Andy Samberg (born August 18, 1978) is an American
stand-up comic, Emmy-winning songwriter, and member
of comedy group The Lonely Island. He is a cast member on Saturday Night Live and has appeared on Premium Blend and
Arrested Development, as well as Late Night with Conan O'Brien, The Daily Show With Jon
Stewart, and The Late Show with David Letterman. In 2007, Samberg
played the lead role in the film Hot Rod.
Biography
Personal life
Samberg was born David Andrew J. Samberg in Berkeley, California to a
photographer father and an elementary school teacher mother.[1] He is Jewish, and his maternal
grandfather, Alfred J. Marrow, served as the executive chair of the American Jewish
Congress.[2] Samberg attended
Berkeley High School, New York University (NYU) film school, and the University of California, Santa Cruz.
The Lonely Island
-
The Lonely Island (which also includes Akiva Schaffer and Jorma Taccone) has a popular website where sketches and music are available for download. Samberg played
the role of Jesse Miller in The OC parody The
'Bu, the group's popular contribution to Channel 101. They also made a pilot for
Fox called Awesometown and have written for various award shows, most
notably the 2004 and 2005 MTV Movie
Awards.
Saturday Night Live
On September 13 2005, the Lonely Island website confirmed
that Samberg would be joining Saturday Night Live as a featured player, while
Schaffer and Taccone would join the show's writing staff. While his live sketch roles were limited in his first year, he has
appeared in many non-live sketches, including commercial parodies and various other filmed segments. For the December 17, 2005 show, he and Chris
Parnell starred in a Digital Short called Lazy Sunday, a rap song sung by two white Manhattanites on a quest to see "The Chronicles of Narnia." The short quickly became an Internet sensation and garnered Samberg
significant media and public attention.
Samberg produced many more Digital Shorts in the following months. Their subject matter varied from a young Chuck Norris; a hardcore gangster rapping and self-parodying Natalie
Portman; a parody commercial for lettuce in which he and Will Forte took large bites out of heads of lettuce during lulls while discussing a friend's death; a game of
spotting doppelgängers that results in Samberg being suddenly and
illogically shot by friends when he cannot be told apart from a large homeless man (portrayed by Horatio Sanz); a shooting spree among friends (a spoof of a season finale of The O.C.), featuring Shia LaBeouf; and a tribute song to his
brother-in-law, Roy (played by SNL writer Bryan Tucker).
In December 2006, Samberg followed up this music video with a spoof on early 1990s R&B/new jack swing fare with "Dick in a Box", a duet with Justin Timberlake. It is a
Christmas song about two men (Timberlake and Samberg) giving their lovers a box with their genitalia inside as presents, going so
far as to explain how to create the gift. The style of the video and the musical performance is reminiscent of early 1990s
R&B sex ballads made popular by acts like Jodeci,
Jon B., Bel Biv Devoe, Color Me Badd, and R. Kelly. Dick in a Box won Samberg a
Primetime Emmy for Outstanding Original Music And Lyrics, shared with Timberlake,
Taccone, Shaffer and Katreese Barnes.[3] In the premiere of
SNL's 33rd season, he made a digital short about falling in love with Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, with cameos from Jake Gyllenhaal and
Adam Levine which also became popular overnight. A new Digital Short was shown on the
October 13th, 2007 episode of SNL titled "People Getting
Punched Just Before Eating".
Samberg was promoted to repertory status at the beginning of SNL's 32nd season (September 30, 2006).
Recurring characters on SNL
- The Out-Of-Breath Jogger, a marathon runner who spouts historic events while exhausted.
- Kuato, the mutant from Total Recall who lives in Danny's (Bill Hader) stomach.
- T Shane, new co-host of Deep House Dish (replacing
Rachel Dratch's character Tiara).
- Blizzard Man, a supposed hardcore white rapper who dresses in clothing styles from the early 1990s. He delivers his lines in
an over-the-top, upbeat, crooner-based style, rapping about hardcore things in a naïve and
matter-of-fact fashion.
Celebrity impersonations
Samberg's impressions include Jack Johnson, Prince Harry, Conor Oberst (from the band Bright Eyes), David Blaine, James
Blunt, Michael Sessions, Chuck Norris,
Ken Mehlman, Kevin Federline, Dustin Diamond, Howard K. Stern, Aaron Carter, Muppets' Swedish
Chef, Dylan Sprouse from the Disney sitcom The Suite Life of Zack and Cody (Dylan's brother, Cole, was played by host
Shia LaBeouf), Sanjaya Malakar, and
Zac Efron.
References
External links
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