Andy Samberg

Samberg majored in experimental film. He became an online star and made his own comedy videos with his two friends Akiva Schaffer and Jorma Taccone.[23] 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 them land an agent and eventually get hired at Saturday Night Live.[24] 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,[25] and starred with Adam Sandler in That's My Boy and Hotel Transylvania as the main character, Jonathan, a role he reprised for its sequels Hotel Transylvania 2 and Hotel Transylvania 3: Summer Vacation.[26] In September 2012, Samberg played Cuckoo in the BAFTA nominated BBC Three series Cuckoo,[27] and in 2013 landed the role of Detective Jake Peralta in Fox's (now NBC's) police sitcom Brooklyn Nine-Nine which first aired on September 17 of the same year[28] and led to Samberg winning 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.[29][30][31] Recently, 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.[32]

In September 2005, Samberg joined Saturday Night Live as a featured player along with Schaffer and Taccone as the show's writing staff. 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, Chris Parnell and he starred 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, as did "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, and is a sequel of "Dick in a Box".[33] Outside of his prerecorded segments, he also participated in recurring live segments, such as his Blizzard Man sketch.[34] On June 1, 2012, Samberg's spokesperson announced that he had left the show.[35][36] He returned to the show as the host of the Season 39 finale in 2014[37] and in the 40th anniversary special's Digital Short.