Megan Stalter speaks about her latest project, Too Much—a Netflix romantic comedy series from Lena Dunham—with the giddy glow of someone describing a love story of her own. And in a way, it is. The partnership began with a digital meet-cute: a DM from Dunham herself. “She messaged me on Instagram and said, ‘I have a project for you,’” Stalter recalls. “She even told me she wrote it with me in mind, which is the craziest thing to hear from my No. 1. I’m a No. 1 fan of Lena.”
That project would take Stalter from her Ohio roots to the streets of London, where she stars as Jessica, a lovelorn New Yorker who crosses the Atlantic and collides with Felix, a gentle musician played by The White Lotus’ Will Sharpe. For Stalter—who built a cult following online with lo-fi videos of hilariously unhinged characters before breaking out in HBO Max’s Hacks—this was her first time anchoring a glossy romantic comedy. But the chemistry was instant. “Will was weird and funny like me,” she says. “We had such an easy time improvising together. Even our first scene—this awkward kiss—ended up being perfect.”
From Ohio Pageants to Hollywood Screens
At 34, Stalter’s career reads like a modern fairytale. Raised in Ohio, she was fascinated by beauty pageants, where over-the-top bravado masked deep vulnerability. That duality inspired characters like the faded beauty queen of Little Miss Ohio, a viral pandemic-era monologue series that turned her into a cult internet star.
But Stalter’s ambitions stretched far beyond TikTok virality. After studying improv in Chicago, she honed her comedy on stage before moving to New York in 2019. When the pandemic hit, her offbeat characters—“your boss when her tube top falls off on a Zoom,” for one—exploded online. Casting directors soon noticed. Lucia Aniello, Paul W. Downs, and Jen Statsky tapped her for Hacks, where she evolved from a broad foil into Kayla, a complex, scene-stealing character who earned Stalter her first major award.
“I never wanted to wait for someone else to tell me yes,” she says. “Comedy let me make my own rules.”
The Rom-Com Ingenue We Needed
In Too Much, Stalter channels the dizzy charm of rom-com icons—from Bridget Jones to Elle Woods—without ever losing her own awkward warmth. Dressed in candy-colored skirt suits and whimsy, her Jessica feels as modern as she is timeless.
What makes the series groundbreaking, though, is the casting itself. Stalter is openly queer, in a long-term relationship with her partner Maddie Allen, yet she steps seamlessly into a heterosexual romantic lead. “It’s really meaningful for me to play queer characters, but I also love that I can bring myself to straight roles,” she says. “Queer people are curious about straight culture just like straight people are curious about ours. Playing both feels natural.”
Faith, Femininity, and the Future
Beyond Netflix stardom, Stalter is developing her dream project: Church Girls, a comedy series with A24 and Max about a young Christian woman in Ohio realizing she’s a lesbian. For Stalter, it’s both personal and revolutionary. “I’ve never understood why you couldn’t be gay and love God,” she says. “It hurts me to think anyone would feel shut out of spirituality because of who they love.”
Even with Hollywood calling, she hasn’t abandoned the offbeat Instagram sketches that built her following. “Laughing with strangers online is still important to me,” she says. Offline, her priorities remain simple: family, friends, her partner, and her pets—“literally God’s little angels.”
Megan Stalter is a star on the rise—quirky, glamorous, unafraid of awkwardness, and radiating the kind of buoyancy that rom-com heroines have always needed. Whether she’s delivering a monologue in a tiara, kissing Will Sharpe in a Netflix comedy, or pitching her dream series about queer faith, she does it all with the same signature charm: too much, and just enough.
