Santina Muha's Fine Lines

Santina Muha knows how to deliver a one-liner. Her comedic prowess is evident throughout season two of Dollface, the Hulu comedy centered on Jules (Kat Dennings), a woman who reconnects with her female friends after a breakup. In the series Muha portrays Sky, a colleague of Jules's at lifestyle company Woöm.

The actress is equally adept at speaking volumes with a mere look. When this is pointed out to her, Muha confirms she has heard this before. In fact, many people have told her it is her forté as a performer.

"I credit Bea Arthur for that," she says. Born and raised in Toms River, New Jersey, Muha grew up watching The Golden Girls and other sitcoms with her Italian nonna (grandmother).

"Every time Bea [Dorothy on The Golden Girls] made a face, the audience would laugh, and so I knew, 'Okay, you make a face, and it's funny.' So that's become part of my natural inclination when it comes to comedy," she explains.

Muha started acting as a child, appearing in commercials and local theater. In 2012, a few years after graduating from Rutgers University with a bachelor of arts degree in communications and sociology, Muha moved to Los Angeles, where she honed her comedic skills at the Upright Citizens Brigade (UCB).

"I immediately found community at UCB, and it was great because it gave people an opportunity to get to know me as a comedian and not just as a woman in a wheelchair," says Muha, who has used a wheelchair since she was paralyzed in a car accident when she was five years old.

Muha delved even further into her exploration of that theme — being seen apart from her wheelchair — in the 2021 documentary short Full Picture, which she cowrote, coproduced and starred in. Filmed during the pandemic — when meetings and hangouts were largely online — the twelve-minute doc follows Muha as she chooses if and when to disclose her disability — gauging the reactions of others when she does.

Performing at UCB led to Muha's first big break in television — being cast as a production assistant, also named Santina, on the IFC series Comedy Bang! Bang! "What was great was that part had nothing to do with me being in a wheelchair. It was just about me being a funny comedian, a funny woman," Muha says.

Another career milestone was her role as military veteran Beth on the One Day at a Time reboot. "Here was a show I used to watch with my Italian grandmother, and now I was on the reboot working with Mackenzie Phillips," Muha says. (Phillips, who plays a therapist on the reboot, originated the role of teenage daughter Julie, one of the central characters in the original sitcom.)

"It was a full circle moment for me," Muha reflects.