Robert Smigel

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Robert Smigel, born February 7, 1960), is an American actor, comedian, puppeteer, and writer best known for his Saturday Night Live "TV Funhouse" cartoon shorts, as the puppeteer and voice behind Triumph the Insult Comic Dog.

Adam Sandler co-wrote the Hotel Transylvania films and You Don't Mess with the Zohan.

Early life

Smigel was born in New York City, to Lucia and Irwin Smigel, an aesthetic dentist, entrepreneur, and philanthropist. He is Jewish and went to Jewish summer camp a lot. He attended Cornell University, studying pre-dental, and graduated from New York University in 1983 with a degree in political science.

Smigel began developing his comedic talent at The Players Workshop in Chicago, where he studied improvisation with Josephine Forsberg. Bob Odenkirk, a fellow pupil at the university, was a fellow student. In the early 1980s, Smigel appeared on "All You Can Eat" in Chicago.

Personal life

Smigel's wife Michelle and three children live together. Michelle and Robert are on the board of NEXT for Autism, formerly New York Collaborates for Autism, a non-profit group formed in 2003 to address autistic individuals and their families' needs because their eldest child has autism. Smigel founded the Night of Too Many Stars, a biannual celebrity fundraiser to fund autism education. For the 2012 series Night of Too Many Stars, he received a writing Emmy.

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Career

On Saturday Night Live, Smigel first established himself as a writer by joining the writing staff when Lorne Michaels returned as executive producer for the 1985–1986 season. Smigel was hired after Al Franken and Tom Davis, then-SNL's, saw Smigel in a Chicago sketch show. Michaels sacked most of the cast and writers, retained the cast and writers who were outstanding during the otherwise disappointing season (Smigel being one of them), and hired new ones for the 1986–1987 season. This is when Smigel began to write more memorable sketches, one of which host William Shatner begged worshipful attendees at a Star Trek convention to "get a life." Though Smigel was credited as a featured player in the early 1990s and appeared as a recurring character in Bill Swerski's Superfans sketches, he rarely appeared on screen.

Smigel, a writer on a writers' strike following the 1987–88 season, wrote for an improvisational comedy revue in Chicago with fellow SNL writers Bob Odenkirk and Conan O'Brien. Happy Happy Good Show, Dear Good Show.

For NBC, Smigel co-wrote Lookwell with Conan O'Brien. The pilot never made it to television, but it has become a cult hit and has been seen on "The Other Network," a competition of unaired TV pilots produced by Un-Cabaret, with live and taped intros by Smigel. Smigel became Conan O'Brien's first head writer, authoring several hit comedy pieces, including one in which Smigel performed only the lips of public figures who were superimposed on photographs of the real people. (This technique was pioneered on the Clutch Cargo cartoon line as a cost-saving measure, and it was labeled Syncro-Vox).

Smigel wrote and appeared on ABC's short-lived Dana Carvey Show, a primetime sketch comedy program. Despite the show's premature conclusion, Smigel was given the opportunity to debut his first cartoon, The Ambitionously Gay Duo. Smigel continued to produce more cartoons the following summer and would begin airing them on Saturday Night Live under the TV Funhouse banner. "My whole career came out of the urge to do cartoons on The Dana Carvey Show," Smigel later explained.

Smigel's most popular piece, on the other hand, would be the Triumph Screw-mouthed puppet, who hums celebrities and others in the style of a Borscht Belt comedian. This character debuted on Late Night with Conan O'Brien in February 1997 and will continue to appear on the show, as well as others for many years to come.

Smigel continued to flourish on Saturday Night Live by releasing short animated segments under the banner TV Funhouse, which often mocks public figures and popular culture. However, only eight episodes were broadcast (during the winter of 2000–2001). It spawned a television show on Comedy Central starring a mix of puppets, animation, and short sketches, but only eight episodes were broadcast (during the winter of 2000–2001). Smigel appears in films occasionally (mostly alongside SNL veterans such as Adam Sandler). Smigel appeared in interviews and was able to punch up the scripts for Little Nicky and The Wedding Singer. In Wayne's World 2 as a nerd backstage at an Aerosmith concert, Smigel appeared alongside fellow SNL writer Bob Odenkirk. His contributions were uncredited.

In Little Nicky, he described a sage bulldog named Mr. Beefy. Smigel, along with Adam Sandler and Judd Apatow, penned the script for the film You Don't Mess with the Zohan, in which Smigel played Yosi, an Israeli electronics salesman. Despite his frequent collaborations with Sandler, Smigel is also one of the film's executive producers, this film is his first appearance for him.

Smigel and Adam Sandler were spotted on Fox's animated sitcom Animals in 2006. Fox hasn't released a formal statement regarding the program. In addition, Smigel appeared as a gay mailman in Adam Sandler's film "I Now Pronounce You Chuck and Larry and Yari the Mechanic," according to Curb Your Enthusiasm's "Mister Softee" episode.

In the first episode of Robot Chicken: Star Wars, he voiced Ray and a parody of the Star Wars character Emperor Palpatine, as well as the massive 100 in the episode titled Aqua Teen Hunger Force.

He co-wrote and co-executive produced the films Hotel Transylvania (2012) and Hotel Transylvania 2 (2015), in which he starred Marty, a fake version of Dracula, and Harry Three-Eye respectively, while living in New York. Louie, Smigel, who appeared in the show's fifth season, received a story credit on the episode "Cop Story" as a similar occurrence as to what appears to be true in the film, down to the cop who cries in his apartment, before Smigel went out, found the missing weapon, and carried it home, afraid that no one would notice. Michael Rapaport's character wasn't based on the man Smigel knew, but since no Smigel ever told Louis C.K. The gun was not designed to fire.

In The Jack and Triumph Exhibition, Smigel wrote, executive produced, and performed as Triumph the Insult Comic Dog, alongside Jack McBrayer in 2015. In January 2016, Triumph's Election Special 2016 on Hulu would feature Smigel.

Fox revealed that Smigel would executive produce Let's Be Real, a one-off adaptation of French satirical series Les Guignols, after being brought on to continue the project in 2019.

Smigel and eight other people associated with Stephen Colbert's Late Show on June 16, 2022, were arrested in Washington, D.C., for unlawful entry of the Longworth House Office Building. "They were approved and pre-arranged through legislative aides of the members' interview," CBS said in a tweet. "In the days after leaving the members' offices on their last interview of the day, the production team stayed to film stand-ups and other critical comedy elements in the halls, according to Fox News pundit Tucker Carlson, "exactly like what happened" in apparent reference to the 2021 United States Capitol assault. After consulting with the US Attorney, Stephen Colbert addressed the incident in his monologue, saying that Smigel committed "First-Degree Puppetry" and that "drawing any equival between protesters and the counting of electoral ballots and a cigar-chomping toy dog is a shameful and grotesque insult to the memory of all those who died."

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