'Valley Girl' Scores Power Players For New Season

It wouldn’t be bad advice if someone told you to play to your strengths, to work with what you know best. For actress Jesse Draper, who is most known for playing the ditzy nanny on Nickelodeon’s The Naked Brother’s Band, that meant mixing a little Hollywood flare with her Valley roots for her indie web series. Oh, and by Valley, I don’t mean the other side of Mulholland. I’m talking about California’s other illustrious hotbed, Silicon Valley.

Draper’s web series, The Valley Girl Show, pits Draper in character as a quirky pink-obsessed host sitting down to chat with some of the world’s top business leaders and entrepreneurs. You can’t help but be reminded of a Reese Witherspoon’s Elle in Legally Blonde, juxtaposing academic bland with more ‘colorful’ smarts.

For Draper, this is her wheelhouse. Draper, the daughter of venture capitalist Tim Draper (of Draper Fisher Jurvetson), literally grew up around the titans of tech, giving her both a level of ease and access to the Valley’s elite.

Last season she landed top execs Google CEO Eric Schmidt and Sun

Microsystems founder Scott McNealy. This season she says they are stepping it up a notch, if that’s even possible. Draper tells me that she looked at last season as a “pilot season,” testing out the concept and honing the character. This season she says they have upped the production quality, bringing on production company OnPoint Productions and even consulting help from the team at EQAL.

This season Draper’s guests include Elon Musk, CEO of Telsa Motors (and SpaceX), NFL star Ronnie Lott and billionaire VC Vinod Khosla. Draper and the team are also in talks with a major sponsor coming on board for the new season.

In its first season, the show was touted as a West Coast spin on Wallstrip, the now defunct business new satire web series from CBS Interactive. But Draper says she’s thinking bigger.

“It’s going to be a journey but I am going to become the pink Ellen Degeneres of the internet,” Draper told us.

The new season of  The Valley Girl Show kicks off August 31, with 15 episodes spread out over 30 weeks.