Anthony King

Nationalities

New York City London Los Angeles Chapel Hill United Kingdom United States

Anthony King is a writer, director, and performer who served as Artistic Director of the Upright Citizens Brigade Theatre in New York from 2005 to 2011, performing on the Harold teams Dillinger and Reuben Williams alongside performers including Zach Woods, Lennon Parham, Joe Wengert, Charlie Todd, and Katie Dippold. He co-wrote Gutenberg! The Musical! with Scott Brown, which originated at UCB around 2003, won the NY Musical Theatre Festival Award for Excellence in Musical Theatre Writing for Book, and reached Broadway in 2023. His book for Beetlejuice The Musical (2019, co-written with Scott Brown, music and lyrics by Eddie Perfect) received a Tony Award nomination for Best Book of a Musical. His television career encompasses Broad City, Silicon Valley (writer and co-executive producer), and The Afterparty (Apple TV+, 2022-2023, showrunner and executive producer).

Career

King relocated to New York around 1998 and joined the Upright Citizens Brigade Theatre, working through UCB's class and practice group system. His practice group, called The Office, competed in Cagematch against veteran teams.

He joined Dillinger, his first Harold team at UCB, in March 2003. The team performed at the Chelsea Playhouse on 26th Street and included Sarah Burns, Brett Christensen, Lennon Parham, Risa Sang-urai, Erik Tanouye, Joe Wengert, and Zach Woods, with coaching from Billy Merritt, Owen Burke, Chris Gethard, and Pat Shay. Despite all members being on their first Harold team, Dillinger achieved anchor team status and was described in UCB institutional records as one of the premier Harold teams at the theatre. The team revived the Pattern Game as an opening device and defeated The Swarm in a Cagematch competition. King's performances during this period identified him as a major player in UCBT programming.

In July 2004, King co-founded what would become the Reuben Williams house team. The ensemble initially performed under the name Robin Williams, a name that Amy Poehler required them to change to avoid association with the comedian. Paul Scheer suggested it become an official UCB house team, and Reuben Williams became the official name when the team joined the programming roster on October 26, 2004. King was named Artistic Director of UCB New York when the team became official. The founding roster included Katie Dippold, King, Chris Kula, John Reynolds, Eric Scott, Kate Spencer, Charlie Todd, and Joe Wengert. On Harold Night the team performed with aggressive, high-energy sound-and-movement openings; as a weekend team they developed a format built around creating an improvised television station from an audience interview. Later members included Lennon Parham, Charlie Sanders, and Eugene Cordero. The team evolved into The Curfew in January 2011.

King served as Artistic Director of UCB Theatre New York from 2005 to 2011, overseeing programming, directing productions, and nurturing emerging talent during the period when UCB alumni were ascending most prominently to national entertainment prominence. He directed multiple productions during this period, including Wendy Spero's one-woman show, and created the show Day 8: Take Complete Control of Your Life. He also appeared regularly in ASSSSCAT, UCB's long-running free Sunday show.

Gutenberg! The Musical!, co-written by King and Scott Brown (book, music, and lyrics), originated from a workshop developed at UCB around 2003 and ran as a 45-minute show at the theatre for nearly two years. The piece premiered in expanded form at the NY Musical Theatre Festival in 2005, where it won the NYMF Award for Excellence in Musical Theatre Writing for Book. The show ran Off-Broadway and transferred Off-West End in London before reaching Broadway in 2023 with Josh Gad and Andrew Rannells, both of The Book of Mormon, in the title roles. The piece is now licensed worldwide through Music Theatre International.

King co-wrote the book for Beetlejuice The Musical (Broadway, 2019) with Scott Brown, with music and lyrics by Eddie Perfect. The production received a Tony Award nomination for Best Book of a Musical in 2019.

He relocated to Los Angeles in 2011 and transitioned primarily to television writing. Credits include Best Friends Forever (NBC, 2012), Playing House (USA Network, 2014-2017, executive story editor), Broad City (Comedy Central, 2014-2019), Wet Hot American Summer: First Day of Camp (Netflix, 2015), Silicon Valley (HBO, 2014-2019, writer and co-executive producer), Wet Hot American Summer: Ten Years Later (Netflix, 2017), Search Party (TBS/HBO Max, 2016-2022), Dead to Me (Netflix, 2019), and The Afterparty (Apple TV+, 2022-2023, showrunner and executive producer). He received a Primetime Emmy nomination for Outstanding Comedy Series for Silicon Valley in 2018, a Writers Guild of America nomination for Broad City in 2016, and a Primetime Emmy win for Night of Too Many Stars: An Overbooked Benefit for Autism Education.

Historical Context

UCB Theatre New York's period from 2003 to 2011 represented the institution's most significant expansion of alumni into national entertainment. King's tenure as Artistic Director from 2005 to 2011 coincided with the years when performers who had trained and performed at UCB, including Amy Poehler, Aziz Ansari, and the generation represented by King's own teams, moved to network television and film at a scale that established UCB's training model as the most publicly recognized comedy development pipeline of its era.

The Dillinger team, which King joined in 2003, was notable within UCB institutional records for achieving premiere status despite being composed entirely of performers on their first Harold team. Its collective cohesion, including the revival of the Pattern Game as an opening device, documented how the Harold training system generated ensemble technique independent of individual experience level. Zach Woods, Lennon Parham, and Bobby Moynihan, all of whom passed through the Dillinger-adjacent cohort, subsequently became prominent television performers.

Gutenberg! The Musical! represents one of the most significant instances of UCB-originated material reaching Broadway. Its development arc, from workshop at UCB to NYMF prize to Off-Broadway to West End transfer to Broadway production, traced a route from the UCB's informal development environment to mainstream commercial theater that was uncommon in the institution's history. The piece's Broadway production in 2023 marked nearly two decades of development rooted in King's time as a UCB performer and Artistic Director.

Teaching Philosophy

King's documented observations on comedy and creative work center on the necessity of iterative revision and the discipline required to complete projects rather than merely generate them. His 2008 description of the Artistic Director role at UCB identified the failure of self-discipline as the primary obstacle separating talented performers from successful careers: the ones who complete, revise, and perfect their work are the ones who advance. This observation, made from his position overseeing a theatre producing significant quantities of performer-generated material, framed improv's generative energy as requiring editorial discipline to produce durable results.

His stated approach to comedy writing emphasizes the value of collaborative friction: the messy creative debate of a writers' room as a productive rather than obstructive process. He frames empathy as a structural tool in comedy, citing the collision of comic framing with genuine emotional stakes as productive rather than contradictory. His advice to emerging performers and writers at UNC emphasized that careers are built through continuous craft improvement and readiness rather than through linear credential paths.

Legacy

King's six-year tenure as Artistic Director of UCB New York during the institution's peak alumni-development period made him a structuring presence in the careers of the performer generation that included Zach Woods, Lennon Parham, Katie Dippold, Charlie Todd, and Joe Wengert. His founding and direction of the Reuben Williams house team, and his earlier participation in Dillinger, documented the institutional ensemble practices through which UCB trained its most productive generation of writer-performers.

Gutenberg! The Musical!, co-written with Scott Brown, established a documented pathway from UCB workshop performance to Broadway musical theater, a trajectory that had not been traced in the institution's history before King's work. The piece is now licensed through Music Theatre International for worldwide production. Beetlejuice The Musical, also co-written with Brown, reached Broadway in 2019 and extended King's work as a writer connecting improv-rooted performance with mainstream musical theater.

His television career as showrunner of The Afterparty and co-executive producer of Silicon Valley represents the most publicly visible continuation of the UCB writer-performer pipeline into prestige television production, a pattern that characterizes the most consequential alumni outcomes of UCB's New York period.

Early Life and Training

King was born on June 6, 1975, in Myrtle Beach, South Carolina, and raised in Durham, North Carolina. His parents held season tickets to PlayMakers Repertory Company at UNC Chapel Hill, giving him early exposure to live theatre. He enrolled at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill initially as a pre-med student, switched to English after failing a chemistry midterm, and graduated with a BA in English in 1997. At UNC he performed with student theater groups UNC Pauper Players and Company Carolina, contributed movie reviews and a humor column to the student newspaper The Daily Tar Heel, and created an early daily comedy newsletter from a university computer lab. He cites creative writing professor Randall Kenan as a formative influence. The UNC English department awarded him the John L. Haber Award from the New York Carolina Club in 2024.

Personal Life

King was born in Myrtle Beach, South Carolina, and raised in Durham, North Carolina. He is married to Kate Spencer, an author and podcaster whom he met through the UCB Theatre. They have two daughters, Eleanor and Lydia. He relocated from New York to Los Angeles in 2011.