David Cross was walking home late one Friday night when he got a call with a job opportunity. The Roswell-born actor and comedian was being offered the role of Sy Grossman in the fourth and final season of The Umbrella Academy, the Netflix smash hit about a family of quirky superhero siblings. There was just one problem.
“I wasn’t familiar with the show,” Cross says. “I knew of it as a cultural thing that people loved, and I’d heard great things. But I’d never watched an episode.”
He spent that weekend addressing the issue, binge-watching and falling in love with the show. That Monday morning, he flew to Toronto to join the ensemble. Cross was such a fan that, during filming, he asked the cast and crew not to reveal spoilers for scenes he wasn’t involved in. “I didn’t want to have the story ruined for me when I watched it,” he says. “I just made sure I knew what I needed to know. Because I was so excited to see the rest of it.”
When he wasn’t on set for The Umbrella Academy, Cross was on the road, touring his stand-up show Worst Daddy in the World. Did you miss it? Not to worry. Cross is so prolific that he’s already on to another tour: The End of the Beginning of the End comes to Atlanta on October 16.
Atlanta is where Cross’s love of comedy first blossomed. Years before he rose to fame with the screwball sketch comedy series Mr. Show with Bob and David, and as Tobias Fünke in Arrested Development, Cross was a student at the former Northside High School. He calls its specialist performance arts program, now defunct, “a lifesaver.” He’d spend his nights watching Monty Python and reading National Lampoon, then write his own skits for class.
When he was 17, he worked up the courage to make his debut onstage. “It was at The Punchline on Roswell Road,” Cross says. After that night, he was hooked. At 19, he left for Boston to attend Emerson College, and later honed his skills in that city’s burgeoning comedy scene. He now lives in Brooklyn with his daughter and wife, the actress Amber Tamblyn, though he visits family in Atlanta several times a year.
Since Arrested Development, Cross has stayed busy. He created, wrote, and starred in the show The Increasingly Poor Decisions of Todd Margaret, while popping up in Modern Family and the Kung Fu Panda franchise. In 2023, he succumbed to the urging of his manager and joined the herd of comedians hosting podcasts. He admits he’s “having a blast” hosting Senses Working Overtime with David Cross, which featured his Mr. Show collaborator Bob Odenkirk as the first guest.
Looking back at both Mr. Show and Arrested Development, Cross can’t help but feel proud, especially when he compares it to what’s on the air now. “Everything on television now feels familiar,” he says. “The writing, acting, pacing, and editing are all good. But they’re not great. It’s like there’s something missing. Like there’s no soul to it. But those two shows in particular—they were so new and risky.”
Cross continues to split his time between acting and stand-up, but there’s no doubting his true creative passion. “I could stop acting, directing, or producing and I’d miss it, but I need to do stand-up,” he says. “I just crave it. Sometimes I’ll think of an idea or joke and I can’t wait to work it out onstage.” Cross is showing no signs of slowing down: He will take The End of the Beginning of the End to 46 cities this fall, before his next special is released next year.
“Touring gets harder the older I get,” says Cross. “But I love it. I just don’t feel that way about any other thing I do.”
This article appears in our October 2024 issue.
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