Taran Killam

Taran Hourie Killam was born on April 1, 1982, in Culver City, California, and spent part of his childhood in Big Bear Lake, California, where he lived until age 15. His mother, a singer-songwriter, toured with The Charlie Daniels Band, while his father, who worked as a contractor, was involved with the City Garage Theatre Group and harbored acting ambitions of his own. Killam is the great-nephew of Rosemarie Bowe, the wife of actor Robert Stack. He has a younger brother named Taylor and a sister named Danielle. Killam attended the Los Angeles County High School for the Arts before enrolling as a musical theater student at UCLA's School of Theater, Film and Television, where he devoted considerable time to UCLA's Theater Festival. He ultimately left UCLA to pursue a professional acting career.

Killam's first screen appearance came in 1994, when he appeared as a boy in Naked Gun 33 1/3: The Final Insult. He subsequently appeared on Nickelodeon's The Amanda Show, playing Spaulding, a boy with a crush on the character Moody in the soap opera parody Moody's Point. He was also a regular cast member on the third and fourth seasons of Wild 'n Out. In 2001, at age 19, Killam joined MADtv as a featured player during its seventh season, becoming the youngest cast member ever hired by the show. Of the 25 episodes that aired that season, he appeared in 13. Following his time on MADtv, he made guest appearances on a range of television series including Jake in Progress, Still Standing, Boston Public, Drake and Josh, Roswell, and Judging Amy, and recurred on Scrubs and Scrubs: Interns as Jimmy, the Overly Touchy Orderly.

Killam co-starred in the 2004 Disney Channel original film Stuck in the Suburbs, portraying a teen pop star. In 2005, he co-starred in the unaired television pilot Nobody's Watching, which gained an audience after being leaked online and led to webisodes produced between 2006 and 2007. He was also a member of the Los Angeles-based improvisational and sketch-comedy troupe the Groundlings, from which he retired in 2012. His film credits during this period include Big Fat Liar, Just Married, and My Best Friend's Girl. In 2011, he appeared in the Community episode "Regional Holiday Music" as Mr. Rad, a parody of Will Schuester from Glee, and in 2012 he appeared in an episode of iCarly as a Secret Service agent. That same year, he appeared alongside Kenan Thompson and Anne Hathaway in the SNL music video "The Legend of Mokiki and the Sloppy Swish," which became a brief internet phenomenon. Also in 2011, Killam posted a video of himself replicating Robyn's "Call Your Girlfriend" in a writer's room; by February 2022, the video had accumulated more than 1,277,875 views on YouTube.

On September 25, 2010, Killam joined the cast of Saturday Night Live for its 36th season, making him the second Nickelodeon veteran, after Kenan Thompson, to become an SNL cast member, and the second SNL performer who had previously appeared on MADtv, after Jeff Richards. He remained with the show until August 2016, when he and castmate Jay Pharoah departed; Killam stated publicly that he was not informed why his contract was not renewed. He has cited Eddie Murphy as his favorite SNL cast member and Arcade Fire as his favorite musical guest to have appeared on the program.

Killam made six guest appearances as Gary Blauman on How I Met Your Mother, the series starring his wife Cobie Smulders, with his first appearance in the March 20, 2006, episode "Life Among the Gorillas" and his final appearance in the March 24, 2014, episode "The End of the Aisle." He and Smulders had begun dating several years before becoming engaged in January 2009 and married on September 8, 2012, in Solvang, California. The couple has two daughters, born in 2009 and 2015.

In 2013, Killam appeared in the film 12 Years a Slave as Abram Hamilton, one of the men who abducts Solomon Northup into slavery, and co-starred in the comedy film The Heat. That same year, he co-wrote a six-issue comics miniseries titled The Illegitimates with Marc Andreyko, illustrated by Kevin Sharpe and published by IDW Publishing, with the first issue released on December 18, 2013. The series follows a team of illegitimate siblings tasked with replacing their father, a James Bond-like spy named Jack Steele, following his death. In 2014, Killam secured a role in the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles film as Channel 5 staff, a franchise of which he is a self-described fan. In 2017, he produced, scripted, directed, and starred in the comic hitman film Killing Gunther, with Arnold Schwarzenegger, who played the title character, serving as executive producer.

Beginning in 2015, Killam provided the voice of the titular character on the PBS Kids series Nature Cat, alongside SNL alumni Kate McKinnon, Bobby Moynihan, and Kenan Thompson. In March 2018, he was cast as a lead in the ABC comedy series Single Parents, which premiered on September 26, 2018. He subsequently took on the recurring role of Ludo Radovic in the ABC series High Potential, which began airing in 2024.

Killam's Broadway career spans 2015 to 2023. On January 17, 2017, he succeeded Rory O'Malley in the role of King George III in the musical Hamilton at the Richard Rodgers Theatre, a run that continued through April 13, 2017. He returned to Broadway at the St. James Theatre in the revival of Spamalot, where he played Lancelot from October 31, 2023, through January 7, 2024.

In January 2025, Killam and Smulders' home in Pacific Palisades, Los Angeles was destroyed by a wildfire. Following the loss of his home, Killam withdrew from a planned appearance as Officer Lockstock in New York City Center's Encores! 2025 production of Urinetown. Killam is an avid fan of the Los Angeles Rams and is frequently seen at their home games.