Anthony Jeselnik Biography | Anthony Jeselnik
Anthony Jeselnik is an American comedian, writer, actor, and producer. He is known for his dark comedy style, which emphasizes ironic misdirection, nonsequiturs, biting insults, an arrogant demeanor, and a stage persona that frequently takes amoral stances.
Jeselnik was a writer for Late Night with Jimmy Fallon in its first season and hosted a Comedy Central Presents in 2009. After releasing his critically acclaimed debut album Shakespeare in 2010, he began writing for the Comedy Central Roasts and moved up to performer in the 2011 roast of Donald Trump.
He continued to perform on the roasts of Charlie Sheen and Roseanne Barr in 2012. In 2013, he hosted his own Comedy Central series, The Jeselnik Offensive, for two seasons and released his second album, Caligula, which doubles as an hour-long standup special.
On July 22, 2015, Jeselnik replaced JB Smoove as the new host of NBC’s Emmy Award-nominated series Last Comic Standing. His second stand-up special, Thoughts, and Prayers premiered in October 2015 on Netflix. Jeselnik starred in the first season of the NFL Media podcast “RJVP” along with friend Gregg Rosenthal. The second season debuted in 2018 on the Comedy Central Podcast Network under the slightly different name “JRVP”.
Anthony Jeselnik Age
Anthony Jeselnik an American comedian, writer, actor, and producer who is 40 years old as of 2018. He was born on December 22, 1978, in Pittsburgh, PA
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Anthony Jeselnik Early life
Anthony Jeselnik was born in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, on December 22, 1978, the son of Stephanie and Anthony F. Jeselnik, whose surname and ancestry originates from Slovenia. He was raised in Upper St. Clair. Jeselnik was interested in making others laugh from an early age.
In elementary school, he would often interrupt the class to tell a joke. On one occasion, a classmate was moving to a different town that was not generally regarded well, and Jeselnik cracked a sarcastic comment: “Oh, well, send us a postcard.” When the teacher laughed at his joke, he realized that “if you’re smart enough that adults get it, you can get away with anything.” He would often stay up attempting to watch Saturday Night Live and, as he grew older, The Ben Stiller Show and Mr. Show.
He graduated from Upper St. Clair High School in 1997. Jeselnik earned a bachelor’s degree in English literature with a business minor from Tulane University in 2001. During his senior year at Tulane, his girlfriend accidentally burned down his apartment, which he would later use as early standup material.
He was a member of Alpha Tau Omega fraternity while at Tulane University. His original dream was to write the great American novel, but an internship in Los Angeles between his junior and senior years of college convinced him there were other avenues for a writer.
In his early twenties, Jeselnik moved to Los Angeles and was working at a Borders when he first tried standup. He found a book by writer and comedian Greg Dean that promoted Dean’s Santa Monica comedy workshops. In his first attempt at a joke, Jeselnik did an impression of his father being stung by wasps.
By the end of the skit—which lasted only one minute, but Jeselnik claimed “felt like 10″—no one had laughed, leading Jeselnik to swear off physical comedy forever. After being fired by Borders, he worked as an accounting clerk for Deadwood, during which time he would perform at open-mic nights. Inspired in part by Mitch Hedberg, Dennis Miller, Sarah Silverman, and Steven Wright, it was two years into his standup comedy career when Jeselnik had a “lightbulb moment.”
After writing a bizarre joke with a dark twist to it, the audience response encouraged Jeselnik to focus more in that area. The joke, titled “My Girlfriend Loves to Eat Chocolate,” was later featured on Shakespeare. The place where Jeselnik found his “home” was the Comedy Cellar, where he said that they let him take earlier sets so he could go home early and go to sleep for work the next morning. The Cellar comedians, known for busting the chops of other comedians, were influential to Jeselnik, and he said that the best at it were Jim Norton, Colin Quinn, Bobby Kelly, and Keith Robinson.
Anthony Jeselnik Personal life
Jeselnik is an atheist. He has dated comedian Amy Schumer. He is an avid fan of the Pittsburgh Steelers, having watched them growing up and admired Louis Lipps and Mike Webster. His favorite player is Hines Ward.
Anthony Jeselnik Parents
Jeselnik has the following parents below:
Stephanie Jeselnik
Mother
Anthony Jeselnik
Father
Anthony Jeselnik Career
Jeselnik’s Comedy Central Presents stand-up special premiered in 2009, and he was named one of Comedy Central’s breakout comedians of the year alongside Nick Kroll, Aziz Ansari, Whitney Cummings, Donald Glover, Matt Braunger, T. J. Miller, Kumail Nanjiani, and Jon Lajoie. In 2009, Jeselnik was hired as a writer for Late Night with Jimmy Fallon.
His dream job, predating standup or his first comedy class, was to sit around a table and “throw out jokes with people you respected.” After getting the job, Jeselnik’s pitches would be continually shot down as they were too dark. For example, he routinely fought for a single joke regarding obesity each day for a month, and although Fallon liked the joke, he felt uncomfortable performing it as it would likely jeopardize his likability with the obese.
During this period, he was a regular at the Comedy Cellar in Greenwich Village, New York City. Jeselnik would work hard each day for the show and then proceed to go to Comedy Cellar, have a “big stiff drink,” and do his act, feeling “miserable.” In March 2010, he approached the show’s producers and told them he wanted to leave. “We understand—you want to go be Anthony Jeselnik,” they said.
He recorded his debut album, Shakespeare, and in 2010 began writing for the Comedy Central Roasts. Jeselnik, who refers to roasts as “the Super Bowl of comedy,” loved roasts during college and always tried to write for them. While Jeselnik was writing for the David Hasselhoff roast, Comedy Central executives took an interest in him and offered him an opportunity to perform on the next roast.
Knowing that this would be his “big moment,” Jeselnik refers to the Roast of Donald Trump as “one of my favorite moments of my life […] because no one knew who I was and it just really caught everybody by surprise. And the next day, my life was completely different.” While Jeselnik had previously been headlining clubs, the audience often was unfamiliar with his brand of comedy; after the Trump roast, the crowds got bigger and Jeselnik felt more comfortable.
Immediately following his performance, the network offered Jeselnik a “three-point deal” in which one receives an hour special, three Comedy Central roasts, and a development deal. Jeselnik went on to perform at two more roasts, the Comedy Central Roasts of Charlie Sheen in 2011 and Roseanne Barr in 2012.
Jeselnik appeared at the Power of Comedy event in November 2012.
In 2013, Jeselnik hosted his own Comedy Central series, The Jeselnik Offensive. In preparing the show, Comedy Central was looking for a half-hour, a four-nights-a-week show following The Colbert Report titled Midnight. Jeselnik’s main draw was the monologue, where he felt he could tell jokes that he was unable to do on Late Night with Jimmy Fallon.
For the pilot, Jeselnik did a test interview with a celebrity but felt “so wrong […] it just fit me like a bad suit.” For the show’s first episode, Jeselnik performs cancer-related standup for a cancer support group. “I had to fight with Comedy Central to put that on the first episode,” said Jeselnik.
The network felt uneasy using the sketch as an introduction. Jeselnik pointed to the premiere episode of Chappelle’s Show, in which Dave Chappelle plays a blind African-American Klansman, which he regarded as “one of the edgiest things they ever did.” As such, the sketch opened the first episode and received a positive reception; Jay Leno called to inform Jeselnik “how much he loved the cancer segment.” The Jeselnik Offensive ran for two seasons on Comedy Central from February 19, 2013, to August 27, 2013.
Jeselnik’s first standup special, Caligula, premiered in 2013.
October 2015 saw the debut of The Rosenthal & Jeselnik Vanity Project (RJVP), a podcast available on NFL.com hosted by Jeselnik and fellow Tulane graduate, NFL Network’s Gregg Rosenthal.
In 2015 Jeselnik released his critically acclaimed third stand up special, and first for Netflix, Thoughts, and Prayers. The hour-long stand-up shows Jeselnik’s trademark dark humor for the first 40 minutes and for the first time personal anecdotes for the last 20 minutes. He discusses his grandmother’s funeral, the Boston marathon bombing, cancellation of the Jeselnik Offensive, and the death threats he receives. Thoughts and Prayers were widely regarded as one of the best stands up specials of 2015.
In September 2018 Anthony Jeselnik returned to Comedy Central, signing a multi-platform development deal which includes new episodes of a weekly podcast, The Jeselnik & Rosenthal Vanity Project (JRVP), where Jeselnik is joined by his friend and NFL Network analyst Gregg Rosenthal, and by producer and NFL Network director Erica Tamposi.
Jeselnik’s latest stand up special, Fire in the Maternity Ward, was released by Netflix on April 30, 2019.
Anthony Jeselnik Tv Show | The Jeselnik Offensive
The Jeselnik Offensive was an American late-night television program that aired on Comedy Central. It was hosted by stand-up comedian Anthony Jeselnik, who extended his onstage character into weekly, topical humor with a sociopathic, dark twist. The show primarily consisted of a monologue and two panelists who joined Jeselnik in adding a humorous take on shocking, lurid news stories.
The series premiered February 19, 2013, on Comedy Central. It was renewed for a second season on April 26, 2013, and aired July 9, 2013. On November 11, 2013, Comedy Central canceled The Jeselnik Offensive after two seasons, most likely motivated by the show’s low ratings.
Format
The Jeselnik Offensive has been described as a combination of the late-night comedy series and a podcast. Each episode opens with a monologue from Jeselnik, which focuses on tragic news and dark humor. The following segment can sometimes be a comedic remote or an audience-participation game (“Which Kind of Asian Is This?”).
Several recurring bits are used: “Sacred Cow” is a segment that takes a subject deemed off limits, and proceeds to make several jokes about it. Each segment uses its platform to tackle such “off-topic” topics as cancer, bullying and missing children through jokes. The following two segments feature guest panelists who continue the wicked take on news.
The final segment, “Defend Your Tweet,” in which Jeselnik digs up an old tweet by each of the panelists and confronts them with it. At the end of each show, Jeselnik looks back at faux “Best Moments” from the broadcast, and closes the show with his sign-off phrase, “Good night, kids, go read a book.”
The series was taped at Hollywood Center Studios in Los Angeles.
Anthony Jeselnik Girlfriend
Anthony Jeselnik does not have a girlfriend at present, but he was in a well-publicized relationship in the past. He dated Amy Schumer, with whom he has been maintaining good terms even after their breakup. All in all, Jeselnik, the comedian who has been inspiring millions of people with his dark sense of humor seems to have a good heart too.
Why did Anthony Jeselnik and Amy Schumer break up?
Anthony Jeselnik is yet to find a soul mate for himself. The 38-year-old bachelor was once romantically linked with Amy Schumer, who also happens to be a stand-up comedian. They dated for a couple of years from 2009 to 2011.
The time they spent together during their work at Celebrity Roasts and Comedy Clubs brought them together. They parted their ways after Schumer became a rom-com girl of Hollywood.
After breaking up, they shared their reasons in an interview. Jeselnik said, “There was good and bad like in any other relationship. If it was great, we would still be together. But we figured it out. We are friends now, it’s good. She has got the romantic comedy market cornered. I am happy for her.”
Later, Amy also stated in another interview that they didn’t have a “bad breakup” and said what led her to call it to quit with Jeselnik was that “he was not attentive enough.”
As they ended the relationship in a friendly term, they accompanied each other on a tour alongside 20 other comics for the 2015 Oddball Festival.
On Larry King’s show, Jeselnik hilariously said, “Well, you know everything I touch turns to gold, so I think she is gonna have a great career. She should be thankful for what I have done for her.”
After splitting with Schumer, Jeselnik has not been romantically linked with any woman. He is currently busy focusing on his career.
Anthony Jeselnik Tour
Anthony Jeselnik Tour Dates
Date City Venue
06/21/2019 San Francisco, CA Bill Graham Civic Auditorium
06/21/2019 San Francisco, CA Bill Graham Civic Auditorium
Anthony Jeselnik Movies
- Anthony Jeselnik: Thoughts and Prayers
2015 - Miss March
2009 - Down & Dirty with Jim Norton
2008
Anthony Jeselnik Caligula
Anthony Jeselnik brings his signature dark and twisted point of view to this extended and uncensored special. He holds nothing back, routinely saying things most wouldn’t ever dare. Anthony is not for the easily offended or humorless.
Anthony Jeselnik Philadelphia
Anthony Jeselnik, Pennsylvania’s sensational and multi-talented comedian is bringing his indelible comedy to Fillmore Philadelphia!
Anthony Jeselnik was born in Pittsburgh in 1978 and is a comedian, television host, writer, producer, actor, and podcast personality.
His style of comedy focuses on dark humor, misdirection, nonsequiturs, biting insults, and an arrogant persona that frequently takes amoral stances.
He’s had a stellar career with 3 comedy albums/specials (Shakespeare, Caligula, and Thoughts and Prayers) and he’s been nominated for a Primetime Emmy Award for Outstanding Writing for a Variety, Music or Comedy Program (for his writing work on Night of Too Many Stars: An Overbooked Concert for Autism Education). In 2013, he got his own TV show (The Jeselnik Offensive) and it aired on Comedy Central for 2 seasons.
His other TV credits include appearances on Premium Blend, Down and Dirty with Jim Norton, Late Night with Jimmy Fallon, Just for Laughs, Comedy Central Roast of Donald Trump, Comedy Central Roast of Charlie Sheen, John Oliver’s New York Stand-Up Show, Comedy Central Roast of Roseanne Barr, The Burn with Jeff Ross, Maron, Garfunkel and Oates, Comedy Bang! Bang!, and Last Comic Standing.
He’s also credited as a writer for the 2007 MTV Movie Awards and for the Comedy Central Roast of David Hasselhoff.
Don’t miss your chance to see this artist with his charismatic stage antics and unique brand of comedy!
Anthony Jeselnik Shakespeare
Shakespeare is the debut album by comedian Anthony Jeselnik released digitally on September 21, 2010, by Comedy Central Records.
A bonus track released separately and used to help promote the album. It features Anthony berating an audience member who interrupted his set by shouting, “Ninja”.
Reception
Shakespeare was met with extremely positive reviews. Napster claimed “[His] outstanding writing and shameless self-promotion bordering on a cult of personality are a winning combination. One of the best comedy albums of the season.” Punchline Magazine’s Brendan McLaughlin praised the album stating, “Anthony Jeselnik writes great jokes—plain and simple.
He’s a master of the one-two punch. Now, he’s not the only game in town when it comes to slinging one-liners, but he’s one of the best, and here’s why: Jeselnik’s stand-up embodies one of the most distinct, specific, unflinching comic personas on the scene today.” The same publication then even chose it as its comedy album of the year.
Saying, “Despite his relatively young age (he’s 31 as of this writing), Jeselnik is one of the best joke writers in comedy. His album Shakespeare is that confirmation. From start to finish, he delivers pristine, precise and economical bits with the polish of a 20-year stand-up veteran. There was a lot of solid comedy released this year, but no other album gave us as rich an experience as Shakespeare.
Anthony Jeselnik Net Worth
Anthony Jeselnik, a native of Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, has an estimated net worth of $1 million. He has accumulated his income largely as a Comedian and TV personality.
Jeselnik wears many hats. Although he is well known as an American stand-up comedian, he is also a television host, writer, and producer. In concert with Jimmy Fallon, he wrote the first season of the TV series Late Night. In 2009, he took up the role of hosting Comedy Central Presents.
In 2010, he produced his debut comedy album and gave it the name “Shakespeare”. In 2012, he performed on the roasts of Roseanne Barr and Charlie Sheen. In 2013, he produced another comedy album entitled “Caligula”. He also began hosting his own show, which he has dubbed “The Jeselnik Offensive”.
As a youth, Jeselnik attended Tulane University in New Orleans, Louisiana. At the university, he studied English literature. He later decided that he needed to earn a living as a comedian. He thus moved to Los Angeles, where he kicked off his dark-style comedy acting.
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Anthony Jeselnik Interview
Anthony Jeselnik on His Netflix Special and Auditioning for ‘Weekend Update’
In the trailer for his fourth hour-long special, Fire in the Maternity Ward, Anthony Jeselnik tells just a single joke that draws one laugh break at the end. Most of what you see is the buildup, the tension leading into a punch line that if you’re familiar with Jeselnik’s work, you know is going to be aimed toward trying to make you laugh at situations that aren’t supposed to be funny. In the case of the trailer, a widower with Alzheimer’s getting to rejoice at his wife’s death, courtesy of Jeselnik, who in turn gets to rejoice in delivering the news to him every day.
In the special, which premieres on Netflix today, Jeselnik delivers exactly what you’d expect: patiently performed dark jokes told by the comedian who has built his reputation around finding levity in any situation. But just as important as the content is the element of surprise, which for him becomes a higher hurdle to cross with every passing year.
He can no longer pull the rug out from his audiences without them already knowing that they were never safe on the rug, to begin with, so how does he still maintain an element of surprise? That’s what drives him to keep writing punch lines that are so unpredictable he can still surprise people with any single joke you could pull from his set.
When you started to find the voice and style you’re known for today, it must have been quite a different feeling to deliver your jokes to a crowd who had no idea what to expect compared to now, when you have a Netflix special and most of the audience is eagerly awaiting the dark punch line. Can you describe that difference between an audience earlier in your career versus today?
I really enjoyed the beginning when I was a total surprise when no one even realized a comedian could do what I was doing and was not expecting it. That was always really fun because people were kind of blown away that somebody’s talking like this. And now I’ve lost that element of surprise. It’s like going to see a random movie and it turns out to be a horror movie; it takes you a while to figure out what you’re watching and then you’re like, Okay, this is a horror film. Now people know exactly what they’re coming to see.
It’s almost like I’m a magician and [they’re thinking], How is he gonna get out of this? He just chained himself upside down in a water tank — how’s he gonna get out? The expectations are higher. It’s just as fun because it’s more difficult when people know who I am, but I’ve noticed people coming to see me are more inclined to follow me down the path, whereas before I had to lure them along. I think it’s a little easier because they know my reputation, but more difficult because I’ve set the bar so high and I need to clear it. People are trying to guess my punch lines, and they have more of a history of punch lines to go to, so I have to make every joke better.
Something you do in this special and in previous work is a comment on the joke and the reaction to it afterward, “I don’t know if you guys know what a false premise is” and “Two jokes for the price of one” being examples in Fire in the Maternity Ward. Where are those moments borne from?
I almost just see it as a tag to the joke itself. The confidence that I portray onstage is funny, it’s part of the show, and if the crowd really reacts to the joke, a big laugh, it’s just a fun way to say, “You guys got it; you’re in this with me.” And it kind of puts them on my side a little more.
It puts me in the audience and commenting almost the way that Jim Gaffigan would do with his disembodied voice sort of thing. I think it’s fun to say really confident things after a joke really kills or does worse than I thought it would. It’s fun to chastise the audience.