Chris Parnell

Chris Parnell came up through The Groundlings in Los Angeles and joined Saturday Night Live in 1998, where he stayed until 2006 with one interruption: budget cuts in 2001 saw him let go, and he was brought back. He was never the show's biggest personality, which was exactly his value. Parnell is the man who reads the absurd line as if it were a corporate compliance memo, and the flatness is the joke.

That deadpan authority is the whole career. Dr. Leo Spaceman on 30 Rock, from 2006 to 2013, is a physician who knows nothing whatsoever about medicine and delivers his catastrophic advice with the calm of a man who has never been sued. Cyril Figgis on Archer runs on the same engine, a spineless accountant who states his humiliations in a level baritone. Jerry Smith on Rick and Morty is the most sustained version: Parnell never lets Jerry become aware of himself, which is what keeps him funny across a decade rather than merely pitiable.

His voice work is where he has spent most of the past twenty years. He narrated WordGirl on PBS Kids from 2007 to 2015, and voiced characters across Family Guy, American Dad, the Hotel Transylvania films and Chip 'n Dale: Rescue Rangers. He is also a fixture of American advertising, having voiced Lefty for Hamburger Helper and the Progressive Box, and appeared as America's Dad for Orbit Gum. In sketch history he is best remembered for rapping about cupcakes with Andy Samberg on Lazy Sunday.