Leah McKendrick Biography

Leah McKendrick was born in San Francisco, California. She attended Chapman University, where she wrote, produced, directed and acted in a number of short films and stage plays. She graduated in 2008 with a BFA in theatre performance.

Leah’s career started like many other actors, playing bit parts in smaller films. A waitress here, crime victim #7 there; that was what Leah was doing in the early parts of her career. Instead of waiting for casting directors to choose her, Leah turned to writing, partly in the hopes of writing better parts for herself.

In 2014, she wrote, produced and starred in the pop musical web series Destroy the Alpha Gammas. The series was well received, and Leah was made a Webby Award honoree and received a Streamy Award nomination for Best Indie Web Series.

Leah would go on to write other shorts such as The Girl in the Green Dress, which earned her a nomination at the Savannah Film Festival for Best Historical Short. While this was going on Leah continued to make small appearances in Hollywood feature films. she was in Bad Moms (2016), Bad People (2016) and on an episode of Criminal Minds in 2017.

That would be the same year Leah would write and star in her first feature film, M.F.A. (2017). Leah would star as Skye alongside Francesca Eastwood who played the lead of Noelle. The film was positively received and her work on the screenplay opened more opportunities for Leah in the writer’s room.

In 2023, it was announced that Leah was writing the sequel I Know What You Did Last Summer (2025) as well as the Netflix movie Voicemails for Isabel (2026), which stars Zoey Deutch and Nick Robinson.

Leah has also added directing to her repertoire of skills. She wrote, directed and starred in the film Scrambled (2023), which explores the trials that women who choose to freeze their eggs go through and is based on Leah’s own experiences. The film premiered at South by Southwest with its distribution rights being acquired by Lionsgate in 2024 and was a nominee for the Grand Jury Award for Narrative Feature.

Speaking about her directorial debut, Leah says a part of it was to protect her scripts and ensure that what she was writing made it to the audience with as little interference as possible.

Following the release of Scrambled, opportunities continued for Leah. She has several screenplays that she's working on. 

Filmography:

Voicemails for Isabelle (2026)
Busboys (2026)
I Know What You Did Last Summer (2025)
The Final List (2024)
Baby Steps (2023)
Scrambled (2023)
Wish Upon a Unicorn (2020)
A Nice Girl Like You (2020)
The Turkey Bowl (2019)
Say Yes (2018)
M.F.A. (2017)
All I Need (2016)
Bad People (2016)
Bad Moms (2016)
Misconduct (2016)
Organize Chaos (2014)
iCrime (2010)
The Last Lovecraft: Relic of Cthulhu (2009)