Jak Knight, a comedian, writer and actor who first gained attention as the voice actor and writer for the Netflix animated series “Big M...
Jak Knight, a comedian, writer and actor who first gained attention as the voice actor and writer for the Netflix animated series “Big Mouth”, died Thursday in Los Angeles. He was 28 years old.
His family confirmed his death on Saturday in a report. The statement did not cite a cause.
Mr. Knight had recently completed filming “First director”, a film written and directed by actress Chelsea Peretti, as part of a cast including many other actors.
He had appeared since March with fellow comedians Chris Redd, Sam Jay and Langston Kerman in the Peacock series ‘Bust Down,’ a comedy about a group of friends working at an Indiana casino, which he also helped create . He was nominated for a Writers Guild of America award this year for his work on the HBO talk show “Pause With Sam Jay,” for which he was a writer and executive producer.
From 2017 to 2021, Mr. Knight served as writer and producer on the hit animated sitcom “Big Mouth,” on which he voiced recurring character DeVon, a classmate of the show’s main characters. In 2019 and 2020, he wrote for the ABC comedy “Black-ish.”
In 2018, Mr. Knight was one of the comedians who performed 15-minute sets in the first season of the Netflix series “The Comedy Lineup”, which The New York Times’ Jason Zinoman praises for its “attempt to give a platform to comics that are not known”.
Mr. Knight may not have been a household name, but he had already caught the eye by the time he appeared on ‘The Comedy Lineup’. He was named Comedy Central’s “Comic to Watch” in 2014 and a new face at the Just for Laughs Festival in 2015 in Montreal. In 2018, he was on a list of “LA comedian to watch by TimeOut Los Angeleswho wrote, “Knight brings so much joy and energy to the stage that maybe he doesn’t even have to be funny – but of course he is.”
He opened for Dave Chappelle, Joel McHale, Eric Andre, Moshe Kasher, Hannibal Buress and other top comedians. Mr. Chappelle and the animated series “The Boondocks”, he once said, were “one hundred percent the reasons I do what I do”.
Mr. Knight grew up in Seattle and started doing stand-up as a teenager. Biographical information and survivor information was not immediately available.
As news of Mr Knight’s death spread, tributes appeared on social media.
Comedian James Adomian said on Twitter that every time he played with Mr. Knight he knew it would be a “wildly funny evening”.
“He was winning big,” Mr. Adomian wrote, “all well deserved, so witty and memorable every moment on stage and off.”
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