Have you ever seen Lily from the recent AT&T ads? If you haven’t, chances are you will soon. She is causing quite a stir online and it isn’t surprising. Lily Adams is the character portrayed in the commercials and she gets herself into all sorts of interesting situations while assisting the fictional customers of the phone company AT&T. This makes for some pretty interesting commercials and they have become pretty popular online. But who is the actress behind the lovable character Lily Adams? How does she bring this character to life, and what is her life actually like off-screen? Read on to learn why Lily from the AT&T ads is making such a huge stir.
The actress behind Lily Adams is named Milana Vayntrub, and she had a very interesting childhood. She was born in what used to be known as the Usbek Soviet Socialist Republic, which is now the Republic of Uzbekistan. The history of this country is very dark and Milana grew up under religious persecution because her family is Jewish. Although it was not easy, they eventually gained political asylum and Milana grew up in the United States.
As she began her life in the US, she started acting at just the age of five years old. Oddly enough, she acted first in a phone company ad, and later appeared in E.R. as a sick patient. She was fortunate enough to be in this TV show with George Clooney and Julianna Margulies. She eventually starred in Disney Channel’s Lizzie McGuire. But after her early roles, she was ready to give up on her acting career. “I remember thinking, ‘I should probably focus on something more realistic. This is probably not going to work out. I have high hopes, but that’s probably not enough to make it in film,’” she told Esquire Magazine in 2015.
What she did not anticipate was that she would be getting her light at the end of the tunnel very soon. As she began to shift her focus back on education, she graduated from University of California, San Diego, with a degree in communication. She still focused on honing her acting skills and was trained by the Upright Citizens Brigade in improvisation, which is the same comedy company that helped launch Parks and Recreation.
She even started her own online comedy sketch series called Live Prude Girls, that ended up gaining a lot of popularity. She also started a show online called Let’s Talk About Something More, where she would interview some pretty big names. “It was me and another girl, and we would sit our guests in between us and harass them gently. Matt Damon was our guest. And Bob Odenkirk, B.J. Novak, other YouTubers,” Milana said.
After her success online, she started to see a big break in her career. She started in Ghostbusters, and even Key and Peele. She also played an ex girlfriend in Love on Netflix, and Silicon Valley. One of her more notable appearances was in This is Us, where she starred in 8 episodes. She has gone on to voice many characters like Ellie Moonshiner in Dallas & Robo, and Squirrel Girl in Marvel Rising: Secret Warriors.
She got her even bigger break when she started doing the AT&T commercials back in 2013. Although she was only supposed to do one commercial, these ads have ended up being a consistent staple in her career. With all the other work she has done, it is interesting that she is most well known for being Lily Adams in the AT&T commercial. She even directs the commercials herself, playing a part on and off the screen in the making of these ads.
