Rainn Wilson

Biography

Rainn Wilson is in the cast of the new and zeitgeist-y Amazon series  Utopia based on the popular UK format. Wilson can be seen in the upcoming indie feature Blackbird starring opposite Kate Winslet and Susan Sarandon. He can also be seen in the upcoming indie feature Don’t Tell A Soul, and co-starred in the Warner Bros summer tentpole hit  Meg, for producer Lorenzo DiBonaventura opposite Jason Statham. On TV, Wilson appears in the new Star Trek series as the iconic con-man Harry Mudd; recurs on Chuck Lorre’s comedy Mom as Allison Janney's therapist; and revised his undertaker role Arthur from Six Feet Under in an appearance in the finale on Amazon's flagship series Transparent. He is next shooting The Power for Amazon, opposite Leslie Mann.

Wilson is an Emmy nominated and SAG award-winning actor who has found himself in a variety of comedic and theatrical roles throughout his career. His first breakthrough role came when he played assistant mortician “Arthur Martin” in HBO’s Six Feet Under, winning him and the cast a Screen Actors Guild Award for “Outstanding Performance by an Ensemble in a Drama Series.” Wilson is best known for playing the inimitable “Dwight Schrute” for nine seasons on NBC’s Emmy award winning comedy, The Office .

Wilson’s film credits include Netflix feature, Shimmer Lake, directed by Oren Uziel; Hesher, opposite Natalie Portman and Joseph Gordon-Levett; Super, with Kevin Bacon, Liv Tyler, and Ellen Page; Cooties opposite Elijah Wood; and the acclaimed comedies Juno; Almost Famous; and Permanent, opposite Patricia Arquette. He is upcoming in the indie feature thriller Don’t Tell a Soul.

On TV, Wilson portrayed the irascible but brilliant Detective Everett Backstrom in FOX's subversive/comic crime procedural Backstrom, as well as a special guest star role in Cameron Crowe’s Showtime series Roadies, and he recently starred in an episode of the HBO anthology series Room 104 from the Duplass Brothers.

Wilson has an MFA from NYU’s Graduate Acting Program at the Tisch School of the Arts, and spent ten years doing theatre in New York before moving to Los Angeles. He was on Broadway in The Tempest with Patrick Stewart, and the Tony nominated London Assurance. Wilson worked off-Broadway at The Public Theater and Playwrights Horizons, and performed regularly at The Arena Stage, The Guthrie, and with the touring repertory theater The Acting Company. The comedy show he created, The New Bonanza, had a successful off-Broadway run at The Cherry Lane, and later played in Los Angeles at The Hudson Guild and The Tiffany.

Wilson performed the critically acclaimed one-person monologue Thom Pain (Based on Nothing) at The Geffen; and most recently, he was the lead role in the political farce, The Doppelganger, at Steppenwolf Theater.

Wilson founded the YouTube channel Soul Pancake, which has over 2.6 million subscribers. In 2015 he published his memoir, The Bassoon King: My Life in Art, Faith, and Idiocy.