John Henson | |
|---|---|
 Henson in 2011 | |
| Born | John Morris Henson July 11, 1967 Stamford, Connecticut, U.S. |
| Education | Boston University |
| Occupations |
|
| Years active | 1993–present |
| Spouses | Corie Hirschtick (m. 2000;div. 2006)Jill Benjamin (m. 2010;div. 2024) |
| Children | 2 |
John Morris Henson (born July 11, 1967) is an American comedian, actor, and talk show host. He was the co-host of ABC's Wipeout with John Anderson, a prime-time game show that ran for seven seasons. [1]
Henson was born in Stamford, Connecticut, to Joe and Barbara (née Wright) Henson. He has four older brothers, one of whom is Dan Henson, the President and CEO of GE Capital, Americas. Another is Frank (Bubba) Henson, a teacher at St. Luke's School in New Canaan, Connecticut. [2] He studied acting at Boston University, Circle in the Square, Playwrights Horizons and Three of Us Studios in New York City. He has starred in various theater productions such as Rosencrantz and Guildenstern Are Dead , Conduct Unbecoming , Heinous Crimes and Other Delights, The Greenhouse Effect and Remote Evolution.
Henson was born with a white streak of hair on the right side of his head. As a result, he received the nickname "Skunk Boy" while hosting Talk Soup . [3]
Henson attended St. Luke's School in New Canaan, Connecticut. [4]
Henson began his career as a stand-up comic. He started appearing in films in the mid to late 1990s. He was the longest-running host of Talk Soup on the E! Entertainment Network, hosting just over 1,000 shows in the four and a half years he was with the network. [5] During his stint as host of Talk Soup , he appeared as a guest on Space Ghost Coast to Coast . In 2004, he was the host of The John Henson Project , a short-lived comedy-reality show on Spike TV, and hosted several broadcast specials including ABC's Best Commercials You've Never Seen, ABC's Best TV You've Never Seen and, more recently, the 33rd Annual Daytime Creative Arts Emmy Awards. From 2005 to 2007, Henson was the co-host of Watch This!, a daily television show on the TV Guide Channel. Henson has also produced numerous field segments on the entertainment industry for MSNBC and CNN and, additionally, had a small recurring role as a local newscaster on My Name Is Earl . [6]
From 2008 to 2014, Henson co-hosted the ABC obstacle course game-show, Wipeout , and always ended the show with the catch phrase, "Good night, and Big Balls", a reference to the signature obstacle in the show. [7]
Exempting the year 2020, Henson has hosted Halloween Baking Championship on Food Network since 2017. [8] For the 2020 season, Carla Hall served as both a judge and the host. [9]
Henson has also appeared in the Blink-182 music video for "What's My Age Again?" [10]
The Muppets are an American ensemble cast of puppet characters known for an absurdist, burlesque, and self-referential style of variety-sketch comedy. Created by Jim Henson in 1955, they are the focus of a media franchise that encompasses television, film, music, and other media associated with the characters. Originally owned by the Jim Henson Company for nearly five decades, the franchise was purchased by the Walt Disney Company in 2004.
America's Funniest Home Videos, also called America's Funniest Videos, is an American video clip television series on ABC, based on the Japanese variety show Fun TV with Kato-chan and Ken-chan (1986–1992). The show features humorous homemade videos that are submitted by viewers. The most common videos feature unintentional physical comedy, pets or children and some staged pranks.
Talk Soup is a television show produced for cable network E! that debuted on January 7, 1991, and aired until August 2002. Talk Soup aired selected clips of the previous day's daily talk shows—ranging from daytime entries like The Jerry Springer Show and to celebrity interview shows like The Tonight Show—surrounded by humorous commentary delivered by the host. Although Talk Soup poked fun at the talk shows, it also advertised the topics and guests of upcoming broadcasts. Despite this, several talk shows, including The Oprah Winfrey Show, refused to allow clips of their shows to be shown on the series. During its run, Talk Soup was nominated for five Daytime Emmy Awards, winning once in 1995 for Outstanding Special Class Program. A show based on it, The Soup, aired from 2004 to 2015.
Jesse James Palmer is a Canadian television personality, sports commentator, and former professional football player who was a quarterback for five seasons in the National Football League (NFL) in the early 2000s. Palmer played college football for the Florida Gators under coach Steve Spurrier, and thereafter, he played professionally for the New York Giants and San Francisco 49ers in the NFL before spending half of the 2006 season with the Montreal Alouettes of the Canadian Football League (CFL).
John Henry Michael "Rove" McManus is an Australian triple Gold Logie award-winning comedian, television and radio presenter, producer and media personality. He was the host of the eponymous variety show Rove and was also the host of the comedy talk show Rove LA. He is the co-owner of the production company Roving Enterprises with business partner Craig Campbell. He hosts Whovians on the ABC.
Travis Landon Barker is an American musician who is the drummer for the rock band Blink-182. He has collaborated with hip hop artists, is a member of the rap rock group Transplants, cofounded the rock band +44, and joined Box Car Racer, Antemasque and Goldfinger. Barker was a frequent collaborator with the late DJ AM, and together they formed TRV$DJAM. Due to his fame, Rolling Stone referred to him as "punk's first superstar drummer" as well as one of the 100 greatest drummers of all time.
KABC is a commercial AM radio station licensed to Los Angeles, California, and serving the Greater Los Angeles area. The station is owned by Cumulus Media and broadcasts a news/talk format. The studios are located in the Los Angeles suburb of Culver City. The transmitter is off West Martin Luther King Boulevard in the Crenshaw District, shared with KWKW and KFOX. KABC’s power is 6,600 watts daytime and 7,900 watts nighttime, using a directional antenna.
John Anderson is an American sports commentator who has served as host of the ESPN TV program SportsCenter since June 1999.
The Prospect Studios is a lot containing several television studios located at 4151 Prospect Avenue in the Los Feliz neighborhood of Los Angeles, at the corner of Prospect and Talmadge Street, just east of Hollywood. For more than fifty years, this facility served as the West Coast headquarters of the American Broadcasting Company (ABC) before the network moved its main headquarters to the Walt Disney Studios in 1996. From 1949 to 1999, ABC-owned Los Angeles television station KABC-TV was also located there. The station moved to a new state-of-the-art facility located on a portion of Disney's Grand Central Creative Campus (GC3) in nearby Glendale, California, in December 1999. The Walt Disney Company, which acquired ABC, continues to own and operate the facility to this day.
Joel Edward McHale is an American actor, comedian, and television presenter. He is best known for hosting The Soup (2004–2015) and his role as Jeffrey "Jeff" Winger on the NBC sitcom Community (2009–2015). He has performed in the films Spider-Man 2 (2004), Spy Kids: All the Time in the World (2011), Ted (2012), and The Happytime Murders (2018).
Jill Suzanne Wagner is an American actress and television personality. She was the on-field host for the ABC game show Wipeout from 2008 to 2014, except in 2012. Since then, Wagner has starred in several made-for-television films for the Hallmark Channel and Hallmark Movies & Mysteries. She stars as Bobby in the Paramount+ spy series Special Ops: Lioness (2023).
St. Luke's School is a private, secular, co-educational day school founded in 1928 and situated on a 40-acre (160,000 m2) campus in New Canaan, Connecticut. St. Luke's offers a college-preparatory curriculum for grades 5 through 12, with a diverse student body of 594 from 30 towns in Connecticut and New York.
CityKids is an American television series that aired late Saturday mornings on ABC from 1993 to 1994. The show consists primarily of live action performances, interspersed with Muppet segments, courtesy of Jim Henson Productions. These Muppets were original characters designed specifically for the show, not ones taken from Sesame Street or The Muppet Show. These original characters often served as the Greek chorus for the show, commenting on the situations of the human characters, but not actually interacting with them.
Wipeout is an American television game show that features contestants competing in the "World's Largest" obstacle course which originally aired on ABC from June 24, 2008, to September 7, 2014. In 2021, the show was rebooted on TBS, with John Cena, Nicole Byer, and Camille Kostek as hosts.
Carla Hall is an American chef, television personality and former model.
Halloween Baking Championship is an American cooking competition show that premiered on Food Network on October 5, 2015. Like its sister show, Holiday Baking Championship, it's a seasonal program that runs for a few weeks and aims to crown the best baker of spooky, creepy desserts.
Camille Veronica Kostek is an American model, television presenter, and actress. She appeared in the Sports Illustrated Swimsuit Issue and was featured on the cover of the magazine's 2019 edition.
Wipeout is an American television game show based on an obstacle course, hosted by John Cena, Nicole Byer, and Camille Kostek which premiered on TBS on April 1, 2021. It is a reboot of ABC's Wipeout which ran from 2008 to 2014. The series was renewed for a second season in May 2021.
Earth to Ned is an American television show on Disney+. It stars Ned, an alien from outer space who comes to Earth on a mission to invade it. Upon arriving, he fell in love with its pop culture, and instead hosts a late night talk show to meet and be entertained by Earth's celebrities. Earth to Ned premiered on September 4, 2020, on Disney+ and consisted of ten episodes. Ten more episodes were released on January 1, 2021. The series was removed from Disney+ on May 26, 2023.