Conner O'Malley

Conner O'Malley (born December 20, 1986) is an American comedian, writer, actor, filmmaker, and social media personality. For his work on ''Late Night with Seth Meyers'', he received three Writers Guild of America Awards nominations. He produces videos on YouTube, and was active on the now defunct social media platform Vine. O'Malley has also appeared on ''Broad City'', '' Joe Pera Talks with You'', and '' I Think You Should Leave with Tim Robinson''. He is married to actor and fellow comedian Aidy Bryant.

Early life

O'Malley grew up living on the North Side of Chicago. He was the youngest of three brothers. His father, brothers, and several uncles were all elevator mechanics. His father wanted him to be a mechanic as well, and when O'Malley took a test to become one at age 18, he failed it "kind of on purpose". He then wanted to be a comedian, and was inspired by Conan O'Brien and Norm MacDonald.

Career

O'Malley started frequently performing in the standup and improv comedy scene at Second City theaters in Chicago. Performing at the Annoyance Theatre, he met his future wife, Aidy Bryant. When Bryant was cast on ''Saturday Night Live'' in 2012, the two moved to New York City, where O'Malley began uploading short comedy videos to the social media platform Vine while working as a dog walker. His Vines, uploaded until the site shut down defunct in 2017, mostly showed him confronting drivers on New York City streets and talking to them in non-sequiturs. The videos were profiled by Alex Naidus in BuzzFeed in 2013.

O'Malley's videos quickly began to gain attention and acclaim, and in 2014, he was hired as a writer for ''Late Night with Seth Meyers''. While writing for ''Late Night'', he occasionally performed on the show and created several re-occurring characters including "Anniversary Guy", "Stink Mouth PigMan", and "Gørbøn Hausinfrud".

In addition to ''Late Night'', O'Malley has written for '' Joe Pera Talks with You'', which he also co-starred in as Joe's neighbor Mike Melsky; and the 66th Primetime Emmy Awards. As an actor, he has been featured in several television shows, most notably '' Detroiters'', on Comedy Central playing Trevor, Tim's free-wheeling brother; and the web series '' Horace and Pete'', in the role of Eric, the boyfriend of Horace's daughter, played by Bryant. O'Malley has also appeared on Comedy Central's ''Broad City'', on Netflix's '' The Characters'', and has been a recurring guest on '' The Chris Gethard Show''. In 2019, he appeared on '' I Think You Should Leave with Tim Robinson'' on Netflix. In 2021, he appeared on HBO's '' That Damn Michael Che''. Since 2016, O'Malley has also frequently posted videos on his YouTube channel, similar to his Vine work. In 2023, he began pay-per-view selling his videos on his own website Endorphin Port.

In 2024, O'Malley released the stand-up comedy special Stand Up Solutions, which satirizes late capitalism and artificial intelligence. Filmed in Brooklyn, the special received critical acclaim upon its release, with Tim Marcin of ''Mashable'' describing it as "a scathing critique of our AI reality" and Clare Martin of '' Paste'' calling it a "fever dream, frantically reflecting our own overwhelming, tumultuous present while still keeping us in stitches".

O'Malley co-directed (with Danny Scharar), wrote, and starred in '' Rap World'', a 2024 mockumentary about three men in Tobyhanna, Pennsylvania, in 2009, who try to record a hip-hop album over the course of a night, despite "having no songs or real focus to speak of", as David Renshaw writes for ''The Fader''. The film is shot with a period-accurate video camera and is edited like a YouTube vlog from that time. Renshaw referred to ''Rap World'' as being the funniest film of 2024.

Style of comedy and filmmaking

O'Malley publishes comedy videos on YouTube and X. These include vlogs from various characters of his, such as a right-wing news show which satirizes '' InfoWars'' and its host, Alex Jones. Jeremy Gordon, writing for ''The Outline'', said that "O’Malley contorts himself into the persona of a deeply unpleasant person like few other comedians". His characters often have a manic and aggressive persona, speak with loose thoughts, and have a comically overzealous interest in politics and popular culture. Shane Ryan, writing for '' Paste'', said his comedy expresses "anger and envy and a sort of perverted worship of wealth and the American dream". Chloe Lizotte wrote for ''Reverse Shot'' (the publication of the Museum of the Moving Image) that his work "mock the idea that commercial entertainment could stand in for political action or fill a spiritual void", and compared his videos to the documentary films of Adam Curtis.

Over two months in 2019, O'Malley uploaded a series of videos jokingly directed toward 2020 U.S. presidential election candidates, Howard Schultz (the CEO of Starbucks) and then-U.S. representative Beto O'Rourke. Jeremy Gordon described the series as "performance art", and Chloe Lizotte used it to show how O'Malley's work frequently switches between different styles of filmic storytelling. In these videos, O'Malley plays a "deranged, diehard" fan of Schultz and O'Rourke's campaigns, who has an unusual outfit, many unexplained bodily injuries, and an addiction to nondescript pills. At the start of the series, the character stands at a construction site and yells compliments at the two candidates in personal messages to them recorded with his phone. He then gets kidnapped and tortured in a van by representatives of Starbucks—the camera switching to the kidnapper's perspective, shot like a snuff film—until he is released into the public. At a shopping mall, filmed like a normal narrative film, O'Malley's character tells strangers that Howard Schultz "made me normal". Lizotte wrote that this character, like many others of O'Malley's, are "socially aloof" people who "navigate a world corroded by mediation", similar to Charlie Chaplin or Jacques Tati's characters but within the "contemporary American hellscape".

Filmography

Film

Television

Award shows

References

External links

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{{DEFAULTSORT:OMalley, Conner
1986 births
21st-century American comedians
21st-century American male actors
21st-century American male writers
American Vine (service) celebrities
American comedy writers
American male comedians
American male film actors
American male television actors
American male television writers
American people of Irish descent
American sketch comedians
American stand-up comedians
American television writers
Comedians from Chicago
Late Night with Seth Meyers
Living people
Writers from Chicago
YouTubers from Chicago