Trevor Moore

Trevor Paul Moore (April 4, 1980 – August 7, 2021) was an American comedian, actor, writer, filmmaker, and solo comedy musician.

He was known for being one of the three founding members—alongside Sam Brown and Zach Cregger—of the New York City-based comedy troupe the Whitest Kids U' Know (WKUK), who had their own sketch comedy series on IFC that ran for five seasons.

Moore was born in Montclair, New Jersey.

His parents are former Christian folk-rock singers Mickey and Becki Moore who were successful in the 1980s, their single "Love Song for Number Two" having reached No. 2 on the U.S. Christian charts.

Because he traveled a lot on tour with his family, he changed schools constantly, going to about five different schools.

By the age of 15, he became a published cartoonist after compiling his early work in a book called Scraps.

At 16, Moore created the comic strip Cuddy for the now-defunct newspaper The Charlottesville Observer in Charlottesville, Virginia.

Moore attended high school at the Covenant School in Charlottesville, and by the time he was 18 he graduated while also developing personal projects.

Moore started out as a broadcasting major at Virginia Commonwealth University, and while he originally wanted to study journalism and political science, he chose film in the end.

Moore, like his future Whitest Kids U' Know companions Sam Brown and Zach Cregger, studied at the School of Visual Arts in Manhattan, where he majored in film with a BFA and graduated cum laude.

From 1997 to 1998, his show The Trevor Moore Show ran on public-access television in Charlottesville, Virginia.

It garnered a following among the local college community, and by the time he was 18, Moore was offered a deal by Pax-TV (now Ion Television).

The show lasted sixteen episodes, featuring sketches like "Hey Hey, Who Died Today?"

(a parody newscast from the local senior citizens' home) and the "Walking-Talking Box", but was cancelled due to what was deemed offensive material and a mistake regarding the programming of the show, namely being broadcast too early for its rating.

It was his belief that the show would only air at night, but halfway through the first season he found out that it was being rerun at 9 a.m. on Saturday mornings.

Later, Moore went on to work at the cable TV startup company ImaginAsianTV as a producer and writer for Jimbo Matison's Uncle Morty's Dub Shack, a comedy show that involved comedians performing sketches and re-voicing and parodying old Asian movies.

By 2002, in his last year of college, Moore was granted a personal internship at Saturday Night Live.

Initially, Moore was only going to be there for one semester, but the show ended up asking him to stay for the entire year.

This got him into the coveted NBC Page Program, which receives about 50,000 applications and only admits 50 people a year.

He credits Saturday Night Live creator and executive producer Lorne Michaels as part of his comedic education.

In 2004, Moore's comedy troupe, the Whitest Kids U' Know, started a regular engagement at the Lower East Side bar, Pianos.

The success of WKUK on the internet and in live shows led to an invitation to the 2006 HBO U.S. Comedy Arts Festival in Aspen.

The troupe won the award for Best Sketch Group and attracted the attention of many Hollywood executives.

Following their success at the festival, Sundance, MTV, and Comedy Central all approached the group to do a television pilot, but Fuse was already getting it started.

It is now in syndication around the world.

In 2008, Moore was a guest voice on an episode of the HBO show The Life and Times of Tim.

After the success of the Whitest Kids U' Know, Fox Searchlight approached Moore and Cregger with a script and offered them a movie project.

After consideration, they accepted, rewrote the original script and adapted it to their comedy style, and after completing filming of the second season of The Whitest Kids U' Know, they directed and starred in Miss March.

This was Moore's first feature film.

It was released on March 13, 2009.

During their college years, Moore and Sam Brown had the idea for a movie about the American Civil War.

Finally, while shooting the fifth season for The Whitest Kids U' Know, he and the troupe wrote and filmed his second feature film titled The Civil War on Drugs (2011), where they all played multiple roles.

The movie was directed by Moore and Cregger.

It had limited release in theaters and ultimately ran simultaneously with the fifth season of WKUK.

It is a historical drama that the WKUK made to document the journey to legalize marijuana during the Civil War.

Moore played Josh Armstrong on Fox's comedy television series Breaking In.

Moore was periodically featured on The Tonight Show with Jay Leno in recurring segments showcasing pre-taped, man-on-the-street style comedy bits, featuring pranks on and encounters with an unsuspecting public.

Moore also collaborated on various occasions with Funny or Die and Comedy Central.

Since the foundation of the WKUK comedy troupe, Moore and the other members have constantly participated in on-stage presentations, either individually or as a group in different projects.

He toured every year with the WKUK troupe, performing old and new sketches in live shows.