Andy Samberg
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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. Andy Samberg attended New York University (NYU) film school and UC Santa Cruz. He is a current cast member on SNL, and has appeared on Premium Blend as well as a cameo on Arrested Development. Samberg has also made guest appearances on Late Night with Conan O'Brien and The Late Show with David Letterman since joining SNL.
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[edit] 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.
[edit] 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 "The Blizzard Man", an underground rap legend brought in by Ludacris, in a later episode, The Blizzard Man is featured when he is brought to the studio to record with Common. Samberg was upgraded to repertory status at the beginning of SNL's 32nd season (September 30, 2006).
[edit] Recurring Characters
- The Out-Of-Breath Jogger, a marathon runner who spouts historic events while exhausted.
- T Shane - new co-host of Deep House Dish.
- Blizzard Man - a supposed hardcore white rapper who instead 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 naive and matter-of-fact fashion.
[edit] 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, Aaron Carter, and Sanjaya Malakar.
[edit] Trivia
- Samberg was awarded a High Times Stony award in October 2006 for his song "Lazy Sunday".
- 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.
- 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]
[edit] External links
- Andy Samberg at the Internet Movie Database
- 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
