When I think about my favorite comedy performers or my favorite Saturday Night Live cast members, I think of people like Eddie Murphy, Robin Williams, Martin Short, Chris Rock, Chris Farley and Dana Carvey. But when it comes to my favorite comedy writers, Robert Smigel is always the first name that comes to mind. He’s not a hugely famous household name, but he’s probably a comedy genius and his quick wit and acerbic sense of humor make me laugh in ways that most “offensive” comedy fails to do.

Born in New York City in 1960, Robert Smigel was always a TV kid. He even grew up watching SNL (even the so-called bad years of the early eighties). You can tell from his style of humor that Smigel is a person who grew up watching cartoons (he has stated that Looney Tunes was a huge influence on his comedy writing) but he started developing his comedic skills professionally when he went to Chicago to join the Players Workshop, which was an improv school founded in 1971 by Josephine Forsberg where such people as Steve Carell and Bob Odenkirk performed early in their careers.

Robert Smigel (left), Conan O’Brien and Bob Odenkirk as young comedy writers

Smigel later joined the comedy troupe “All You Can Eat” which performed in Chicago regularly. He first got hired to write for Saturday Night Live when SNL writers Al Franken and Tom Davis discovered him performing in a comedy sketch show. Smigel joined SNL‘s writing staff in 1985, the year Lorne Michaels returned to the show following his hiatus in 1980. Even though the 1985-86 season of SNL that marked Lorne Michaels’ return is not one that is looked upon fondly and it took a while for the show to get its groove back, Smigel was one of the few people working on that season who Lorne Michaels thought was worth saving for the next season, so Smigel would continue writing for SNL from 1985 to 1993, joining the cast as a performer from 1991 to 1993.

Among Smigel’s contributions to SNL, he wrote the sketch where William Shatner tells Trekkies to “get a life,” he created the Bill Swerski’s Superfans sketch, he played Hank Fielding and gave the “Moron’s Perspective” on Weekend Update and he wrote the “who will survive?” cliffhanger sketch at the end of his first season in 1986, which gave Lorne permission to fire and keep as many cast members as he wanted (in response to the bad reception the season got).

Smigel left SNL in 1993 to join Conan O’Brien’s writing staff on Late Night, for which Smigel was the head writer from 1993 to 2009 and contributed many funny, memorable and absurd bits. Just as an example of Late Night with Conan O’Brien’s type of humor, sometimes O’Brien would do a bit where he interviewed celebrities like Bill Clinton, Bob Dole and Arnold Schwarzenegger, but instead of booking the actual celebrity, they would just hang a picture of the celebrity with footage of Smigel’s moving lips where the celebrity’s mouth would be, as Smigel gave a half-hearted imitation of the celebrity and spoke for them Clutch Cargo-style.

Smigel’s greatest contribution to Late Night and to the world of comedy in general may be the dog puppet Triumph, who was first introduced in 1997 in a comedy bit parodying the Westminster Dog Show featuring the cigar-smoking dog puppet as a Westminster Dog Show winner. He would later come to be known as Triumph the Insult Comic Dog, who Smigel gave a Peter Lorre-like Eastern European accent, one that O’Brien has said sounds like a Russian woman and who Smigel said was actually inspired by his Russian grandparents. He appeared on the show several more times, eventually becoming a fan favorite. And now Triumph makes regular appearances on other shows, often mocking celebrities, politicians and civilians Borscht Belt-style and becoming a celebrity in his own right as he makes appearances in places like Space Ghost Coast to Coast, SpongeBob SquarePants, Svengoolie, The Daily Show, the Eminem music video “Ass Like That” and even at the actual Westminster Dog Show in 1999 where he (Smigel) was thrown out by security guards.

Smigel also co-created and starred in the short-lived 1996 sketch comedy series The Dana Carvey Show, which aired in prime time on ABC in the same block as ABC’s family-oriented sitcoms (one of the biggest scheduling blunders in television history). It got destroyed in the ratings so badly that it got cancelled before it could even air all ten of its episodes, although the comedic talent involved in that show was impressive (among the cast were future comedy superstars Steve Carell and Stephen Colbert) and retrospective reviews say the show was ahead of its time. It just shouldn’t have aired after Home Improvement, that’s all.

After the cancellation of The Dana Carvey Show, Smigel was rehired as a writer at SNL where he continued working until 2008, even borrowing and expanding upon an idea he used on The Dana Carvey Show and creating comedic animated segments that were known as Saturday TV Funhouse cartoons, which appeared on the show regularly until Smigel departed, with 101 cartoons airing total. They even spawned a short-lived spin-off series that aired from 2000 to 2001 on Comedy Central.

Smigel continued to act while he wrote, appearing in shows like Arrested Development, Curb Your Enthusiasm, Portlandia, New Girl and What We Do in the Shadows and lending his voice to animated shows like Robot Chicken, Aqua Teen Hunger Force and Bob’s Burgers. Smigel also co-created, executive produced, wrote and starred in the Adult Swim sitcom The Jack and Triumph Show, which starred Jack McBrayer as the former child star of a Lassie-like program who lives with his former canine co-star Triumph. The show also starred June Squibb and comedian Esther Ku and it was pure Adult Swim weirdness, but it only lasted seven episodes in 2015.

Smigel also appeared on the big screen in movies like Wayne’s World 2 (1993), Billy Madison (1995), Happy Gilmore (1996), The Wedding Singer (1998), Little Nicky (2000), Punch-Drunk Love (2002), I Now Pronounce You Chuck and Larry (2007), You Don’t Mess with the Zohan (2008), This Is 40 (2012), Pixels (2015), The Do-Over (2016), Marriage Story (2019) and The King of Staten Island (2020). As you can tell from that list, he often collaborated with fellow SNL alum Adam Sandler, and this was also true behind the camera, as Smigel helped punch up the scripts for The Wedding Singer and Little Nicky, he produced and co-wrote You Don’t Mess with the Zohan with Adam Sandler and Judd Apatow, and he wrote and directed the Adam Sandler and Chris Rock comedy The Week Of (2018).

Smigel would also return to the world of animation as a writer and executive producer on Sony Pictures Animation’s Hotel Transylvania (2012) which was directed by Genndy Tartakovsky and starred Adam Sandler as the voice of hotel owner Count Dracula. Smigel, Tartakovsky and Sandler would all return for Hotel Transylvania 2 (2015) and Smigel would also co-write and co-direct Netflix Animation’s Leo (2023) starring Sandler as the voice of a 74-year-old tuatara who serves as a class pet and can magically talk to students. Leo and the Hotel Transylvania films were huge with family audiences and whether it was animation or live action, Sandler and Smigel’s collaborations were a match made in heaven, often infusing their brand of comedy with a universal kind of stupidity.

While Smigel loved to highlight the stupid, the man was anything but stupid. He used his fame for good when he started the Night of Too Many Stars, a fundraising telethon for autism that has periodically aired ever since 2003 (Smigel has a son who is autistic). But for a comedy fan like me, ever since I found out who the guy behind Triumph and TV Funhouse was, I recognized a sharp, slightly twisted and very smart comedic voice that I admired not just for his cutting satire but for his ability to just make me belly laugh out of genuine glee. Fellow Players Workshop alum and SNL writer Bob Odenkirk said it best when he praised Smigel’s ability to write a funny concept before he wrote an actual joke, his ability to highlight and bring out the funny in his cast, and his hard work as a comedy writer. Even in Smigel’s first year on the show, his sense of humor far exceeded the quality of most freshman SNL writers.