Chris Hardwick

Christopher Ryan Hardwick (born November 23, 1971) is an American comedian, actor, television and podcast host, writer, and producer.

He hosts Talking Dead, an hourlong aftershow on AMC affiliated with the network's zombie drama series The Walking Dead and Fear the Walking Dead, as well as Talking with Chris Hardwick, a show in which Hardwick interviews prominent pop culture figures, and The Wall, a plinko-inspired gameshow on NBC, Hardwick created Nerdist Industries, operator of the Nerdist Podcast Network and home of his podcast The Nerdist Podcast, which later left the network and was renamed to ID10T with Chris Hardwick.

Christopher Ryan Hardwick was born in Louisville, Kentucky, on November 23, 1971, the son of Billy Hardwick (1941–2013), a professional ten-pin bowler, and Sharon Hills (née Facente), a real estate agent in Pasadena, California.

His maternal grandfather was Italian-American, and opened a bowling alley where Hardwick's parents first met.

Hardwick was raised in his mother's Roman Catholic faith.

At age four, he met comedian Joan Rivers and they became lifelong friends.

Hardwick grew up in Memphis, Tennessee, where he was the 1983 Memphis City Junior High Chess Champion.

He later attended St. Benedict at Auburndale before moving to Regis Jesuit High School in Aurora, Colorado, and spent his senior year at Loyola High School in Los Angeles.

Hardwick was a DJ on Los Angeles radio station KROQ-FM during the mid-1990s.

He studied philosophy at UCLA, where he was a member of the Chi Phi Fraternity during his freshman year and graduated in 1993.

He was roommates with Wil Wheaton, whom he had met at a screening of Arachnophobia in Burbank, California.

In 1993, Hardwick hosted the MTV game show Trashed, in which contestants would answer trivia questions or risk some of their belongings being destroyed.

From 1995 to 1998, he co-hosted with Jenny McCarthy the MTV dating game show Singled Out, in which the main contestant selects from a pool of 50 people based on their attributes without seeing them.

While working on Singled Out, he met fellow MTV personality Jacinda Barrett, to whom he became engaged but never married.

Later, he hosted the syndicated dating show Shipmates.

In the fall of 1998, he starred in the UPN comedy Guys Like Us; the show aired 12 episodes before it was cancelled in January 1999.

Hardwick appeared in Rob Zombie's horror films House of 1000 Corpses and Halloween II.

He also made a small appearance in Terminator 3: Rise of the Machines.

He made guest appearances on such shows as CSI: Crime Scene Investigation, Married... with Children, Boy Meets World and Zoey 101, and was a guest commentator on VH1's I Love the '90s, which aired in 2005.

He appeared as a television host on hip hop group Little Brother's 2005 album, The Minstrel Show.

Hardwick is a contributing writer for Wired (since 2007), wrote for Web Soup and Back at the Barnyard, and he made regular appearances on The Late Late Show with Craig Ferguson and Chelsea Lately.

As part of what Hardwick calls his "nerd media empire", he ran Nerdist Theater, an entertainment space at Meltdown Comics in Los Angeles.

In 2010, he was featured in the film The Mother of Invention.

From 2011, he hosted the BBC America Britcom block Ministry of Laughs.

He entered into an equity partnership with GeekChicDaily in June 2011 to form Nerdist Industries.

Hardwick published a self-help book, The Nerdist Way: How to Reach the Next Level (In Real Life), with Penguin Publishing, in late 2011.

In February 2012, GeekChicDaily fully merged with Nerdist Industries and became Nerdist News, with Hardwick operating as Chief Creative Officer.

On July 10, 2012, Nerdist Industries was acquired by Legendary Entertainment.

Hardwick was given the title of co-president of Legendary's digital business.

From 2013 to 2017, he hosted @midnight with Chris Hardwick, a nightly comedy-game show series on Comedy Central.

In 2013, he hosted Talking Bad, a live half-hour talk show on AMC following the final eight episodes of Breaking Bad.

Between May 2013 and July 2016, he voiced "Craig the Snake" on Sanjay and Craig.

He also voiced the character Vaughn in Telltale Games's Tales from the Borderlands, reprising his role in the Borderlands 2 DLC Commander Lilith and the Fight for Sanctuary and in Borderlands 3.

From 2016, he hosted Talking Saul for the Breaking Bad spin-off Better Call Saul.

He is also known for performing with Mike Phirman in the musical comedy duo Hard 'n Phirm, as well as hosting Singled Out, Wired Science, and Web Soup, the voice of Glowface on The X's, and the voice of Otis the Cow in Back at the Barnyard.

In 2017, Hardwick guest-voiced the villain Klaxxon for a special episode of Futurama released on the Nerdist podcast.

In February 2018, Hardwick announced that he would be rebranding The Nerdist Podcast to ID10T and that he would be leaving Nerdist since the contract with Legendary came to an end in 2017.

Hardwick voiced Alexander Hamilton in The Radio Adventures of Dr. Floyd and Otis the Cow in the Barnyard series (originally voiced by Kevin James in the film Barnyard).

He provided the voice for Green Arrow/Oliver Queen on The Batman and Lego Dimensions, Glowface in The X's, and Sokka in The Legend of Korra, as well as voice work for The Minstrel Show from the rap group Little Brother, and narration for the introduction video for the Flash animation game George Plimpton's Video Falconry.

His podcast has broadcast 1,000 episodes as of December 2019.