Andy Samberg

Andy Samberg
Samberg in 2016
Born	David A. J. Samberg (1978-08-18) August 18, 1978 (age 46) Berkeley, California, U.S.
Education	University of California, Santa Cruz New York University (BFA)
Occupations	Comedian actor writer producer rapper singer songwriter
Years active	1999–present
Spouse	Joanna Newsom ​ (m. 2013)​
Children	2
Relatives	Alfred J. Marrow (adoptive grandfather) Tammy Baldwin (third cousin)
Comedy career
Medium	Film internet music television
Genres	Anti-humor musical comedy improvisational comedy physical comedy sketch comedy
Musical career
Genres	Comedy hip hop
Discography	The Lonely Island discography
Member of	The Lonely Island
Musical artist
Website	thelonelyisland.com

Andy Samberg (born David A. J. Samberg;^[1] August 18, 1978)^[2] is an American comedian, actor, rapper, singer and songwriter. He is a member of the comedy music group the Lonely Island with Akiva Schaffer and Jorma Taccone. Samberg was also a cast member and writer for the NBC sketch comedy series Saturday Night Live from 2005 to 2012, where he and his fellow group members are credited with popularizing the SNL Digital Shorts.^[3]

Samberg's starring film roles include Hot Rod (2007), the Cloudy with a Chance of Meatballs film series (2009–2013), That's My Boy (2012), Celeste and Jesse Forever (2012), the Hotel Transylvania film series (2012–2022), Popstar: Never Stop Never Stopping (2016), and Palm Springs (2020). From 2013 to 2021, he starred as Jake Peralta in the Fox, and later NBC, police sitcom Brooklyn Nine-Nine which he also produced. For his work on the show, he was awarded a Golden Globe Award for Best Actor – Television Series Musical or Comedy in 2013.^[4]

David A. J. Samberg was born in Berkeley, California on August 18, 1978.^[2] His mother, Marjorie "Margi" (née Marrow), is a retired teacher, who taught at John Muir Elementary School, and his father, Joe Samberg, is a photographer.^[5] He has two sisters, Johanna and Darrow.^[6] His family is Jewish, and Samberg described his upbringing as "I wouldn’t say we’re super-religious, but we’re very much in touch with the cultural aspect of it."^[7] Samberg never had a bar mitzvah.^[8] He attended Chabot Elementary School^[9] with his future Brooklyn Nine-Nine co-star Chelsea Peretti.^[10] At age 5, he told his parents that he wanted to change his name to Andy.^[11][12]

In a 2019 episode of Finding Your Roots, hosted by Henry Louis Gates Jr., Samberg discovered that his mother Marjorie, who was adopted by Jewish parents, is the biological daughter of an Italian Roman Catholic father named Salvatore Maida, who immigrated in 1925,^[13] and a German-Jewish refugee mother named Ellen Philipsborn, who had come to the US in 1938; they met in San Francisco.^[14] Samberg is a third cousin of U.S. Senator Tammy Baldwin (D-WI),^[15] and his adoptive maternal grandfather was industrial psychologist and philanthropist Alfred J. Marrow.^[16]

Samberg graduated from Berkeley High School in 1996, where he became interested in creative writing and has stated that writing classes "were the ones that [he] put all [his] effort into... that's what [he] cared about and that's what [he] ended up doing".^[17] He attended college at University of California, Santa Cruz for two years^[18] before transferring to New York University (NYU)'s Tisch School of the Arts, where he graduated in 2000.^[19] While at NYU, writer Murray Miller was his roommate.^[20]

Samberg majored in experimental film. He became an online star and made his own comedy videos with his friends Akiva Schaffer and Jorma Taccone.^[21] When YouTube was created in 2005, the streaming of their videos became much more widespread. Samberg became a featured player on Saturday Night Live in part because of the work he had done on his sketch comedy website TheLonelyIsland.com, which helped him land an agent and eventually get hired at Saturday Night Live.^[22] Prior to joining its cast, Samberg was (and remains) a member of the comedy troupe the Lonely Island, along with Taccone and Schaffer. The trio began writing for Saturday Night Live in 2005 and released their debut album Incredibad in 2009. Samberg appeared in numerous theatrical films, commercials, music videos, and hosted special events, including the 2009 MTV Movie Awards.

In 2012, Samberg delivered the Class Day speech at Harvard University,^[23] and he starred with Adam Sandler in That's My Boy. The same year, he starred in Hotel Transylvania as the main character, Jonathan, a role he reprised for its sequels Hotel Transylvania 2 and Hotel Transylvania 3: Summer Vacation.^[24] In September 2012, Samberg played Cuckoo in the BAFTA nominated BBC Three series Cuckoo;^[25] and, in 2013, he landed the role of Detective Jake Peralta in Fox's (later NBC's) police sitcom Brooklyn Nine-Nine, which first aired on September 17 of the same year.^[26] Samberg won the Golden Globe Award for Best Actor – Television Series Musical or Comedy in 2014 for his role as Peralta. Samberg hosted the 67th Primetime Emmy Awards on September 20, 2015.^[27][28][29] Years later, he co-hosted the 76th Golden Globe Awards with Sandra Oh on January 6, 2019.

Samberg starred in Sleater-Kinney's "No Cities to Love" video along with other actors such as Fred Armisen, Elliot Page, and Norman Reedus. On May 16, 2016, Samberg and the Lonely Island performed their 2009 hit "I'm on a Boat" with classroom instruments on The Tonight Show Starring Jimmy Fallon, as part of a recurring segment on the show.^[30]

In September 2005, Samberg joined Saturday Night Live as a featured player and writer. Though his live sketch roles were limited in his first year, he appeared in many prerecorded sketches including commercial parodies and various other filmed segments. On December 17, 2005, he co-starred with castmate Chris Parnell in the Digital Short show "Lazy Sunday", a hip hop song about a quest to see the film The Chronicles of Narnia: The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe. The short became an Internet phenomenon and garnered Samberg significant media and public attention. Acclaim continued, especially for "Dick in a Box", a duet with Justin Timberlake that won a Creative Arts Emmy for Outstanding Original Music and Lyrics.^[3] The video for his comedy troupe's collaboration with T-Pain, "I'm on a Boat", had over 56 million views on YouTube, after debuting on February 7, 2009. The song was nominated for a Grammy Award. Another digital short, "Motherlover", also featuring Timberlake, was released on May 10, 2009, to commemorate Mother's Day. Outside of his prerecorded segments, he participated in recurring live segments, such as his Blizzard Man sketch.^[31] On June 1, 2012, Samberg's spokesperson announced that Samberg had left the show.^[32][33] He returned to the show to host the Season 39 finale in 2014^[34] and to host the 40th anniversary special's Digital Short. He later returned in Season 50 to portray Doug Emhoff in the run up to the 2024 election.

In November 2023, the first issue of Holy Roller, a comic written by Samberg, Rick Remender, Joe Trohman and illustrated by Roland Boschi, was released and published by Image Comics. It is about a pro bowler who is forced to quit his dream job and return to his hometown, which he soon discovers has been overrun by Neo-Nazis, leading him to become a trick bowling ball-wielding Jewish superhero.^[35]

Samberg co-hosts The Lonely Island and Seth Meyers Podcast alongside Schaffer, Taccone and Seth Meyers, which discusses the Lonely Island's SNL Digital Shorts.^[36]

Samberg is married to musician Joanna Newsom. He once described himself as a "superfan", and they met at one of her concerts.^[37][38] After five years of dating, Samberg proposed to her in February 2013, and they married on September 21, 2013, in Big Sur, California,^[39][40][41] with Saturday Night Live co-star Seth Meyers serving as Samberg's groomsman.^[42]

In March 2014, Samberg and Newsom purchased the Moorcrest estate in the Beachwood Canyon area of Los Angeles, California,^[43] which was associated with various historical figures: in the 1920s, it was owned by the parents of actress Mary Astor; and, prior to that Charlie Chaplin rented it. The couple also owns a home in Manhattan's West Village.^[44] They announced the birth of their daughter on August 8, 2017.^[45] The birth of their second child was announced by the Lonely Island's Jorma Taccone in February 2023.^[46]

Samberg, who grew up in the East Bay, is a fan of the Oakland Athletics and the Golden State Warriors.^[47]

Samberg was raised in a Jewish family, but considers himself "not particularly religious".^[48]

• Andy Samberg at IMDb
• The Lonely Island
• Andy Samberg profile
• Short Movies with Andy Samberg at Channel 101
• Samberg SNL video archive at Yahoo Screen