Maya Rudolph

Maya Khabira Rudolph born July 27, 1972 is an American actress, comedian, and singer. She first gained prominence in the 1990s as a member of the alternative rock band The Rentals before joining The Groundlings improv troupe later in the decade. In 2000, Rudolph became a cast member on the NBC late-night sketch comedy series Saturday Night Live and subsequently appeared in supporting roles in films such as 50 First Dates (2004), A Prairie Home Companion (2006), and Idiocracy (2006).

After leaving Saturday Night Live in 2007, Rudolph appeared in various films, including Grown Ups (2010) and its 2013 sequel, Bridesmaids (2011), Inherent Vice (2014), Sisters (2015), CHiPs (2017), Life of the Party (2018), and Wine Country (2019). She also lent her voice to the animated films Shrek the Third (2007), Big Hero 6 (2014), The Angry Birds Movie (2016) and its 2019 sequel, The Emoji Movie (2017), and The Willoughbys (2020).

In addition to her film appearances, Rudolph starred as Ava Alexander in the NBC sitcom Up All Night (2011–2012), and co-hosted her own variety series Maya & Marty (2016) with Martin Short. She has voiced various characters in the Netflix animated sitcom Big Mouth (2017–present), which won her a Primetime Emmy Award, and the Fox animated sitcom Bless the Harts (2019–present). Rudolph appeared in the NBC fantasy comedy series The Good Place (2018–2020), for which she received three Primetime Emmy Award nominations. For her portrayal of Senator and vice Presidential candidate Kamala Harris on Saturday Night Live, Rudolph won the Primetime Emmy Award for Outstanding Guest Actress in a Comedy Series. She continued to reprise the role throughout 2020 as Harris was named candidate for and later elected as Vice President.

Early life

Rudolph was born in Gainesville, Florida, to singer-songwriter Minnie Riperton and composer Richard Rudolph. Her mother was African-American and her father is Ashkenazi Jewish. Her paternal grandfather was Sidney Rudolph, a philanthropist who once owned all of the Wendy’s and Rudy’s restaurants in Miami-Dade County, Florida. Her great-grandfather was born in Vilnius, Lithuania, changed his surname from “Rudashevsky” to “Rudolph”, and was one of the founding members of Congregation Beth Shalom, a Conservative Jewish synagogue in the Squirrel Hill neighborhood of Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. Rudolph’s godmother was R&B singer Teena Marie.

Rudolph’s parents moved to Los Angeles, California, when she and her brother Marc were very young, and they grew up primarily in the Westwood neighborhood. Near the end of the song “Lovin’ You”, Riperton can be heard singing “Maya” over and over again. Riperton incorporated this into her performance of the song on The Midnight Special. Riperton died of breast cancer on July 12, 1979, at age 31, when Maya was just two weeks shy of her seventh birthday. In 1990, Rudolph graduated from Crossroads School in Santa Monica, California, where she befriended fellow students Gwyneth Paltrow and Jack Black, and continued her education at the University of California, Santa Cruz, living in Porter College. She graduated in 1995 with a Bachelor of Arts degree in photography.

Career

This section of a biography of a living person needs additional citations for verification. Please help by adding reliable sources. Contentious material about living persons that is unsourced or poorly sourced must be removed immediately, especially if potentially libelous or harmful. Find sources: “Maya Rudolph” – news · newspapers · books · scholar · JSTOR (January 2015) (Learn how and when to remove this template message)

Saturday Night Live

In May 2000, Rudolph joined the cast of Saturday Night Live as a featured player for the final three episodes of the 1999–2000 season, after a stint as a member of The Groundlings improv troupe, where she met future Saturday Night Live cast member Will Forte. Rudolph’s musical talents were frequently employed on Saturday Night Live. She sang as Beyoncé Knowles in the Prince Show sketches, as the “Space Creature” in the Gays in Space sketches, except for the one on the season 31 episode hosted by Peter Sarsgaard, because it aired around the time Rudolph was on maternity leave. Forte substituted for her during that episode. Her ability to change her looks and her command of many accents also led to her playing an unusually wide range of ethnicities on the show, often with only a change of wigs. As “Nuni Shoener”, Rudolph, along with Fred Armisen, created a couple from an unspecified Scandinavian country, who have unplaceable accents and bewilderingly foreign manners. Rudolph was also able to play male characters such as Scott Joplin, Justin Guarini, and Mario Vazquez.

Her final episode as a cast member was on November 3, 2007, with host Brian Williams and musical guest Feist, the last episode before the writers’ strike. She returned on October 25, 2008, in a featured guest appearance as Michelle Obama and sang a duet with Kenan Thompson about Amy Poehler’s newborn. She also appeared in the 2008 Christmas episode, where she reprised her role in the sketch Bronx Beat, with Amy Poehler. She also appeared in two sketches in the 2008–09 season finale with Will Ferrell. She appeared in a Weekend Update Thursday sketch during the fall 2009–10 season as Oprah Winfrey speaking on behalf of Chicago’s bid for the 2016 Olympics. She also appeared on the show in May 2010 to perform in skits including “The Manuel Ortiz Show” with Betty White. She returned to Saturday Night Live for the season 36 premiere, hosted by Amy Poehler, performing the “Bronx Beat” sketch and that same season for episode 700, hosted by Tina Fey. On February 18, 2012 she returned to Saturday Night Live as a host for the first time and reprised her roles in sketches such as “Bronx Beat”. She once again returned to SNL for the Christmas episode hosted by Tina Fey and Amy Poehler on December 19, 2015, reprising her role in the “Bronx Beat” sketch. She appeared on the 41st-season finale (hosted by Fred Armisen) as Dilma Rousseff on Weekend Update. Since the 45th-season premiere, she has appeared in sketches as Vice President Kamala Harris (D-CA), as well as making other appearances in occasional sketches.

Characters

Rudolph’s characters on the show have included “Attorney Glenda Goodwin” and “Megan” from the “Wake Up, Wakefield!” sketches. Rudolph did a number of celebrity impressions on Saturday Night Live during her tenure, including Amanda Byram, Ananda Lewis, Barbra Streisand, Bern Nadette Stanis (as Thelma Evans on Good Times), Beyoncé, Charo, Christina Aguilera, Condoleezza Rice, Darcel Wynne, Diana Ross, Dilma Rousseff, Donatella Versace, Donna Fargo, Emily Robison, Fredricka Whitfield, Free, Gayle King, Orda Khan, Griselda Blanco, Halle Berry, Ivanka Trump, Ja’net Dubois (as Willona Woods on Good Times), Jennifer Lopez, Joyce “Fenderella” Irby, Justin Guarini, Kara Saun, Kamala Harris, Kristen Welker, La Toya Jackson, Lisa Kudrow, Lisa Ling, Liza Minnelli, Lucy Liu, Lynda Lopez, Macy Gray, Mario Vasquez, Mary Roach, Maya Angelou, Melinda Doolittle, Melissa Stark, Michelle Obama, Mýa, Nelly Furtado, Omarosa Manigault, Oprah Winfrey, Paris Hilton, Patti LaBelle, Phylicia Rashad (as Clair Huxtable on The Cosby Show), Rocsi, Scott Joplin, Teresa Heinz, Tina Turner, Tyra Banks, Valerie Simpson, Vanessa Hudgens (as Gabriella Montez from High School Musical 3), Vanessa Bryant, Wanda Sykes and Whitney Houston.

Recurring characters

Television and film

In addition to her work on Saturday Night Live, Rudolph has appeared on other television shows, including the CBS medical drama series City of Angels and Chicago Hope. She had small parts in Chuck & Buck, Gattaca, As Good as It Gets, Duplex and Duets; she was also a music supervisor for Duets. Her first prominent film role came in 2006 with A Prairie Home Companion. Earlier, she had costarred with Luke Wilson in the 2005 Mike Judge sci-fi comedy Idiocracy, although that film was shelved until September 2006 and then only given a limited release. She also guest-starred as Rapunzel in the DreamWorks animated film Shrek the Third. She guest-starred as Julia in The Simpsons episode “The Homer of Seville”. Rudolph guest-starred as character Athena Scooberman in NBC’s Kath & Kim, and starred in the film Away We Go with The Office star John Krasinski. In 2010, she appeared in Grown Ups starring Adam Sandler, where she played the wife of Chris Rock’s character. In 2011, she appeared in Bridesmaids with Saturday Night Live colleague Kristen Wiig, and in 2013 she played a supporting role in The Way, Way Back as the girlfriend of Sam Rockwell’s character. She co-starred in the NBC sitcom Up All Night, with Christina Applegate and Will Arnett. Rudolph’s self-titled variety show television pilot aired on May 19, 2014, but the show did not go beyond that. It was later announced that she would star in an NBC variety series Maya & Marty with Martin Short, which debuted on May 31, 2016. Her next series, Forever, premiered on September 14, 2018 on Amazon Video. She has also provided the voice of Connie in the Netflix animated series Big Mouth since it premiered in 2017.

Also in 2018, she began doing Ruby Tuesday and Seventh Generation commercials. In 2019 she appeared as the mother in The Lego Movie 2: The Second Part.

Music

Prior to joining Saturday Night Live, Rudolph was a backing singer (1995–99) and briefly a keyboardist in the band The Rentals, with whom she toured for a short time. She also appears in the music videos of the songs “Waiting” and “Please Let That Be You”. She sang backing vocals for “Barcelona” and “My Head Is in the Sun”, both from the album Seven More Minutes. In 2004, she recorded a track with The Rentals frontman Matt Sharp, including a cover of Tegan and Sara’s “Not Tonight”. Rudolph also performed “Together In Pooping” and “Little Roundworm” with Triumph the Insult Comic Dog (Robert Smigel) on his album Come Poop With Me. She is in a Prince cover band called Princess with her friend Gretchen Lieberum.

Personal life

Rudolph has been in a relationship with Paul Thomas Anderson since 2001. They live in the San Fernando Valley with their four children—daughters Pearl Minnie (born October 2005), Lucille (born November 6, 2009), son Jack (born July 3, 2011), and daughter Minnie Ida (born August 2013).