazer.
Career
''Broad City''
From 2009 to 2011, Jacobson and Glazer wrote and performed in a web series titled Broad City, which focused on their lives in New York. The series was nominated for an ECNY Award for Best Web Series. It was well received by critics and developed a cult following. At the Upright Citizens Brigade, Jacobson and Glazer adapted the series into a live show that they performed in, called Broad City Live.In 2011, cable network FX, working with Amy Poehler as the producer, purchased a script commitment for the series from Glazer and Jacobson. However, the network did not approve the script and decided not to proceed with development. Glazer and Jacobson then approached Comedy Central, who agreed to purchase the script from FX and order a pilot.
Broad City made its broadcast television premiere in January 2014 and was received with positive reviews and strong ratings, becoming Comedy Central's highest-rated first season since 2012 among the younger demographics, including adults 18–34, with an average of 1.2 million viewers.
Materializing following backlash of Lena Dunham’s Girls, which was critiqued for its lack of racial diversity and upper-middle-class characterization, Broad City is often discussed for its approach and depictions to themes gender, sexuality, and identity. The series, portrays semi-biographical characters, millennial, assimilated Ashkenazi Jewish New Yorkers. The intersection between Jewishness, queerness, femininity, masculinity, and adulthood is central to the narrative of the show and the lives of characters; Ilana has relationships with both men and women, and in the final season, Abbi comes out as queer.
The show has received critical acclaim from fans and critics alike. Review aggregation website Metacritic noted season 1 received "generally favorable reviews", giving it a score of 75 out of 100, based on reviews from 14 critics. Karen Valby from Entertainment Weekly described the show as a "deeply weird, weirdly sweet, and completely hilarious comedy". The Wall Street Journal referred to the show as "Sneak Attack Feminism". Critic Megan Angelo quotes Abbi Jacobson: "If you watch one of our episodes, there's not a big message, but if you watch all of them, I think, they're empowering to women." The A.V. Club critic Caroline Framke wrote that Broad City was "worth watching" despite its "well-trod premise", and that the series is "remarkably self-possessed, even in its first episode". Jacobson was a fan of bands like Phish growing up and would often spoof her jamband fandom on Broad City.
Season one of the show received a 96% rating from Rotten Tomatoes, based on reviews from 23 critics, with the site's consensus stating, "From its talented producers to its clever writing and superb leads, Broad City boasts an uncommonly fine pedigree." The A.V. Club named Broad City the second best TV show of 2014 for its first season.
In February 2014, Comedy Central renewed the show for a second season. Season two received positive reviews, with Metacritic giving it a score of 89 out of 100, based on reviews from 8 critics. Rotten Tomatoes gave the second season a rating of 100%, based on reviews from 11 critics, with the site's consensus: "Led by two of the funniest women on TV, Broad City uses its stars' vibrant chemistry to lend an element of authenticity to the show's chaotic yet enlightening brand of comedy."
In January 2015, the series was then renewed for a third season, which premiered on February 17, 2016. In January 2016, the series was renewed for a fourth and a final, fifth season.
Reception and impact
The bodily and racialized humour within the show is noted to transform stereotypes and tropes of Jewish womanhood that have been underdocumented within feminist academia, further exploring themes of sexual desire, female agency, and freedom of choice. The show may further be interpreted as a rejection of overconsumption culture and what societal ideas of what conventional success looks like for young women through the character's constant battles with unemployment and business endeavours, showcasing a theme of “perpetual adolescence” and “failed adulthood”.Tender Pictures
Jacobson extended her commitment to inclusive storytelling through “Tender Pictures”, founded in 2020, which “centers stories of friendship, identity, and found family”. In January 2025, she co-founded the Tender Pictures Fellowship Program, “Prelude”, alongside Mieka Tennant, whose aim is to “level the playing field for emerging storytellers”. The eight-month fellowship offers ten spots and connects its participants with over thirty established filmmakers and industry experts through mentorship, workshops, and panels. “Rooted in play and experimentation”, the program partners with names such as A24 and the Criterion Collection, emphasizing “creativity before credentials and supporting economic viability for new voices in film”.Jacobson shared in an interview with Deadline, “The most important thing we can give emerging storytellers is the confidence that there’s a place for them in the industry and that their story is worth telling, all while providing them a toolkit to do so,”.
Tender Pictures is currently working on a television series adaptation of Isle McElroy’s 2023 novel People Collide, which centers around a married couple swapping bodies. The book's themes explore marriage, identity, sex and raises questions about the nature of true partnership. Jacobson serves as the series writer and showrunner via Tender Pictures.
Other work
In 2011, Jacobson wrote and performed in a solo show called Welcome to Camp, which ran in New York and Los Angeles.In December 2015, Jacobson was cast in the film Person to Person, opposite Michael Cera and Philip Baker Hall, written and directed by Dustin Guy Defa. Jacobson also starred in The Lego Ninjago Movie, released on September 22, 2017.
Her first appearance in BoJack Horseman was in the 2016 episode "The Bojack Horseman Show", in which she voiced Emily.
In 2017, Jacobson hosted a 10-episode podcast about modern and contemporary art called A [Piece of Work |A Piece of Work] co-produced by The [Museum of Modern Art] and WNYC Studios. She plans to do a second season.
From 2018 to 2023, she voiced Princess Bean in Matt Groening's Disenchantment.
Jacobson appeared in a March 2020 episode of Curb Your Enthusiasm.
In 2021, Jacobson voiced Katie Mitchell in the Sony Pictures Animation film The Mitchells vs. the Machines.
In 2022 she served as a writer, producer, co-creator and star of the Amazon series A League of Their Own, based on the 1992 film of the same name, where she plays catcher Carson Shaw. The series is critically acclaimed and has a Rotten Tomatoes score of 95%.
Books
In 2013, Jacobson published two coloring books with Chronicle Books: Color This Book: New York City and Color This Book: San Francisco. Jacobson also illustrated a book titled Carry This Book, published October 2016 by Viking Press. It features colorful, humorous illustrations of the imagined contents of various celebrities' bags. "I have always been intrigued by what people carry around with them. It can tell you everything" says Jacobson in the book's introduction. Well received by critics, Carry This Book was a New York Times bestseller.Jacobson published another book, I Might Regret This: Essays, Drawings, Vulnerabilities, and Other Stuff, October 30, 2018, with Grand Central Publishing. With drawings throughout, the book of personal essays is centered around Jacobson's solo three week cross-country road trip. While it features comedic anecdotes and moments, it primarily focuses on the heartbreak Jacobson endured while getting over her first love, also her first relationship with a woman, and general issues of identity. According to Jacobson, the book is centered around self-reflection: "It's about how I've felt like an internal outsider for my entire life because I just never understood what love was, that I would never get to experience it, and being a public figure only heightened that anxiety."
Legacy
Visibility
Broad City’s origins as a web series elevated a platform and space for groups that are overlooked by traditional media programming, gaining an established online fanbase for how the series blended cultural specificity and relatability. Broad City expanded the possibilities for women, making a lasting influence on feminist media and independent television for its expansion of feminist comedy theory, and for its depictions of taboo topics.As comedians, actors, and creators, Jacobson and Glazer's work reveal the contradictions and impossible standards within postfeminist culture, especially within media creation, illustrating both on-and-off-screen how boundaries can restrict women’s ability to define themselves and see themselves within comedy television.
Beyond the series, Jacobson’s work with Tender Pictures continues to empower storytellers in underrepresented groups by redefining what access to the film and television industry looks like. The company aims to respond to systemic barriers in place by creating opportunities that directly combat industry exclusivity. The company website states that 91% of participants in its programs come from underrepresented groups, 79% identify as LGBTQIA+, and 73% identify as she/her or she/they.
Jacobson’s series A League of Their Own is celebrated for its reinterpretation of the 1992 film by the same name that tells the story of a World War II-era women’s baseball team and the queer community that it fostered. While initially renewed for a four-episodes second season in March 2023, Amazon Studios later cancelled the series, and blamed it on the 2023 [Writers Guild of America strike|WGA and SAG-AFTRA] strike the same year
Advocacy
In October 2023, Jacobson signed the Artists4Ceasefire open letter to Joe Biden, President of the United States, calling for a ceasefire of the Israeli bombardment of Gaza. She is also a signatory of the Film Workers for Palestine boycott pledge that was published in September 2025.Personal life
In an April 2018 interview, Jacobson stated that she dates men and women but "they have to be funny, doing something they love."She has been in a relationship with actress Jodi Balfour since October 2020. In June 2024, Jacobson and Balfour got married.
Filmography
Film
Television
Awards
Jacobson’s 2022 Amazon series [A League of Their Own |A League of Their Own] earned recognition from GLAAD for Outstanding New TV Series as well as the 2023 National Visibility Award from the Human Rights Campaign, honouring LGBTQ+ leaders and entities that exemplify living openly and authentically.Abbi voices "Katie Mitchell