Michael Showalter has made a lot of people laugh throughout his career. While there are no doubts that the acclaimed film Wet Hot American Summer has been easily deemed a cult comedy and revered by many, this is only a small sliver of the career that you might even be aware of. To many, the actor seemed to have appeared out of nowhere. To give you a little insight into who Showalter is and what he has done throughout his fairly successful jaunt in show business, here are five things you didn’t know about him:
1. Graduated From Brown University
While he actually began his secondary education at New York University, Showalter would eventually transfer to Brown University to complete his degree. At NYU, he joined up with a small sketch comedy team that he continued to perform with through his time at Brown. This would be his first significant dapple into the arts, allowing him an opportunity to see how he could be instrumental in making people laugh.
2. Has Written Nearly As Much As Performed
One of the interesting facts about Michael Showalter is that he is as avid a writer as he is a performer. There have been numerous productions in which he simply helped to write instead of actually taking up a role for himself. While he is most known for the pieces that he both wrote and starred in, such as Wet Hot American Summer and The Baxter, Showalter will take any opportunity that he can get to get his comedy to a broader audience (even if that means having to spend time away from the camera to achieve it).
3. Got His Start on MTV
With the same comedy group that he initially formed up with (originally called The New Group), Showalter and The State (as they would then be called) began creating comedy shorts that would be picked up and aired by MTV. A show in the early 1990s, “You Wrote It, You Watch It” would be the first introduction that broad audiences would get to the actor. His writing style and humor would actually help the show to stay on the air for 2 full seasons before it was bumped out of the lineup.
4. Still Does Sketch Comedy
Here is an interesting fact: Showalter still performs in a small comedy team on a regular basis. He and close friends Michael Ian Black and David Wain have a small comedy troupe called Stella that have been doing small performances together since 1997. This might explain how each of these other actors have such favored roles or production slots in many of the films and shows that Showalter has written and starred in himself.
5. Stand Up Professor
There are few people that know that Michael Showalter had his own comedy standup album put out by a non-profit record label. The album was called Sandwiches and Cats and features a lot about how the actor grew up and his takes on some basic things in life. As he approaches 50, Showalter has taken an educator role along with his writing and acting, teaching students at NYU Graduate School the art of screenwriting.
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