Conner O'Malley

{{Short description|American comedy writer and actor (born 1986)}}

{{Infobox writer

| name = Conner O'Malley

| image =

| image_size =

| caption =

| birth_date = {{Birth date and age|1986|12|20|mf=y}}

| birth_place = Chicago, Illinois, U.S.

| occupation = {{flatlist|

Comedian
screenwriter
actor
filmmaker
social media personality

}}

| nationality = {{flatlist|

American
Irish{{cite podcast |url=https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cyEkJvG1NBw&ab_channel=Stavvy%27sWorldClips |title=Conner O'Malley recalls his Irish upbringing |work=Stavy's World |host=Stavros Halkias |date= |time= |access-date=7 September 2024 |quote=I have [Irish] citizenship...My grandparents were from [Ireland]}}

}}

| notableworks = {{ubl|Late Night with Seth Meyers (2014–2017)|Joe Pera Talks with You (2018–2021)}}

| years_active = 2013–present

| spouse = {{marriage|Aidy Bryant|April 30, 2018}}

| module = {{Infobox YouTube personality

| embed = yes

| channel_id = UCDIJ45Bba6nzrGL5v8b7fMw

| channel_display_name = Conner O'Malley

| years_active = 2006–present

| genre =

| subscribers = 261 thousand

| views = 20.9 million

| associated_acts =

| stats_update = January 28, 2025

| network =

| silver_button = yes

| silver_year =

| gold_button =

| gold_year =

| diamond_button =

| diamond_year =

| ruby_button =

| ruby_year =

}}

| website = {{url|endorphinport.com}}

}}

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.{{cite web |last=Goldstein |first=Pablo |title=A Beginner's Guide to Conner O'Malley |url=https://www.vulture.com/2018/06/a-beginners-guide-to-conner-omalley.html |website=Vulture|date=June 21, 2018}} 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.{{cite web |title=SNL's Aidy Bryant Marries Conner O'Malley |url=https://www.eonline.com/news/930845/snl-s-aidy-bryant-marries-conner-o-malley |website=eonline.com |date=April 30, 2018 |publisher=E! News}}

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.{{Cite magazine |last=Fry |first=Naomi |date=2024-11-23 |title=Conner O'Malley Is the Bard of the Manosphere |url=https://www.newyorker.com/culture/critics-notebook/conner-omalley-is-the-bard-of-the-manosphere |access-date=2025-02-20 |magazine=The New Yorker |language=en-US |issn=0028-792X}}

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.{{cite news |title=Aidy Bryant, SNL's Next Big Thing |url=https://www.thedailybeast.com/the-adorable-rise-of-aidy-bryant-snls-next-big-thing |newspaper=The Daily Beast |date=February 24, 2016 |last=Fallon |first=Kevin}} 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.{{cite web |title=Aidy Bryant's Husband, Conner O'Malley, Went From A "Literal Garbage Man" To A Success In The Comedy World |url=https://www.bustle.com/p/aidy-bryants-husband-conner-omalley-went-from-a-literal-garbage-man-to-a-success-in-the-comedy-world-8940489 |date=April 30, 2018 |work=Bustle}} 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.{{cite web |date=September 20, 2013 |title=Someone On Vine Is Accosting People In Fancy Cars And It's Hilarious |url=https://www.buzzfeed.com/alexnaidus/someone-on-vine-is-accosting-people-in-fancy-cars-and-it-is |website=Buzzfeed}}

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.{{cite web |title=An Interview With Vine Legend Connor O'Malley |url=https://www.pastemagazine.com/articles/2016/03/behind-the-trump-rally-video-an-interview-with-lat.html |date=March 13, 2016 |work=Paste Magazine}}{{cite web |title=conner o'malley 5 things to know |url=https://www.usmagazine.com/celebrity-news/news/aidy-bryants-fiance-conner-omalley-5-things-to-know-w479358/ |date=April 28, 2017 |work=Us Magazine}} 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".{{cite web |title=Anniversary Guy |url=https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oXI3xgBIz5o |website=Seth Myers| date=February 24, 2017 |via=YouTube}}{{cite web |title=Connor O'Malley's Interpretive Dance To The Charlie Rose Theme Song |url=https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9oiGDN_CyxM |website=Seth Meyers| date=June 2017 |via=YouTube}}

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.{{cite web |title=Connor O'Malley Acting Credits |url=https://www.imdb.com/name/nm5423804/ |website=IMDB}} 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.{{cite web |title=Conner O'Malley tries his hand at Leno's "Jay Walking" and ends up in hell |url=https://www.avclub.com/conner-o-malley-tries-his-hand-at-lenos-jay-walking-a-1832790434 |website=The A.V. Club |date=February 21, 2019 |publisher=The Onion}}{{cite web |title=This Mockumentary About Young Trump Superfans Is Great (Again) |url=https://www.fastcompany.com/40431913/this-mockumentary-about-young-trump-superfans-is-great-again |date=June 15, 2017 |work=Fast Company}}{{cite web |title=TruthHunters |url=https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CKSc8JC0Q6c |via=YouTube}} In 2023, he began pay-per-view selling his videos on his own website Endorphin Port.{{Cite web |last=Goldstein |first=Pablo |date=2023-09-18 |title=Conner O'Malley Opens His Digital Womb |url=https://www.vulture.com/article/conner-omalley-endorphin-port-interview.html |access-date=2023-10-24 |website=Vulture |language=en}}

In 2024, O'Malley released the stand-up comedy special Stand Up Solutions, which satirizes late capitalism and artificial intelligence.{{cite web |last1=Martin |first1=Clare |title=Conner O'Malley's Stand Up Solutions Is a Feverish Masterpiece |url=https://www.pastemagazine.com/comedy/conner-omalley/conner-omalleys-stand-up-solutions-is-a-feverish-masterpiece |website=Paste |access-date=3 February 2025 |date=6 May 2024}} 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".{{cite magazine |last1=Blistein |first1=Jon |title=Conner O'Malley's 'Stand Up Solutions' Is Brilliant. But He's Just 'Trying To Be Stupid on the Computer' |url=https://www.rollingstone.com/culture/culture-features/conner-omalley-comedy-special-stand-up-solutions-1235043086/ |magazine=Rolling Stone |access-date=3 February 2025 |date=23 June 2024}}{{cite web |last1=Marcin |first1=Tim |title=Conner O'Malley's new standup special is a scathing critique of our AI reality |url=https://mashable.com/article/conner-omalley-ai-stand-up |website=Mashable |access-date=3 February 2025 |language=en |date=15 May 2024}}

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.{{Cite web |title=Rap World is this year's funniest music movie |url=https://www.thefader.com/2024/11/05/rap-world-conner-omalley-interview |access-date=2025-02-20 |website=The FADER |language=en}}{{Cite web |last=Stanton |first=Chris |date=2024-10-25 |title=Conner O'Malley on Going Full Dumbo for Rap World |url=https://www.vulture.com/article/conner-omalley-rap-world-interview.html |access-date=2025-02-20 |website=Vulture |language=en}}{{Cite web |title=Conner O'Malley's Rap World Is the Manic Movie of the Summer |url=https://www.pastemagazine.com/comedy/conner-omalley/conner-omalleys-rap-world-is-the-manic-movie-of-the-summer |access-date=2025-02-20 |website=Paste Magazine |language=en-US}}

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".{{cite web |title=Stop What You're Doing and Watch Conner O'Malley and Joe Pera's 'TruthHunters.com' Pilot|url=https://www.vulture.com/2017/06/stop-what-youre-doing-and-watch-conner-omalley-and-joe-peras-truthhunters-com-pilot.html|website=Vulture}}{{cite web |title=Inside the deranged mind of a Howard Schultz superfan {{!}} The Outline |url=https://theoutline.com/post/7269/conner-omalley-howard-schultz-president-videos |website=The Outline}} 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".{{cite web |date=March 13, 2016 |title=An Interview with Late Night Writer and Vine Legend Conner O'Malley, On His Trump Rally Video |url=https://www.pastemagazine.com/articles/2016/03/behind-the-trump-rally-video-an-interview-with-lat.html |website=Paste}} Chloe Lizotte wrote for Reverse Shot (the publication of the Museum of the Moving Image) that his work "mock[s] 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.{{cite web |title=Lambs to the Slaughter: The Weird and the Normal of Conner O'Malley |url=http://www.reverseshot.org/features/2695/weird_normal_conner_omalley |website=Reverse Shot}}

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".{{Cite web |last=Gordon |first=Jeremy |title=Inside the deranged mind of a Howard Schultz superfan |url=https://theoutline.com/post/7269/conner-omalley-howard-schultz-president-videos |access-date=2025-02-20 |website=The Outline |language=en}}{{Cite web |title=Conner O'Malley: The Weird and the Normal |url=https://www.reverseshot.org/archive/entry/2695/weird_normal_conner_omalley |access-date=2025-02-20 |website=Reverse Shot |language=en}}

Filmography

=Film=

Year ! Title ! Role ! Notes
class="wikitable"
2020	Palm Springs	Randy
2022	Bodies, Bodies, Bodies	Max
rowspan="3" \|2024	I Saw the TV Glow	Dave
Rap World	Matt	Also director and writer
Friendship	Patton

=Television=

Year ! Title ! Role ! class="unsortable"\|Notes
class="wikitable sortable"
2013–2014	The Chris Gethard Show	Various	Recurring, 9 episodes
2014	Louie	Young Louie	Episode: "Elevator: Part 4"
2014–2016	Late Night with Seth Meyers	Various	Recurring, Also writer
rowspan="2"\|2015	The Awesomes	(Voice)	Recurring, 2 episodes
Broad City	Chris	Episode: "St. Mark's"
2015–2016	The Special Without Brett Davis	Various	Recurring, 3 episodes
rowspan="2"\|2016	Horace and Pete	Eric	Episode #1.7
Netflix Presents: The Characters	Pointer Brother	Episode: "Tim Robinson"
2017	At Home with Amy Sedaris	Guanog	Episode: "Out of This World"
rowspan="2"\|2018	Detroiters	Trevor	Episode: "Trevor"
The Shivering Truth	(Voice)	Episode: "The Magmafying Past"
2018–2021	Joe Pera Talks with You	Mike Melsky	Co-star, also writer, executive producer
2019–2023	I Think You Should Leave with Tim Robinson	Various	Recurring, 4 episodes
2020	Search Party	Chris	Episode: "A National Affair"
2020–2021	Shrill	Reggie	Recurring, 4 episodes
2021	How To with John Wilson	{{n/a}}	Writer for second season
2021–2023	Teenage Euthanasia	Various	3 episodes