Bo Burnham Biography

Bo Burnham was born in Massachusetts, USA on August 21, 1990, to a construction company owner, Scott, and a nurse, Patricia. He is youngest of the three children in the Burnham family, and hence the most pampered since his early childhood. Bo attended the all boys St. John Preparatory school in his hometown, where he was on a school honor roll.

Bo started performing skits at the age of 3 in front of his family and as his parents were huge fans of stand-up comedians such as Richard Pryor and George Carlin, Bo started idolizing them. While in high school, Bo would entertain his classmates with self-written political and social satire songs, and upon their insistence, he started making videos and putting them up on YouTube, which was just an emerging platform in those times.

In 2009, he appeared in the show ‘Funny People’ in which he was seen playing a student. In 2010, Burnham recorded a one hour stand-up special for Comedy Central’s project ‘House of Comedy’, for which several other stand ups were hired. The show got released in October 2010, and met with accolades.

Bo’s second special titled ‘What’ came out in 2013, on Netflix and YouTube garnering more than a million views on both the video streaming websites. Netflix signed him on for ‘Make Happy’ which got released in June 2016.

Since 2013, Bo Burnham has been in a relationship screenwriter and filmaker Lorene Scafaria. 

In 2009, a dozen Westminster University students protested against one of his concerts saying he was making fun of minorities through his ‘gags’. Bo was emotionally affected with the accusations and said that he is doing a social service by making people aware of the issues through humour and people connect well with that. Bo’s stand was appreciated by the media.