From Corporate To Creative: LI Native Shares The Inside Scoop On New Series

HICKSVILLE, NY — From corporate to creative, a Hicksville native helped bring a Long Island-filmed series to life. The Diner Anthologies premiered on YouTube on Sunday.

As producer, director, writer, and actress, Gabriella Piazza said she was ecstatic to work on such a meaningful piece with other Long Islanders and creatives. Piazza said showrunner Ryan Sarno had the idea to shoot at Underworld Productions in Patchogue, which he built himself. Piazza said it was the perfect backdrop to the series.

The starlight said she took theater in high school, but didn’t think she could form a career from it, so she started in the corporate world about 10 years ago. After seeing someone use their corporate salary to fund their own projects, she knew the path to film and television was possible: “I’m an actor at heart.”

Challenging herself, Piazza took night classes at the New York Film Academy to make her way towards her goal of being on the big screen. She started training and acting, and about six months later, she quit her job to start her own production company. Her first film was self-funded and titled To Whom It May Concern.

While bringing her work to life is rewarding, she said, finding funds and projects can be difficult at times.

“It’s really hard out here,” she said. “While waiting for the jobs to come in, you have to have the drive to create and tell your own stories all the time as an artist.”

The 35-year-old said it’s an interesting industry that is undergoing many changes. She hopes to be able to focus on film and narrative storytelling in the future: “Film is where my heart lives.”

Reflecting on how the idea was developed, she said it was a group effort.

“It evolved from a desire to create and share original stories with different creative teams,” she said.

The television industry’s landscape has been ever-changing, and Piazza said they wanted to partake in the growing demand for YouTube viewing. A Nielsen report from May of 2025 stated that YouTube maintained the largest share of television viewing among other media companies for the third consecutive month.

As an independent filmmaker, Piazza said it’s important that her work gets noticed.

“For all of us who have been in film festival circuits before, we put the movie out there, and then it’s behind a firewall that nobody ever sees,” she said. “You hope it gets distributed, but that rarely happens. We wanted to make high-quality short television shows that were not verticals, and that people could actually watch and enjoy.”

Piazza shared that she is thrilled to have worked on high-quality cinematic experiences in a short film format. A past project that she produced and was the lead in was a short film from 2019 called Sawdust.

“That was pretty amazing,” she said. “Any project that I produce individually is sort of my favorite, like the Diner Anthologies. That’s a huge feat for our creative team.”

Aside from working on short films, she has starred in larger productions, such as Mission Impossible with Tom Cruise.

“I’m so grateful to have been involved with that team and learn from filmmakers like that,” she said.

The Diner Anthologies will live on YouTube TV in a five-episode series and premiered on Jan. 25.