Jay Pharoah Biography

Jay Pharoah was born Jared Antonio Farrow on October 14, 1987, in Hampton Roads, Chesapeake, Virginia, U.S, to Antonio and Ramona Farrow. Friends and family call him by the nickname J-Hulk.

Pharoah was a premature baby and was born along with a twin brother who died at birth. He was 6 when he first performed an impersonation, as Iago from Aladdin. A few months later, his father put him in a talent competition, where he secured the fifth place.

He graduated from the Chesapeake-based Indian River High School in 2005. He then joined the Tidewater Community College and the Virginia Commonwealth University, where he studied business.

His sister, Shaina Farrow, later became his manager. He is also the cousin of Jovel Ford, who appeared with him on Celebrity Family Feud.

Jay Pharoah was 15 years old when he began performing stand-up comedy in local comedy clubs and theaters of Virginia. He soon gained fame with his impersonations of celebrities such as Jay-Z, Kanye West, Eddie Murphy, Peter Dinklage, Denzel Washington, and Will Smith. He later also toured to places such as the UK, US, and Canada However, he became an overnight internet sensation after his impersonation of Barack Obama in a YouTube video became viral.

In 2010, he joined NBC’s Saturday Night Live (SNL), as a performer, in its 36th season. He debuted on the show in September 2010. Over the years, he appeared in six seasons of the show, impersonating countless celebrities.

He is also known for his SNL character Principal Daniel Frye, which is said to be inspired by the principal of his high school, Indian River High School in Chesapeake. The subjects of his comedy ranges from American politics and African-American culture/pop culture to race and human sexuality.

In 2012, he appeared in the romantic comedy Lola Versus, while in 2014, he was seen in the buddy-cop movie Ride Along and the animated sports comedy Balls Out. In 2015, he, along with then-First Lady Michelle Obama, created a viral rap video named Go to College, which promoted the value of higher education.

Later that year, Jay Pharoah came up with his first stand-up comedy special, Jay Pharoah: Can I Be Me?, which was aired on Showtime. The same year, Rolling Stone magazine ranked him as the 55th greatest Saturday Night Live cast member.

He co-hosted the American Music Awards, with supermodel Gigi Hadid, in November 2016, while at the same time headlining comedy clubs across the US and shooting for a series. The same year, he quit SNL, along with fellow performer Taran Killam, on good terms.

Apart from the usual stand-up comedy shows and appearances, he has also released a number of music videos, such as a parody of Usher’s Good Kisser, titled Bad Kisser, and Problems. Pharoah’s parody of Kanye West, titled I Am a Dog, went viral and garnered more than a million views within the first week of its release.

Throughout his career to date, Jay Pharoah has appeared in several series and movies, most notably, the 2017 series White Famous (as the lead Floyd Mooney), the 2018 YouTube Premium series Champaign ILL (as Lou), the 2018 Steven Soderbergh movie Unsane (as Nate Hoffman), the 2019 ABC series A Million Little Things (as Omar Howard), the 2020 movie 2 Minutes of Fame (as Deandre), and the 2021 Netflix movie Resort to Love (as Jason King).

A talented voice actor, too, Jay Pharoah has lent his voice to the 2016 Illumination/Universal animated movie Sing (as Meena's grandfather) and the TV shows Legends of Chamberlain Heights (as Montrel and Randy, 2016-2017) and BoJack Horseman (as Dashawn Manheim and the Man on the Street, 2017). He has also voice-acted on Fox’s Family Guy (multiple characters, 2017-2022) and The Simpsons (as Drederick Tatum, 2022), Sony’s 2021 movie The Mitchell’s VS. The Machines (as Noah), and Cartoon Network’s Robot Chicken (as Barack Obama and the Man with the Yellow Hat, 2021).

Some of his other films are the 2014 comedy Top Five, the 2016 comedy Get a Job, the 2020 romantic drama All My Life, and the 2022 thriller Private Property. He has also appeared as J.J. Evans in the Emmy Award-winning ABC “Live in Front of a Studio Audience” version of the American sitcoms All in the Family and Good Times.

He has hosted and produced the hit Nickelodeon game show Nickelodeon's Unfiltered (2020-2021), too. Some of his upcoming films are Spinning Gold, Mort in Sherman Oaks, Easter, and the Adventures of Drunky.

In August 2021, he released his first EP, Spittin Image. The tracks, such as Rihanna Madonna, Tik Tok, and Work do the Talk, showcase a mix of his spot-on impressions and his raps. All the songs of the EP were written by him.

In a 2022 episode of The Tonight Show Starring Jimmy Fallon, he admitted he could perform up to 200 impersonations. On the same show, he set a stopwatch and performed 11 impressions, including those of Shaquille O'Neal, Jamie Foxx, Seth Rogen, and Barack Obama, in just a minute.

Jay Pharoah is apparently single, and not much is known about his personal life. However, back in 2015, he was rumored to be dating actor Kat Graham of The Vampire Diaries fame. The duo was seen in public and attended a few events together, too.

In June 2020, during the George Floyd protests, Pharoah released some controversial video footage, showing how he was detained at gunpoint by the Los Angeles Police Department in April 2020, with an officer kneeling on his neck in a manner similar to the one that had caused the death of George Floyd. However, after googling his name, the officers apparently apologized and let him go.

In 2022, he appeared on Celebrity Family Feud and, together with his family, won $5,000. They decided to donate their winning amount to the Children’s Hospital of the King’s Daughters (CHKD). It was later revealed that Pharoah’s nephew, Parker, had spent 28 days in the neonatal intensive care unit of the CHKD, back in 2017, and had later recovered. The family thus wished to help the hospital tale care of more babies.