HQ’s Sarah Pribis talks trivia, acting, plus a new comic-based role

Sarah Pribis, one of the hosts of the viral trivia app HQ, talks with Culturess about the game show gig plus an upcoming comic-based role.

If you’ve played HQ (which if you haven’t, download the app ASAP), you’ve likely seen Sarah Pribis’ bubbly personality pop up from time to time. Pribis spoke with Culturess about the experience of hosting a viral trivia show everyone can play on their phones.

Pribis was bitten by the performance bug back in high school when she was scouted for the Broadway production of Les Miserables. The role motivated her to pursue acting, so off she went to NYU Tisch School of the Arts, and she’s stayed in the Big Apple ever since.

She’s no stranger to hosting, having done red carpet interviews at film fests such as Tribeca and The New York Film Festival. She’s also had previous experience with live streaming, like HQ, for a now-closed company called Little Things.

“I used to host a show for them that was like a viral video countdown every night. So that gave me my first taste of what it was like to have the live streaming experience,” Pribis says.

As an actor, Pribis has kept her resume flowing with a mix of work, from commercials to short films and web series. Most recently, she’s had a recurring role on The Fever and will appear alongside Ice-T and Eric Roberts in a new film, Clinton Road.

Some people may also recognize Pribis from a viral infomercial, of which she went on to appear on Ellen for — the Shiny Hiney.

“That was a life-changing experience,” Pribis says with a laugh.

She shared that she actually self-submitted herself for the infomercial and similarly did so for her current role on HQ. After the video went viral, she received a call at work asking her to be on Ellen the very next day.

“And when that happened, I was kind of like, this is it. This is my big break,” Pribis says. “As we like to think with anything like that happens.”

She adds that though the viral vid was not her claim to fame, it did motivate her to push harder to get roles she wanted.

“I reached out to contacts, friends I hadn’t spoken to in a while, representation… I just networked more. I took on as many projects as I could. I continued to submit myself for things.”

Pribis says she applied to a posting looking for a host for a streaming trivia app. While HQ is well-known today, Pribis joined when it was still in a beta phase.

“So we’re talking Scott Rogowsky had just signed onto the project as well. He had maybe only been doing a couple weeks worth of games,” Pribis says. “There were 100 people max that were playing. I started kind of subbing in as one of the hosts, and I just never stopped. It’s grown in popularity. It’s gained a lot of traction obviously.”

Pribis adds that despite quizzing all of us on insanely hard questions, she does not claim to be a trivia queen herself. But she has learned a lot from hosting and become better at trivia in general.

“So often, I look at the questions and I’m like ‘Wow, I think I would have gotten up to Q4 on this game. How are people getting to the end?’ It’s amazing!”

As far as preparation for the show goes, Pribis arrives about an hour before a game goes live to go over questions that have been developed by a team of writers. She’s offered suggested facts that she can choose to share, or she can add her own flavor and personality to the mix.

While Scott Rogowsky is known for his hilarious references and phrases like “Quemero Numero Uno,” Pribis enjoys bringing her own style to the game.

“I like to keep it relatable… I keep things pretty, as I say, short and sweet. We’re all there to play trivia. I want everyone to learn… I want people to understand what it is they’re learning so if I can relate the material back to something that you know the masses are gonna get, then that’s what I’m there to do.”

She adds that along with offering some relatability to the questions, she wants to cheer the fans on.

“I am really grateful to the fans,” Pribis says. “It’s really helped me. Right before I started doing HQ, I had started to create my own content for social media. Doing comedy videos and sketches and that sort of thing. [HQ has] given an audience to my platform, and it feels really good to have people watch you on the show and come back to your page and watch your videos and cheer you on. As much as I’m cheering them on, they’re cheering me on too.”

As for the HQ experience overall, Pribis says: “It’s a real gift. I am really grateful that it has just given me a platform to learn because I have never had any experience like this. This is the first of its kind… to go on a live stream, in front of millions of people. I’ve never done that before. It took me awhile to find my voice… It has been a real learning experience.”

Pribis continues to work on acting opportunities along with her time on HQ.

She recently shared preview photos of an upcoming project that was just filmed in New Orleans, and it looks perfect for cosplayers to emulate.

Pribis says the project is called Rockabilly RoadTrip and is based on the graphic novel of the same name. The novel’s site describes itself as being “a cross-country love story of a man, his car and his homemade bride. On the roadtrip, we follow our hero, Nicky ‘The Pipe’ who has just completed work on his long time project ‘The Devil Driver,’ his dream automobile.”

She notes the project has been in the works for 10 years, and the sizzle is currently out to be pitched to various platforms and producers.

Pribis’ character is named Patches, and she characterized her as a mix between Ariel and Maleficent. Rockabilly RoadTrip‘s describes Patches as Nicky’s “bombshell of a passenger dummy” who “mysteriously comes to life.” Nicky “decides there would be no better way to educate her on the ways of the world than with a road trip across the U.S. of A. Doing so would also let him break in his new ride and possibly win Patches’ heart.”

Pribis says the project’s goal is to become a series, and each episode would take place in a different state — likely showing different scenarios state to state for Nicky and Patches.

We’ll definitely keep our eye out for this series because anything involving wild costumes and even wilder characters is always our thing.

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Catch Sarah Pribis and fellow HQ hosts every day at 9 p.m. ET and weekdays at 3 p.m. ET.