John Early

John Early is a gay comedian and actor who has been out throughout his entire professional life and whose work is inseparably inflected by queer sensibility — a maximalist, camp-adjacent aesthetic rooted in Old Hollywood melodrama, musical theater, and the particular irony of being gay and overly feeling in the contemporary world. He became widely known for his scene-stealing performance as Elliott in the HBO Max millennial satire "Search Party" (2016–2022), a character whose blend of neediness, delusion, and surprising moral horror made him one of the decade's most memorable comic creations. His stand-up and live work — including HBO specials and theatrical one-person shows — drew enormous acclaim from queer audiences for their emotional honesty and formal inventiveness. He has collaborated frequently with Kate Berlant and appeared in "Bottoms" (2023), "Bros" (2022), and the podcast-turned-phenomenon "Las Culturistas." A beloved figure in downtown New York comedy and queer performance spaces, Early represents a tradition of out gay performers whose gayness is not incidental but generative — the lens through which everything else is seen.