[18] Neely has been cast in over twenty national commercials,[14] most notably as goth daughter Debbie in Pepcid's The Burns Family campaign alongside Richard Riehle[19] and as the bubbly Tide Pods Waitress, which ran in the U.S. and Canada from 2015 to 2019.
[20] Frustrated by the lack of nuance written into female TV and film roles, Neely began creating her own projects, learning how to edit using YouTube tutorials.
[21] A comedy about Sofia, a young actress grappling with her control issues by trying and failing to hook up with a co-star, Neely wrote, directed, edited, produced, and starred.
[21] She then made Wacko Smacko, an eight-episode web series based on The Dresser that follows Sofia as she fumbles through ordeals with dating, friendships, and family while trying to develop an acting career in Los Angeles.
[21] One critic said of Wacko Smacko, “Neely’s storytelling is raw and real, and her character Sofia is, thankfully, imperfect and nuanced, a person with aspirations who also occasionally shoots herself in the foot, and is by no means a one-dimensional female stereotype.”[21] In 2017 Neely was hired to direct and edit Pink Trailer,[23] a short film that follows two young women, Julie and Lucy, as they housesit for Lucy's grandmother [2] but keep getting visited by a foreboding neighbor.
[37] Following two strangers who show up to the same Brooklyn apartment looking to collect cash they are both owed, the dialogue heavy film has been likened to an East Coast version of a Duplass Brothers Mumblecore movie.
[38] During the initial lockdown of the coronavirus pandemic in March 2020, Neely, isolated and living alone, decided to record herself on an iPhone, reenacting love duets from classic musicals like Les Misérables, Phantom of the Opera, Grease, Hamilton, among others.
[14] “All those years of singing every role in every musical alone in my childhood bedroom suddenly felt like training for this moment, because I wasn’t just alone in my bedroom—everyone was.”Her efforts resulted in media attention, performance offers, and widespread praise, including compliments from broadcast TV showrunners Krista Vernoff, Warren Leight and Mike Schur plus Broadway luminaries Lin-Manuel Miranda[14] and Andrew Lloyd Webber.
[40] After wrapping up the initial thread of love song covers in April, Neely came back in May with a full song-by-song reenactment of The Sound of Music to raise money for Broadway Cares/Equity Fights AIDS.