Cleveland, OH · comedy

Meg Stalter

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Hacks scene-stealer doing gloriously unhinged live comedy — anti-comedy charisma that turns awkwardness into an art form.

Meg Stalter is an American comedian and actor born in Cleveland, Ohio, who moved through Dayton, Huber Heights and Centerville as a child, raised in the Pentecostal church. At Wayne High School she was a drama-club regular who read for every play but never got cast in a lead. She started college at Sinclair Community College, then Wright State University, before leaving to chase acting instead.

She began doing sketch and improv in Dayton in her early twenties, then relocated to Chicago to work on comedy full time, often teaming up with her brother Nick. Moving to New York in 2019, she built a following performing several nights a week in Brooklyn's alt-comedy rooms, catching notice from New York magazine and a New York Times critic who singled her out as the year's standout new voice.

She became widely known through short character videos posted online, built around a particular kind of oversharing, self-deluded persona delivered straight to camera. During the pandemic, nightly improvised characters on Instagram Live spread her name quickly, and a sketch skewering rainbow Pride marketing, opening with the line 'Hi Gay!', turned into a widely shared meme.

Television work followed, most prominently the role of Kayla, a clueless but self-assured Hollywood assistant, in Hacks, and later a lead part in Lena Dunham's Too Much on Netflix. She has also voiced Bonnie Davis in Tooning Out the News, hosted her own webseries and podcast, and appeared in the film The Treasure of Foggy Mountain as a park ranger.

Her live work stays close to the sensibility of the videos: loose, character-driven and deliberately awkward, with long pauses and misfired bits treated as the point rather than a problem. In 2026 she began releasing music as well, putting out the single 'Prettiest Girl in America' and announcing a debut album, Crave, followed by the singles 'Gay' and 'Brr'.

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comedy