Joel McHale is an actor, comedian and television host. He can be seen starring in Fox’s Animal Control as Frank Shaw, also serving as an executive producer for the show. Animal Control has been renewed for a Season 2 at FOX. He will also reprise his role as Jeff Winger in the upcoming Community movie on Peacock based on the hit comedy series of the same name, which ended its sixth season on Yahoo! after five seasons on NBC. Joel’s next project will be hosting the unscripted reality competition series, House of Villains on E!, bringing 10 of reality television’s most infamous villains under one roof to compete for the title of America’s Ultimate Supervillain. He can recently be seen as Starman in CW’s DC Universe series Stargirl and the host of the E! Game show, Celebrity Beef. Other recent projects include the Fox Game Show Crime Scene Kitchen, the sci-fi podcast series Black Box and the dark romantic comedy Happily alongside Kerry Bishe. In 2020, Joel co-hosted FOX’s New Years Eve special alongside his fellow Community co-star Ken Jeong. They also host a podcast, The Darkest Timeline, together. Upcoming projects include California King alongside Victoria Justice. Other recent projects include ABC’s Card Sharks, Becky alongside Kevin James and Lulu Wilson, Twilight Zone and Mortal Kombat Legends: Battle of the Realms and Mortal Kombat Legends: Scorpion’s Revenge where he voiced Johnny Cage. McHale hosted The Joel McHale Show with Joel McHale on Netflix, a half-hour topical series that took a sharp, absurdist look at pop culture and news from across the globe. In 2015, he wrapped the twelfth and final season of E! Network’s The Soup, in which he satirized pop culture and current events.
He previously starred in The Great Indoors on CBS, Netflix’s Santa Clarita Diet with Drew Barrymore and Timothy Olyphant, and Fox’s revival of The X-Files, where he played a conservative news anchor. Other starring feature roles include The Happytime Murder; Netflix’s A Stupid & Futile Gesture, opposite Will Forte, in which he played Chevy Chase, his former Community co-star; Queenpins opposite Kristen Bell; A Merry Friggin’ Christmas opposite Robin Williams; the Jerry Bruckheimer-produced supernatural thriller Deliver Us From Evil; the Warner Bros’ romantic comedy Blended alongside Adam Sandler and Drew Barrymore; Seth MacFarlane’s comedy smash Ted; David Frankel’s The Big Year; Steven Soderbergh’s The Informant and What’s Your Number starring Chris Evans and Anna Faris. In 2014, McHale hosted the annual White House Correspondents’ Association Dinner in Washington D.C. He also hosted the 2015 ESPYS on ABC.
In the fall of 2016, McHale released his first book through Putnam Penguin, Thanks For The Money: How to Use My Life Story To Become The Best Joel McHale You Can Be, which is part memoir, part self-help guide.
Born in Rome and raised in Seattle, Washington, McHale was a history major at the University of Washington and a member of their championship football team. He also graduated with an MFA from the Actor’s Training Program.
McHale resides in Los Angeles with his wife and two sons.