Emmy Award winner and two-time Grammy Award nominee David Cross is an inventive performer, writer, and producer on stage and screen.
On August 8, David will join the cast of the Netflix series, The Umbrella Academy, for their fourth and final season playing Sy Grossman, an upstanding, shy business owner and family man desperate to reconnect with his estranged daughter, who will stop at nothing to get her back.
David hosts the podcast, Senses Working Overtime with David Cross, which premiered December 7, 2023, available every Thursday on all audio platforms and video available on David’s YouTube page. The podcast began as a vehicle for David and his guests to explore the Best/Worst/Funniest/Saddest/Most Beautiful etc. things they’d ever Seen, Touched, Tasted, Smelled, and Heard. Somewhere along the way it became a loose premise, a jumping off point to learn more about a variety of fascinating people, where David could let conversations steer themselves.
On November 27, David premiered his special, David Cross: Worst Daddy In The World, on Veeps. The special was shot during David’s 2023 theatre tour that visited 66 cities across North America, Ireland and the U.K. On February 12, 2022, David premiered his comedy special, David Cross: I’m From The Future, as a livestream event available internationally on his website. Recorded on November 8, 2021 in Brooklyn, NY, the special finds David reflecting on life during the pandemic, euthanizing a pet, The Gettysburg Address, the true power of wishes, and so much more.
In 2023, David was seen in the Julia Louis-Dreyfus film, You Hurt My Feelings, and the FX series, Justified: City Primeval. In 2021, he starred in the National Geographic series, Genius: Aretha, portraying famed music producer, Jerry Wexler opposite Cynthia Erivo as Aretha Franklin; he made guest appearances in the, critically-acclaimed HBO Max miniseries, Station Eleven; and starred in the HBO Max film, 8-Bit Christmas.
David received rave reviews for his starring role in the dramatic film, The Dark Divide. Based on the beloved book. “Where Bigfoot Walks: Crossing the Dark Divide,” by Robert Pyle, one of America’s premiere nature writers, the film recreates Pyle’s perilous 1995 journey across one of America’s largest undeveloped wildlands.
David’s previous special, Oh Come On, is now available on Amazon Prime and Peacock. The special was originally released on May 10, 2019, simultaneously in a 10-city theatrical run and was filmed in August 2018 at The Orange Peel in Asheville, NC. The album version of Oh, Come On was recorded in November 2018 in Birmingham, AL and is available on iTunes, Spotify, Sirius XM, Google Play and at physical retailers.
David’s Oh Come On international tour visited theatres in more than 70 cities including London, Manchester, Glasgow, Dublin, Amsterdam and cities across North America. Named one of the Top 100 Stand-Up Comedians of All Time, David’s 2016 Making America Great Again! tour included David’s first European dates outside of England and produced the Netflix special of the same name and the Grammy nominated CD, …America…Great.
David voiced roles in Boots Riley’s film, Sorry To Bother You, and the Netflix animated film, Next Gen. He stars in the 5th season of Arrested Development, which premiered on Netflix on May 29, 2018, reprising his beloved role as Dr. Tobias Fünke. During its original critically acclaimed, Emmy Award-winning run on FOX, David was twice-nominated as part of the ensemble cast for a Screen Actors Guild Award. David can also be seen in a recurring role in the second season of the Amazon series, Goliath, starring Billy Bob Thornton, which premiered on June 15, 2018.
In January 2018, David was part of the ensemble cast with Tom Hanks and Meryl Streep in Steven Spielberg’s The Post. His series, Bliss, which he wrote, directed and produced, starring Stephen Mangan, premiered on Sky TV in the UK in February 2018. The inventive series is about a bigamist travel writer who has two families, neither of whom knows of the others existence.
In January of 2016, IFC premiered the long-awaited third season of Todd Margaret, created by and starring David as an ill-equipped American who finds himself running the London sales office of the energy drink company for which he works. The original iteration, The Increasingly Poor Decisions of Todd Margaret, aired on IFC and Channel 4 in the U.K. from 2010 to 2012.
David toured in 2009 with a solo stand-up show in support of his New York Times Bestseller, I Drink for a Reason. That hugely successful comedy show was filmed at Boston’s Wilbur Theater for a special, entitled Bigger and Blackerer, which premiered on EPIX in April 2010 before being released on CD and DVD by Sub Pop. His previous comedy special, David Cross: The Pride is Back, aired on HBO in 1999, and was named one of the 25 best stand-up comedy specials and concert films of all time by Rolling Stone in July 2015.
David has released two other comedy albums – the Grammy nominated, Shut Up You Fucking Baby, and It’s Not Funny. In 2003 he released the DVD, Let America Laugh, a documentary film of his groundbreaking stand up tour of alternative, indie rock clubs.
David reteamed with his Mr. Show with Bob and David collaborator and co-creator, Bob Odenkirk, to create With Bob and David, a four-episode revamp of the iconic sketch comedy series, which premiered November 2015 on Netflix. The original Mr. Show with Bob and David received three Emmy Award nominations for both Writing and Music & Lyrics. David also had a guest arc on the Netflix breakout comedy Unbreakable Kimmy Schmidt, as lawyer Russ Snyder, who finds himself in an unlikely relationship with fallen socialite Jacqueline White (Jane Krakowski).
In September 2013, David Cross and Bob Odenkirk released the book, “Hollywood Said No! Orphaned Film Scripts, Bastard Scenes, and Abandoned Darlings from the Creators of Mr. Show.” Written with friend and fellow Mr. Show alum Brian Posehn, Hollywood Said No! is a collection of never-before-seen scripts for both sketch and film. In support of the book, David and Odenkirk embarked on a multi-city tour, performing their first official stand-up comedy shows together since their sold-out national tour in 2002.
In 2014, David released the indie film, Hits, which he wrote and directed. A black comedy about the nature of fame in the YouTube era, the film is set in a small town in upstate New York and stars Matt Walsh and Meredith Hagner. It first premiered at the 2014 Sundance Film Festival, and then helped raise funds for its theatrical distribution via a successful Kickstarter campaign. In addition to a traditional theatrical release, the film was also available to fans across the nation on BitTorrent, where they were able to pay what they wanted to view it.
On the big screen, David appeared in the independent features, Kill Your Darlings alongside Daniel Radcliffe and Michael C. Hall, and the dramedy It’s a Disaster, opposite Julia Stiles and America Ferrera. Other film credits include Year One, Christopher Guest’s Waiting for Guffman, Men in Black and Men in Black II, Ghost World, Michel Gondry’s Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind, Pitch Perfect 2, I’m Not There, and provided his vocal talents for several animated films, including Megamind, the Kung Fu Panda franchise and Curious George.
David’s introduction to the TV scene came with The Ben Stiller Show, where he honed his comedy writing skills and shared a 1993 Emmy Award for Outstanding Achievement in Writing in a Variety or Music Program.
David served as a writer and contributor for Tenacious D. He also wrote, produced and starred in the Comedy Central animated series Freak Show, which he co-created with H. Jon Benjamin.
