A mysterious illness, a directorial debut, and a starring role in several popular cartoons.
These are just a few of the things that have occupied Demetri Martin's time the last few years.
Keep watching to find out exactly what happened to the iconically dry humored Demetri Martin!
Over twenty years after losing his father, Demetri Martin wrote,
directed, and starred in the 2016 film Dean. Inspired by Martin's father,
the film follows its title character, Dean, who learns that his father is selling his childhood
home after the death of his mother. Although the story isn't about Martin's own father,
per se, the film is about handling grief. Martin told the College Times,
"At my dad's funeral, I remember thinking, 'This is the worst day of my life. No contest.' It was
horrible when he was sick. Don't get me wrong, but it was that finality. Then,
I remember thinking that someday I'll be able to talk about this without crying."
Martin, who loves drawing, was able to include that passion in his film since his character was
a cartoonist. He told the Washington Post that he'd been drawing since childhood, and giving
his character a profession other than comedy gave him more room to play with non-verbal commentary.
Dean starred Martin alongside Kevin Kline, Mary Steenburgen, and Gillian Jacobs. It won
the Best Narrative Feature award at the Tribeca Film Festival, with Deadline reporting that the
festival jury found Martin's directorial debut a uniquely original take on grief-centered comedy.
With over two dozen acting credits in addition to his work as a stand-up comedian and filmmaker,
it's safe to assume Demetri Martin doesn't need to work constantly to stay afloat. In fact, Martin is
currently worth around $4 million, according to Celebrity Net Worth. He even purchased a house
from How I Met Your Mother alum Cobie Smulders back in 2017 for well over $1 million dollars.
Though he's created a rather nice nest egg for himself, he's not pompous about
it. Martin told Vice that, after dropping out of law school, he often had to take
temp work in his early days as a performer because otherwise, he didn't make any money.
"I bombed regularly and made no money for years. Eventually,
I found my way in, and now I look back and I'm like, 'Oh, I'm so glad I did that.'"
Martin also added that he worked at his family's food stand in Jersey Shore as a kid so he has a
lot of experience in the service industry. Like many former food service employees,
Martin states that he tips fairly generously in appreciation for the difficulty of the job.
In 2019, while getting ready to head out on an Australia tour, Demetri Martin told The Music that
he has become "domesticated" since the last time he was in the country. Martin married interior
designer Rachael Beame Martin in 2012, and since then the two have had two children. According to
Celebrity Net Worth, his son, Paul, was born in 2014 and his daughter, Eve, was born in 2016.
Martin elaborated that he's rarely left for too long while raising their children.
He added that he feels bad when he travels on tour without her, because she is a,
quote, "better traveler" than he is. As a father of two, Demetri Martin recognizes that
he has changed as a person after becoming a dad. He told Vulture that, much like other new parents,
he finds it easier to empathize with others after raising children. He added that he's made a point
not to talk a lot about his kids in public, being a relatively private person himself.
One detail of his parenting life Martin did share with The Boston
Globe was that he felt immense pride when his son once let the family know
that he wanted to tell a joke. Despite this early brush with the artform,
Martin added that he doesn't expect his children to become comedians like their old man.
He shared with Seven Days that being a father has also complicated his grief from losing his
own dad decades earlier. Now instead of thinking about his father's death in relation to himself,
Martin sees it in relation to his own kids.
The adorably awkward animated series We Bare Bears is about a trio of bear
siblings who want to coexist in the Bay Area alongside humans.
The cartoon bears in question are voiced by Bobby Moynihan,
Demetri Martin, and Eric Edelstein. Martin plays Ice Bear, a wise and soft spoken polar bear.
In 2017 Martin told The Patriot Ledger that doing the voice for
We Bare Bears is a good job for him because the commute isn't bad
and they can knock out a lot of recordings in just one or two sessions a week.
Martin told the publication he enjoys how wholesome the show is.
He also explained that the show is special to him as a parent, saying,
"My 3-year-old doesn't watch much stuff yet because he's so young,
but I'll go to him 'Ice Bear says good night,' and he laughs. He has this little plush toy of
Ice Bear that he sleeps with because he figured out it's my voice on the show."
In summer 2020, Martin also appeared in We Bare Bears: The Movie.
The spinoff series We Baby Bears premiered in January
2022. It showcases the same bear trio as babies, and features Martin as its narrator.
Shortly after its premier, Cartoon Network announced that a second season was underway.
In 2022, Demetri Martin kicked off his I Feel Funny tour. He told the Steamboat Pilot that
returning to the stage has been great, since a successful comedy performance is extremely
audience-driven. He went on to explain that the initial tour dates have gone great,
and he's been thrilled to see the excitement the audience feels at being at a show.
Martin told the Fairfax County Times that, like many other performers,
the joy he feels on stage is something that he missed throughout the pandemic shutdown
and he's thrilled to be back doing something he loves so much.
His current tour is full of material he wrote when he wasn't able to do live shows due to COVID-19,
so audiences are seeing almost all new work from the comedian. He explained,
"I've been joking on stage that I had this time at home where I could reflect on this unprecedented
time in global history and I found nothing, just more jokes about my dog and stuff."
After the past few years, it's safe to say dog jokes are more than enough for most fans.
On September 23, 2019, Demetri Martin took to Twitter to express his sadness to fans about
canceling his fall tour due to health issues. In the announcement, he explained that what he
thought was fatigue turned out to be a real issue with his health. The good news is that the ailment
was not life threatening, and he added that he was excited to get back on tour in 2020.
Chortle pointed out that Martin canceled his gigs in the UK and Ireland earlier in 2019 due to,
quote, "unforeseen circumstances" after rescheduling other dates because of a
last-minute conflict involving a filming schedule. Martin never revealed what illness
caused him to cancel his tour in 2019, just that he was receiving treatment.
When the COVID-19 pandemic made the world pause, Demetri Martin was forced to take a break from
stand-up shows. As a result, he suddenly felt he could enjoy other things again.
Martin told Vanyaland that the relative isolation gave him the opportunity to
focus more on both old and new hobbies. He spent more time drawing and painting,
and even took up some woodworking. What's more, Martin is coming back into his comedy
career with a newfound appreciation for the art after some much-needed time away.
Today, Martin's social media pages are filled with his sketches,
references to the work he's done in the past, and reminders of his 2022 comedy tour. Even though you
can see the joy he has in the drawings he shares online, it's also clear that Martin embraces the
joy that audiences bring him, especially after so long away. He admitted to Vanyaland that
he has nas a newfound appreciation for how much he missed connecting with his audience.
He even posted a drawing which captured just how much of an effect performance has on him.
Demetri Martin's famous one-line jokes and penchant for deadpan
delivery were on full display with his 2018 Netflix special, The Overthinker.
Just shy of an hour-long set, Martin talks about everything from donut holes, dogs,
and aggressive alphabet letters in a way only he can. The special was met with mixed reviews.
Decider's Sean McCarthy observed that some of the techniques employed in the special
set it apart from many of the works put out by Martin's contemporaries. McCarthy wrote,
"[B]y employing split-screen to present illustrations as tags to jokes,
'The Overthinker' becomes the rare stand-up comedy performance better taken in at home than live."
Other publications were even less generous in their reviews.
The AV Club critiqued the hour as unmemorable. For someone with as analytical a mind as Martin,
leaning too much on criticism of his work probably wouldn't help with his
self-diagnosed overthinking problem. The comedian told Forbes that The Overthinker was an experiment
in working with all the things he likes to do when analyzing his work as he creates it.
Although he has already published several books including If It's Not Funny It's Art and
This Is a Book, Demetri Martin has been working on another for quite some time.
Martin told Vanyaland that, despite his wife's teasing and the time he had
to work during the pandemic, he hasn't quite finished his next literary release. However,
he explained that he is making progress and his fiction writing is improving.
Martin told MN Daily that he sees books as a way to "do comedy in print".
With such a multimedia-centered approach to his live work, it only makes sense that he'd
be drawn to writing as well. Martin's other books include his quirky drawings along with his love of
wordplay. He jokingly told NPR that, while most of the sections in This Is a Book are fairly short,
he also finds some of it quite thoughtful. With sections as intricately crafted as
"Palindromes for Specific Occasions", who could disagree?
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