Taran Killam

Early life

Killam was born on April 1, 1982 in Culver City, California, and grew up in Big Bear Lake, California. He graduated from the Los Angeles County High School for the Arts. His great-uncle was actor Robert Stack. Killam attended the University of California, Los Angeles for one year in 2000.

Early career

In 1994, Killam made his first film appearance as an adolescent in Naked Gun 33⅓: The Final Insult. Killam was featured on Nickelodeon's The Amanda Show, a sketch-comedy vehicle for Amanda Bynes, on which he played Spaulding, a boy who had a huge crush on Moody, in the soap opera parody "Moody's Point".

Killam joined the cast of MADtv as a featured player during its seventh season from 2001 to 2002. Of the 25 episodes that aired during MADtv's seventh season, Killam appeared fully in 13 episodes. Joining the MADtv cast at age 19, Killam was the youngest cast member hired on the show and the only cast member on MADtv to get his start on children's shows (similar to Kenan Thompson on Saturday Night Live). He was a regular cast member on the third and fourth seasons of Nick Cannon's Wild 'N Out. In 2005, Killam co-starred in the television pilot Nobody's Watching, which never aired on network TV. The pilot gained popularity after it was leaked online and webisodes were produced from 2006 to 2007.

Killam co-starred in the 2004 Disney Channel original film Stuck in the Suburbs. After MADtv, Killam appeared on TV shows such as Jake in Progress, Still Standing, Boston Public, Drake & Josh, Do Over, Roswell and Judging Amy. He has appeared on Scrubs and Scrubs: Interns as Jimmy (the Overly Touchy Orderly). Killam appeared as a contestant on the episode of The Price Is Right which aired on December 7, 2006. The episode was re-aired on July 19, 2007.

He has been in Big Fat Liar, Just Married, Anderson's Cross, and My Best Friend's Girl.

Killam was a member of the Los Angeles-based improvisational and sketch-comedy troupe the Groundlings. He retired from the main company in 2012.

Saturday Night Live

On September 25, 2010, Killam joined the cast of Saturday Night Live for the 36th season, making him the second Nickelodeon veteran (after Kenan Thompson) to join SNL and the second SNL cast member who was previously a cast member on the sketch show MADtv (after Jeff Richards). Killam named Eddie Murphy as his favorite SNL cast member and Arcade Fire as his favorite musical guest. In August 2016, Killam along with Jay Pharoah were let go from SNL.

Other work

In December 2011, Killam replicated the Robyn video "Call Your Girlfriend" in a small writer's room and post it to YouTube. The video went viral and by January 6, 2015 it had been viewed more than 958,382 times. The late night antics briefly became an Internet phenomenon and garnered Killam media and public attention. When interviewed on Late Night with Jimmy Fallon, Killam stated that he had not known the dance shown in the song's official video until Robyn was scheduled to appear on SNL as a guest; then, he watched the video repeatedly until he could perform it himself.

In 2011, Killam appeared in Community episode "Regional Holiday Music" as Mr. Radison (Mr. Rad), a parody of Will Schuester from Glee. In 2012 he appeared in iCarly episode "I Meet The First Lady" as a Secret Service agent.

On November 10, 2012, Killam appeared with Kenan Thompson in a short video, "The Legend of Mokiki and the Sloppy Swish". Mokiki is a laboratory test subject who wanders Manhattan performing a shuffling move known as the "Sloppy Swish". The sketch briefly became an Internet phenomenon and garnered Killam media and public attention. Mike Ryan of The Huffington Post wrote, "It is one of the most bizarre things to ever air on SNL, yet, the next day, everyone was talking about the Sloppy Swish."

Killam co-starred in the 2013 comedy film The Heat. Killam voices Zip "Frantic" Danger on the Hulu original series The Awesomes.

In 2013 Killam ventured into the spy genre and the comics industry with The Illegitimates, a six-issue comics miniseries co-written by Marc Andreyko, illustrated by Kevin Sharpe and published by IDW Publishing. The series focuses on a team of illegitimate siblings who are charged with taking the place of their father, Jack Steele, a James Bond-like spy, after his death. The first issue was published December 18, 2013, and received mixed reviews.

Killam appears in the 2013 film 12 Years a Slave, playing the role of Abram Hamilton, one of the kidnappers who brought the main character into slavery.

Killam is a fan of the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles franchise (Raphael in particular), and successfully lobbied for a cameo role in the 2014 film.

Killam made six guest appearances as Gary Blauman on his wife Cobie Smulders' TV series, How I Met Your Mother. His first appearance was in the March 20, 2006 episode, "Life Among the Gorillas" and the final one was the March 24, 2014 episode, "The End of the Aisle".

In 2015, Killam provided the voice of the titular character on the PBS Kids show Nature Cat, along with SNL alumni Kate McKinnon, Bobby Moynihan, and Kenan Thompson.

On January 17, 2017 Killam succeeded Rory O'Malley in the role of King George III in the Broadway musical Hamilton.

Personal life

After several years of dating, Killam and Canadian actress Cobie Smulders became engaged in January 2009. They married on September 8, 2012, in Solvang, California. The couple have two daughters. The first, Shaelyn Cado Killam, was born May 16, 2009; the second, whose name was not revealed, was born in January 2015.

Killam is an avid reader of comic books and a fan of James Bond films. He first became interested in comics with Jim Lee's 1991 work on X-Men #1. He counts among his favorite aspects of the Bond franchise On Her Majesty's Secret Service and the Nintendo 64 video game GoldenEye 007, and names Sean Connery, Goldfinger and "Skyfall" as his favorite Bond actor, film and theme, respectively.