Rise to Fame
"Lazy Sunday" dropped in December 2005, racked up over a million downloads within days of airing, and some credited it with helping popularize YouTube. That's an odd legacy for a sketch about seeing The Chronicles of Narnia. Samberg had arrived at SNL that fall as part of a trio with Akiva Schaffer and Jorma Taccone, who'd known each other since junior high in Berkeley. The Digital Shorts they built made SNL relevant online at a moment when the show desperately needed to be.
In the Spotlight
Brooklyn Nine-Nine ran for eight seasons and landed him a Golden Globe for Best Actor in a comedy series. That's the career pivot that shouldn't have worked, the viral internet comedian taking on a network cop procedural, but the show stayed warm enough that nobody questioned it. Since it ended in 2021, he's done voice work in Digman! and is set for Zootopia 2. The Lonely Island reunited on SNL in 2024 for their first Digital Short in six years, and it landed like comfort food, which is either a compliment or a diagnosis.
Side Notes
He met his wife, experimental harpist Joanna Newsom, at one of her concerts in 2006. She reportedly greeted him backstage by yelling the name of one of his cruder Lonely Island characters. They bought a historic Beachwood Canyon estate in 2014, previously rented by Charlie Chaplin, that he's described as perfect for lying on the floor listening to her play harp. Joanna is also a second cousin, twice removed, of California Governor Gavin Newsom, which the couple didn't exactly plan for.