page_title: Thomas Middleditch
section_title: Career
hierarchical_section_title: Thomas Middleditch / Career
caption_attribution_description: English: Thomas Middleditch at "SILICON VALLEY: Making the World a Better Place", a panel starring the cast and creators of Silicon Valley (TV series) at SXSW 2016.
context_page_description: Thomas Steven Middleditch is a Canadian actor, voice actor, comedian, and screenwriter, known for his role as Richard Hendricks in the HBO series Silicon Valley, for which he was nominated for a Primetime Emmy Award for Outstanding Lead Actor in a Comedy Series, and Penn Zero in the Disney XD animated series Penn Zero: Part-Time Hero. He voiced Harold Hutchins in Captain Underpants: The First Epic Movie. Middleditch also appears in ads for Verizon Wireless.
context_section_description: While living in New York City, Middleditch began acting in commercials. In 2007 a sketch video for Chicken McNuggets he made with Fernando Sosa in Chicago was purchased by McDonald's and used as a commercial. He appeared in the 2009 romantic comedy Splinterheads, portraying the lead role of Justin Frost. On March 25, 2010, he joined a CBS pilot Hitched, written by Josh Schwartz and directed by Rob Greenberg. On May 5, 2011, Middleditch made his first appearance in Jake and Amir, in the episode "Jake and Amir: Doobs".
  On May 31, 2011, Middleditch joined the cast of the Paramount Pictures' comedy film Fun Size, directed by Josh Schwartz. On August 8, 2011, he joined Road to Nardo, a film that would have been Scot Armstrong's directorial debut. On December 12, 2011, he joined Jay Roach's The Campaign, starring Will Ferrell and Zach Galifianakis.
  On July 23, 2012, Middleditch joined the cast of the comedy film Someone Marry Barry, directed and written by Rob Pearlstein and produced by Barry Josephson. On August 23, 2012, he had a role in The Office's final season episode "The Farm". He had a role in the 2013 comedy fantasy film The Brass Teapot, directed by Ramaa Mosley, and played a police officer in the 2013 CBS Films coming-of-age comedy film The Kings of Summer.
  On January 30, 2013, Middleditch joined HBO's comedy pilot Silicon Valley playing Richard Hendricks. He has said that the pilot was written with him specifically in mind as the lead (the character was originally named Thomas Pickering; the latter being his mother's maiden name). This was a result of a "random" audio sketch he once made for a stand-up routine which he would later animate himself and pitched to several people, including Mike Judge's production partners John Altschuler and Dave Krinsky, who would later create the show.
  For his work on the show, Middleditch has garnered four Satellite Awards nominations and a win in 2019,  and two Critics' Choice Television Award nominations. In 2016, Middleditch earned his first Primetime Emmy Award nomination for Outstanding Lead Actor in a Comedy Series for his performance in the show.
  On April 23, 2013, he was added to the cast of the comedy film Search Party, playing Nardo, who travels to Mexico to win his fiancé back. Middleditch made a small cameo appearance in the 2013 film The Wolf of Wall Street as a broker who is fired for cleaning his fish bowl during office hours.
  He has played as a hipster thief in the episode "Sunday Funday" on the show You're The Worst. On The Pete Holmes Show, he played Nightcrawler and Gambit from the X-Men and Vega and Ken from Street Fighter II. On October 16, 2013, it was announced that the Disney XD-produced animated series Penn Zero: Part-Time Hero would star Middleditch as the titular multiverse-hopping hero. The series premiered in late 2014. In 2015, he co-starred in the films The Final Girls and The Bronze. Also in 2015, he began streaming himself playing video games on the website Twitch.
  In 2014 he joined a CollegeHumor series on YouTube called CAMP.
  Middleditch voiced Harold Hutchins in DreamWorks Animation's animated feature Captain Underpants: The First Epic Movie (2017), based on Dav Pilkey's book Captain Underpants. As of 2017, Middleditch has appeared in Verizon commercials as their spokesperson. In 2019, he appeared in the MonsterVerse film Godzilla: King of the Monsters and the basketball video game NBA 2K20.
  In April, 2020, Middleditch and fellow improvisor Ben Schwartz starred in Netflix's first longform improv special Middleditch and Schwartz, a series of three hourlong performances filmed at New York University's Skirball Center for the Performing Arts.
  In fall 2020, Middleditch will play in the lead role of Drew in CBS comedy series B Positive which was written by Chuck Lorre. The series was originally supposed to air in March 2020 but production was halted due to the COVID-19 pandemic, however filming of the pilot had already taken place and so the show was moved to be CBS' only fall debut.
caption: Middleditch at SXSW 2016
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