Ike Barinholtz

Ike Barinholtz was born in Chicago in 1977 and got his training the hard way, five years on MADtv from 2002, which is a job that teaches you to build a whole person in ninety seconds and then throw them away.

His register is the loud idiot with unnerving conviction, and the reason it works is that he never plays these men as stupid. Morgan Tookers on The Mindy Project, an ex-convict nurse with total and unearned self-belief, is the best-known version: the comedy comes from how sincerely he means everything he says. Griggs, the prison officer in Suicide Squad, is the same energy turned petty and cowardly. Jimmy in the Neighbors films is a man permanently three drinks past his own judgement. He is also unusually good at playing the loudest conspiracy theorist in the room, which is what he does in The Hunt.

Two things complicate the picture in his favour. He wrote, directed and starred in The Oath in 2018, a Thanksgiving-set political comedy with real teeth and a genuinely uncomfortable streak. And Sal Saperstein on The Studio, from 2025, gave him the best-received work of his career, a Critics' Choice Award and an Emmy nomination, playing a studio executive whose loyalty runs about as deep as the current quarter.