Gorilla Party

Gorilla Party is an American sketch comedy trio consisting of Jason O’Brien, Dan Wolf, and Owen Graziano. Formed while the members were students at New York University, the trio began posting sketch comedy videos on YouTube in 2018. They were hired as writer for Saturday Night Live in 2021 and also appear in pre-recorded sketches. In late 2023, they co-wrote and starred in the buddy dramedy film My Boys, which was directed and produced by Judd Apatow.

Dan Wolf is the son of former SNL writer Fred Wolf, while Owen Graziano is the son of comedic actress and former SNL castmember Risa Kaye.

History
O’Brien and Graziano met as freshmen at New York University when both joined the school’s improv comedy group, Hammerkatz. Both found common interests such as cinema, comic books, and underground hip hop music. Graziano introduced O’Brien to improv teammate Wolf, whom the former had grown up with due to their respective parents’ shared time on Saturday Night Live, and the trio became close friends. In early 2018, Graziano’s mother helped the trio buy a single-story home in Bedford-Stuyvesant, Brooklyn, where they started creating short sketch comedy videos and posting them on YouTube. The name “Gorilla Party” was thought up by O’Brien during a night where all three of them were high on cannabis. “I came up with it and we all thought it was hilarious,” O’Brien said. “I don’t know, man. We were high.”

In 2021, the trio were invited to join Saturday Night Live as a writing trio, and were also offered their own series of pre-recorded sketches in the vein of The Lonely Island from the late 2000s. As with their YouTube sketches, many of their skits involved surreal or random scenarios such as the three of them all trying to adopt new personalities for New Year’s or drinking hard seltzers created by companies like JC Penny or Jiffy Lube. Many critics considered the skits to be a highlight of an otherwise mediocre season, which convinced showrunner Lorne Michaels to use more of their sketches the following season.

In mid-2022, it was announced that the trio were co-writing and starring in a new film to be produced by Judd Apatow; Bob Odenkirk, Bowen Yang, Sydney Sweeney, Molly Gordon, and Sarah Sherman joined the main cast the following month. The film, titled My Boys, centers around Dan Smart, Jacob O’Connell, and Owen Milano, three childhood best friends who work together at a social media startup and deal with the issues and anxieties of being young men in modern-day New York City. It was released by Universal Pictures on November 24, 2023, to generally positive reviews.

Personal Lives
O’Brien dated comedian AJ Haley from 2018 to 2020; they broke up amicably but later reunited in late 2022. Wolf has dated his high school sweetheart, registered nurse Julia Dayton, since 2014. Graziano is currently in a relationship with comedian Sydney Sweeney, who he met on the set of My Boys. All three have been very open about their struggles with mental health. In 2023, Graziano came out as gender fluid, using “he/him” and “they/them” pronouns interchangeably.