Nick Swardson
Nick Swardson is an actor, born 1976.
Swardson came up in Minneapolis stand-up, and his first sustained screen job was Terry Bernadino on Reno 911!, a rollerblading local nuisance the deputies keep arresting and keep releasing. It is still the best use anyone has found for him. A sketch show of his own, Pretend Time, ran from 2010 to 2011.
The rest of the filmography is essentially one address. From Grandma's Boy in 2006 onward he has been a fixture of Adam Sandler's Happy Madison operation, and the parts are interchangeable by design: the roommate, the assistant, the idiot at the next desk. His instrument is a high, unbothered voice that delivers deranged information in the tone of small talk, which is very funny for roughly one scene and is rarely asked to do more than that.
There are exceptions and they are worth knowing. Blades of Glory uses him as a straight-faced hanger-on. 30 Minutes or Less drops him into an actual crime plot and he plays it nervous rather than goofy, which suits him better than the mugging does. Art School Confidential gives him two minutes of something odder. Bucky Larson, which he headlined in 2011, is the one time a studio bet on him carrying a film, and it was received about as badly as a comedy can be. He has worked steadily since anyway, mostly in voice roles and in the Netflix run of Sandler pictures, which is a durable career even if it is a narrow one.
Movies (34)
- Grown Ups 2 (2013)
- A Haunted House (2013)
- Just Go with It (2011)
- Bolt (2008)
- Hotel Transylvania 2 (2015)
- Click (2006)
- That's My Boy (2012)
- Leo (2023)
- You Don't Mess with the Zohan (2008)
- The House Bunny (2008)
- The Ridiculous 6 (2015)
- Bedtime Stories (2008)
- Grandma's Boy (2006)
- I Now Pronounce You Chuck & Larry (2007)
- Blades of Glory (2007)
- Jack and Jill (2011)
- The Wrong Missy (2020)
- The Do-Over (2016)
- The Benchwarmers (2006)
- 30 Minutes or Less (2011)
- Buddy Games (2019)
- Malibu's Most Wanted (2003)
- Art School Confidential (2006)
- Sandy Wexler (2017)
- Airplane Mode (2019)
- Reno 911!: Miami (2007)
- Hell and Back (2015)
- Deported (2020)
- It's a Wonderful Binge (2022)
- Bucky Larson: Born to Be a Star (2011)
TV (8)
Where to start with Nick Swardson
Reno 911! first, and it may honestly be all you need. Terry is a supporting character in a fake police documentary, and Swardson's timing inside those improvised scenes is sharper than anything the films have got out of him since.
For the movies, Grandma's Boy is the cult one and the only Happy Madison picture partly built around him rather than past him. Blades of Glory and 30 Minutes or Less are the two where a real director uses him properly, in both cases by making him the anxious one instead of the loud one. The Benchwarmers is the pure form of the Sandler-adjacent comedy if you want to know what that genre is.
Click and Just Go with It are the big-audience credits and he is barely in either. Bucky Larson: Born to Be a Star is a genuine curiosity: he headlines it, he is completely committed to it, and it is close to unwatchable. Do not start there.