Andy Samberg
Andy Samberg (born August 18,1978 in Berkeley, California), also known as Ardy, is a stand-up comic and member of comedy group The Lonely Island. With Nick Wold, he is also a repertory player on Saturday Night Live. Samberg has also gained exposure on the Comedy Central series Premium Blend, performing a brief stand-up routine. Rumored to be dating Kelly Severyns and Jordyn Wollam.
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 Aaron 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, labelled as Digital Shorts. Samberg's first appearance was a minor role in a fake commercial parodying Morgan Stanley. 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 became an Internet sensation and garnered Samberg significant media and public attention. In December 2006, Samberg followed up this music video with a spoof on early 1990s boy band fare with "Dick in a Box", a duet with Justin Timberlake. 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.
Samberg has had more prominence in non-live segments over live segments overall, including appearing as a taco restaurant patron along with Bill Hader and Jason Sudeikis in the commercial parody Taco Town; Jack Johnson in a fake commercial for casual shoes shaped like feet; a young Chuck Norris; a hardcore gangster rapper in Viking apparel alongside a 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; and in a game of spotting doppelgängers which 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).
Other prominent digital shorts featuring Samberg include the Tom Hanks/Red Hot Chili Peppers episode where he and Hanks play lead singers to a fictional 1990's techno band called Ariel and Efrim. Samberg gained some fame on the Julia Louis-Dreyfus/Paul Simon episode when he played a Learning Annex teacher who heads a class on how to use MySpace where the students are male sexual predators (played by Bill Hader, Jason Sudeikis, Horatio Sanz, Chris Parnell, Seth Meyers, and Will Forte) and a clueless soccer mom (played by Julia Louis-Dreyfus). Samberg's appearance as "Blizzard Man", an underground rap legend brought in by Ludacris, is reportedly scheduled to have appearances with future musical guests.[citation needed]
Samberg was upgraded to repertory status at the beginning of SNL's 32nd season (September 30, 2006).
Recurring Characters
- The Out-Of-Breath Jogger, a marathon runner who spouts historic events while exhausted.
- T Shane - co-host of Deep House Dish.
- Blizzard Man - supposedly hardcore white rapper who instead dresses in clothing styles from the early '90s, sounds very "nerdy" while rapping, and raps about hardcore things but from a naive perspective in a very matter-of-fact manner.
Celebrity Impersonations
- Jack Johnson
- Bright Eyes
- David Blaine
- James Blunt
- Michael Sessions
- Chuck Norris
- Ken Mehlman
- Kevin Federline
- Dustin Diamond
- Aaron Carter
Trivia
- Samberg is a Berkeley High School graduate, class of 1996.
- Had a cameo in the second season finale episode "Righteous Brothers" of Arrested Development as the stage manager for the Blue Man Group. Will Arnett, a cast member of Arrested Development, noted him especially on the DVD audio commentary of the episode. Months later, Samberg was hired to work for SNL with Arnett's wife, Amy Poehler, and would later co-star with Arnett in Hot Rod.
- After writing for the 2004 and 2005 MTV Movie Awards, Samberg had a cameo in a sketch during the 2006 broadcast, where he played Ron Google, the fictitious founder of the popular search engine.
- Samberg attended both University of California, Santa Cruz, and New York University as a film student.
- Has wrapped filming on his first feature film "Hot Rod" for Paramount in Vancouver, British Columbia.
- In a Lonely Island pilot entitled "White Power", there is a scene where the 3 characters mug an old lady. During filming of the scene, actor Kiefer Sutherland was driving by. Thinking the mugging was real he pulled over in an attempt to help only to later realize he had interrupted the filming.[1]
- The "Digital Shorts" featured on Saturday Night Live that feature Samberg are usually written and directed by Samberg and his The Lonely Island friends, Akiva Schaffer and Jorma Taccone.
External links
- Andy Samberg at IMDb
- The Lonely Island
- Andy-Samberg.com The Official Unofficial Fansite for Andy Samberg
- Short Movies with Andy Samberg at Channel 101, including The 'Bu
- Andy Samberg Blog The Unofficial journalistic blog for Andy Samberg
- Andy's father's website Joe Samberg Photography
- Andy Samberg and Justin Timberlake"Dick in a Box" video on SNL