Maya Rudolph

Maya Rudolph (born July 27, 1972, Gainesville, Florida, U.S.) is an award-winning American comedian and actress known for her scene-stealing characters and impressions as a cast member on Saturday Night Live (SNL) from 2000 to 2007 and later as a guest host and actor on the show. Other roles include the bride-to-be in the comedy Bridesmaids (2011), various voices in the hit animated series Big Mouth (between 2017 and 2023), and a billionaire divorcée in Loot (2022– ).

Early life and career

Rudolph is the youngest child of rhythm-and-blues singer-songwriter Minnie Riperton and record producer Richard Rudolph. Riperton’s hit song “Lovin’ You,” which reached number one on the Billboard Hot 100 chart in 1975, was written by Riperton and Richard Rudolph as a lullaby for their daughter—as the song fades out, repetitive la, las and do, do, dos are interspersed with Riperton singing “Maya, Maya, Maya.” The family, which includes Maya Rudolph’s elder brother, Marc Rudolph, left Florida for southern California in 1973 to develop Riperton’s music career. Maya Rudolph spent the early years of her childhood surrounded by artists and musicians and traveling for her mother’s performances. “When I was a little girl,” Rudolph told Interview magazine in 2013, “I would stand on the side of the stage and watch my mom singing out there in beautiful gowns.…I always had the idea of wanting to be on a stage, in these beautiful gowns, with a microphone in my hand, and that comes from my mom.” Riperton died of breast cancer at age 31 in 1979 just before Rudolph turned seven years old. The New York Times called her mother “one of the finest black singers of the 70’s.”

While studying photography at the University of California at Santa Cruz Rudolph sought her own stage by forming a band called Supersauce. After graduation she joined the rock band the Rentals, founded by Weezer bassist Matt Sharp. She sang backup vocals and played synthesizer but pointed out later to Interview, “I don’t sound anything like my mother; she was so unique and her voice was its own thing.” After the Rentals disbanded, Rudolph found a new stage—this time in comedy. She enlisted in the Groundlings, an improv and sketch comedy troupe based in Los Angeles, and in 2000 she joined the cast of Saturday Night Live.

Saturday Night Live and personal life

On SNL Rudolph became a breakout star. Her impressions—of Oprah Winfrey, Donatella Versace, and Beyoncé—as well as her characters—including the hopelessly romantic middle-schooler Megan, a talk show host celebrating “sweater weather,” and Glenda Goodwin, Attorney at Law—made her an audience favorite. She frequently collaborated with other SNL stars including Amy Poehler, Rachel Dratch, and Kristen Wiig. During her tenure at SNL Rudolph met director and screenwriter Paul Thomas Anderson, with whom she welcomed a daughter, Pearl, in 2005. She left SNL in 2007 but often returned as a host or guest star.

Bridesmaids and post-SNL projects

Rudolph then starred in such films as Away We Go (2009) and had a second daughter, Lucille (also 2009), with Anderson. She reteamed with Wiig on Paul Feig’s R-rated comedy Bridesmaids, which follows a down-on-her-luck pastry chef (Wiig) as she navigates the travails of being a maid of honor. Bridesmaids was a huge hit, surpassing box office expectations and earning more than $280 million worldwide. Rudolph referenced the film in a 2024 return to SNL in which she performed a drag-inspired song about motherhood with several nods to drag culture: “Remember in that movie when I pooped my pants? / When you were a baby, you pooped your pants / And I changed your diaper. / I’m your mother.”

Acting and motherhood

Following that commercial success Rudolph balanced motherhood—she had an additional two children with Anderson, Jack (2011) and Minnie (2013)—and acting. She took on a number of roles in such ensemble dramedies as Friends with Kids (2011) and The Way Way Back (2013) and voiced a series of animated creatures that included a snail, a pug, and a former angry bird in the movies Turbo (2013), The Nut Job (2014), and The Angry Birds Movie (2016), respectively. Rudolph also acted in Anderson’s Inherent Vice (2014) and appeared alongside SNL alums Tina Fey and Poehler in Sisters (2015) and Wine Country (2019), Andy Samberg in Popstar: Never Stop Never Stopping (2016), and Fred Armisen in the series Forever (2018). Her films from the late 2010s and early 2020s this include Olivia Wilde’s directorial debut, Booksmart (2019), Anderson’s Licorice Pizza (2021), and Disney’s Disenchanted (2022).

Emmy Award-winning performances

Toward the end of the 2010s Rudolph began to garner a number of accolades. For her guest role as the all-knowing judge in the sitcom The Good Place, Rudolph received two Emmy nominations, in 2018 and 2019. Also in 2019 she debuted her impression of then senator and U.S. presidential candidate Kamala Harris on SNL, for which she won an Emmy for outstanding guest actress in a comedy series. She won a second Emmy for hosting the show in 2021, during which she reprised her role as Harris, then vice president. For her work on Netflix’s animated Big Mouth, Rudolph amassed four additional Emmys (2020, 2021, 2023, and 2024) for outstanding character voice-over performance. She also starred in the streaming comedy series Loot (2022– ), for which she was nominated for an Emmy for best lead actress in 2024.

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