Michelle Wolf
USA- Early Life and Education
- Career
- White House Correspondents' Dinner Performance (2018)
- for "exposing the absurdity of the fictions" of the "Trump Era."
- The Break with Michelle Wolf
- Personal Life
Michelle Wolf: American Comedian and White House Correspondent's Dinner Performer
Early Life and Education
Michelle Wolf was born on July 1, 1982, in Hershey, Pennsylvania, and grew up with two older brothers. She graduated from Hershey High School in 2003. In 2007, she earned a Bachelor of Science degree in kinesiology from the College of William & Mary and worked in a cardiovascular physiology lab. Throughout high school and college, she was a track and field athlete, competing in long jump, and the 400- and 800-meter runs, before an injury cut short her competitive pursuits.
Career
After graduating, Wolf worked at Bear Stearns from 2007 to 2008 and then at JPMorgan Chase for nearly four years, working in mutual funds and managing accounts in both banks. Around the time of the JPMorgan buyout, Wolf began taking improv classes at Upright Citizens Brigade and the Peoples Improv Theater (PIT). Her frustration with the imperfect and ephemeral nature of improv, and the encouragement of her classmates, led her to audit a standup class at the People's Improv Theater, also known as the PIT.
Her first late-night television appearance came in July 2014, when she auditioned for "Late Night with Seth Meyers" and was booked on the show later that month. She went on to appear in numerous segments on "Late Night," often as her fictional persona, "Adult Annie," a grown-up version of Little Orphan Annie. She later held additional roles for the show, including, most recently, as head writer.
In November 2015, Comedy Central released an all-web series on YouTube hosted by Wolf called "Now Hiring." Wolf is a regular at the Comedy Cellar in New York City. In April 2016, she joined "The Daily Show with Trevor Noah" as a writer. Wolf has stated that she learned "how to do comedy" while working with Seth Meyers and Trevor Noah. In August 2016, she performed her standup show "So Brave" at the Edinburgh Festival, which was her first performance outside of North America.
Wolf's television work in the United Kingdom also includes an appearance on "Live At The Apollo" in late 2016, and guesting as a panelist on the British comedy panel show "8 Out of 10 Cats Does Countdown" in early 2017, partnering with team captain and British standup comedian John Richardson. Later that year, she appeared on the same show again, this time partnering with Sean Lock. On 2 December 2017, Wolf made her HBO debut with "Michelle Wolf: Nice Lady," which was taped at the Skirball Center for the Performing Arts in New York City in mid-August 2017.
White House Correspondents' Dinner Performance (2018)
On April 28, 2018, Wolf was the featured entertainer at the White House Correspondents' Dinner. US President Donald Trump did not attend the dinner for the second year in a row, sending White House Press Secretary Sarah Huckabee Sanders in his stead. Wolf delivered a 19-minute comedic routine, and was both praised and criticized for her "pointed and barbed" jokes targeting the Trump administration, particularly Sanders, and the media itself.
Wolf's criticism of the press was called by one commentator "the most substantive monologue of the Donald Trump era" and led to calls for the dinner to be canceled because it was believed to have violated FCC rules on indecent behavior and could be subject to fines. Wolf's joke about Sanders using the ashes of facts to create the perfect smoky eye was among the most controversial of the criticisms of Wolf's performance:
> "I actually really like Sarah Huckabee Sanders. I think she's very resourceful. She burns facts and then she uses that ash to create a perfect smoky eye. Like maybe she's born with it, maybe it's lies. It's probably lies."
Journalists, including Maggie Haberman of The New York Times, Mika Brzezinski of MSNBC, and Andrea Mitchell of NBC News, criticized Wolf on social media for attacking Sanders. Ed Henry of Fox News stated that "this was nasty and mean-spirited." CBS News executives reportedly considered ending their participation in future dinners but later reversed their stance after the network was assured that the Correspondents' Association would "take a serious look at changing the format of the dinner." Former White House Press Secretary Sean Spicer wrote on social media: "Tonight's #WHCD was a disgrace," to which Wolf replied: "Thanks!"
The next day, Trump called several outside advisors to criticize the comedian and sent a series of tweets stating that "the so-called comedian" and "filthy 'comedian'" had "totally bombed" and called for the dinner to be discontinued or "start over."
Wolf questioned her critics in the media, asking: "Why are you guys so mean about Sarah's looks? I said she burns facts and uses the ash to create the perfectsmoky eye. I complimented her eye makeup and her resourcefulness in using repurposed materials." In an interview with Terry Gross on NPR, Wolf said that the joke was not about Sanders's appearance at all, but about her lying, and that she in fact made an effort to not criticize her appearance. She stated that she had not attacked any women's appearance, unlike some male politicians who had made fun of, for example, Mitch McConnell's neck or Chris Christie's weight, but that "as a woman, I have access to punching up at women in a way that men might not be able to get away with in their jokes." Of her performance, she said: "I would not change a single word that I said. I'm very happy with what I said, and I'm glad that I stuck to my guns."
Other journalists, including NBC News's Jacob Soboroff, CNN's Joan Walsh, The New York Times's Amanda Hess, and The Washington Post's Wesley Lowery, tweeted their support for Wolf and criticized the White House Correspondents' Association (WHCA) for a statement by its president, Margaret Talev. Talev wrote that the program "was intended to offer a unifying message about our shared commitment to a vigorous and free press while honoring civility, great reporting and scholarship winners, not to divide people" and that "Wolf's monologue was not in the spirit of that mission."
"The WHCA stood by Wolf, but early Saturday evening, its president backed off her earlier statement, even though she reaffirmed that Wolf had not lived up to the WHCA's stated goals for the event: to 'offer a unifying message about our shared commitment to a vigorous and free press while honoring civility, great reporting and journalism.' Michelle Wolf stood by the WHCA on Saturday evening, even if it failed to stand by her the day after."
for "exposing the absurdity of the fictions" of the "Trump Era."
Many comedians came to Wolf's defense, including Jimmy Kimmel, Trevor Noah, Seth Meyers, Adam Conover, Dave Chappelle, Kathy Griffin, Guy Branum, Anthony Atamanuik, and Jim Gaffigan. Stephen Colbert, who had hosted the event in 2006, joked on "The Late Show": "This is the Correspondents' Dinner, dedicated to freedom of speech. You can't just say whatever you want!" Nell Scovell, writing for Vulture, criticized journalists Haberman, Brzezinski, and Mitchell for what Scovell called a "manufactured feud" between Wolf and Sanders. Describing the subsequent controversy, Scovell wrote: "Women, comedians, and members of the media were tearing one another's hair out and throwing one another to the ground, while the men watched and applauded."
The controversy helped sell out Wolf's March 2018 standup show at Caroline's on Broadway, and she tweeted, "Hey @GOP, thanks for the free publicity kissy face emoji." Wolf's final line in her speech was: "Flint still doesn't have clean water," referring to the ongoing man-made water crisis in Flint, Michigan.
The Break with Michelle Wolf
Wolf hosted the weekly Netflix talk show "The Break with Michelle Wolf," which premiered on May 27, 2018, and was canceled on August 18, 2018. Prior to the show's premiere, it was announced that it would "take a break from the seriousness of late-night comedy" and "instead of a take on the news, it will be a take on everything. There will be no lectures or political agendas – unless it's funny." The show shared a writing staff with "Late Night with Seth Meyers." Netflix released a trailer timed to her appearance at the 2018 White House Correspondents' Dinner. Netflix ordered a 10-episode season, which premiered in May 2018 and aired for 10 weeks, with the series finale on July 29, 2018. The show was canceled after one season, as it did not attract enough viewers to warrant renewal.
Personal Life
Wolf is an avid runner, having run a marathon in 2005 (Las Vegas), and a 50-mile (80 km) ultramarathon in 2018 in the Bonneville Salt Flats in Utah. In interviews, she has stated that her resulting injury effectively ended her athletic dreams, saying: "I had a grade three ankle sprain doing the long jump... It never fully healed."
