Performer
A performer whose catalogue work here is strong, with the fuller case still to be made.
Nutevio rank
#1576
of 909177 performers
Top 1%
Jay Pharoah works on versatility rather than volume, and the catalogue keeps proving that the quieter choice was the correct one.
The essay
Our editors on the work, the patterns and the reason this body of work holds together.
Jay Pharoah appears in 18 films in the Nutevio catalogue, and none of them would work the same way without Jay. Norman Lear: 100 Years of Music and Laughter is the clearest case: a film rated 8.0 by our editors, where the performance carries weight the script only implies.
The recognisable elements are versatility, transformation, quiet performance. Watch two of these films back to back and the method separates from the material — the same instrument, tuned differently for comedy, tv movie, horror. It is a style built on what is withheld as much as what is played.
Working with Adam Ray, Tim Story, Christopher McCulloch and others, Jay Pharoah helped set a standard other performers now audition against. Awards bodies have been slower than the work, which is usually the sign of a career built on choices rather than campaigns.
Norman Lear: 100 Years of Music and Laughter (2022) as Self · All My Life (2020) as Dave Berger · The Mitchells vs. the Machines (2021) as Noah (voice)
Career snapshot
Ranked #1576 of 909177 performers tracked in the Nutevio library.
Films in Nutevio
18
2014–2026
Career length
12 yrs
Measured across our catalogue
Academy Awards
—
Unknown
Oscar nominations
—
Unknown
Highest Nutevio score
8.0
Norman Lear: 100 Years of Music and Laughter
Average Nutevio score
6.4
Across catalogue work
Highest IMDb rating
8.0
Norman Lear: 100 Years of Music and Laughter
Most frequent director
Tim Story
2 films together
Longest collaboration
2×
With Tim Story
Most common genre
Comedy
13 titles
Average runtime
1h 35m
Across catalogue work
Golden Globe wins
—
Unknown
Nutevio metric
Ten weighted categories, applied identically to everyone we cover.
Nutevio Performer Score
6.8
out of 10
A performer whose catalogue work here is strong, with the fuller case still to be made.
Nutevio metric
Cultural impact and legacy, measured separately from craft — how far the work travelled once it left the cinema.
Nutevio Influence Score
6.3
out of 10
A quieter influence — felt inside the films rather than across the industry.
How far the work travelled past the people who saw it first.
What survives once the release-week conversation has burned off.
Institutional acknowledgement, weighted but never decisive.
Years of chosen, relevant work rather than years merely employed.
Statuettes, read as evidence rather than verdict.
Roles named without needing the film named alongside them.
Directors who wrote parts because this performer existed.
The reading other performers now have to answer.
Actor DNA
A fingerprint derived from the roles themselves — register, range and the kind of film they carry.
The shape of a career
Every performance plotted in time. Hover a point to read the title behind it.
Peak years
Where the scores, the awards and the sheer volume of work agree with each other.
Best decade
2020s
6.5 average MV
The 2020s are where the work and the material meet. Busboys, Adam Ray Is Dr. Phil UNLEASHED, The Blackening — the run our editors reach for first when the argument is about range rather than fame.
Highest average Nutevio score
2020s
6.5
Across 12 catalogue films in this decade, our scores never drop below the level a career is judged on.
Highest average IMDb rating
2020s
6.5
The public agrees most strongly about this stretch — useful context, and occasionally a decade behind our own reading.
Most awarded era
2010s
0 Academy Awards
Statuettes for the films themselves, which is the honest way to read an ensemble career. Live in Front of a Studio Audience: "All in the Family" and "Good Times", Unsane, Get a Job.
Most productive era
2020s
12 films
The busiest stretch of the catalogue — volume that reads as appetite rather than availability.
Range, mapped
Genres down the side, decades across the top. Warmer cells mean stronger titles.
| Genre | 2010s | 2020s |
|---|---|---|
| Drama | 5.72 films | 6.03 films |
| Action | 6.31 film | 7.31 film |
| Thriller | 6.31 film | 4.71 film |
| Comedy | 6.25 films | 6.68 films |
| Crime | — | 4.71 film |
| Romance | 6.11 film | 7.42 films |
| Horror | 6.31 film | 5.82 films |
Chronology
Firsts and peaks
The turning points, in the order they happened.
First film in Nutevio
2014Ride Along
Where our catalogue meets this career, as Runflat.
Highest rated performance · Career peak
2022Norman Lear: 100 Years of Music and Laughter
8.0 on the Nutevio scale, the top of the catalogue for this performer. Weighing billing against the film's own quality, this is the point where everything aligned at once.
Most recent film
2026Busboys
The current state of the argument, as DEA Agent.
Our order
Every performance in the catalogue, ordered by Nutevio Score.
Every title
Filter by genre or decade, and compare any two titles side by side.
18 of 18 films
as Self
Directed by Unknown
as Dave Berger
Directed by Unknown
as Noah (voice)
Directed by Mike Rianda
as Jason
Directed by Steven K. Tsuchida
From the library
Every movie and TV credit stored for this name in the Nutevio catalogue — filter by media, role or sort by rating.
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The defining work
#1
Self
Norman Lear: 100 Years of Music and Laughter (2022)
Performance score7.8
The performance the rest of the career is read through. Self gives Jay Pharoah a structure to work against, and the film hands over its centre of gravity without hesitation.
View movie#2
Dave Berger
All My Life (2020)
Performance score7.6
All My Life asks for something the previous films did not, and gets it. Dave Berger is played without a single line of pleading for the audience's sympathy — which is exactly why it lands.
View movie#3
Noah (voice)
The Mitchells vs. the Machines (2021)
Performance score7.5
The Mitchells vs. the Machines asks for something the previous films did not, and gets it. Noah (voice) is played without a single line of pleading for the audience's sympathy — which is exactly why it lands.
View movie#4
Jason
Resort to Love (2021)
Performance score7.5
Resort to Love asks for something the previous films did not, and gets it. Jason is played without a single line of pleading for the audience's sympathy — which is exactly why it lands.
View movieStart here
A guided path through the work, ordered so each film explains the next.
Best entry point
as Self
Start here. Norman Lear: 100 Years of Music and Laughter is the clearest statement of what Jay Pharoah does — accessible, 85 minutes, and rated 8.0 by our editors. No context required.
Our editors order this path by accessibility first and chronology second. You meet Jay at the most legible performance, then move forward in time so each film reads as a response to the one before it rather than a repetition of it.
All My Life (2020)
Same director as Norman Lear: 100 Years of Music and Laughter, different problem to solve. Watching them in order shows how much of the effect was the collaboration.
The Mitchells vs. the Machines (2021)
A deliberate change of key after All My Life — same instrument, unfamiliar tuning, and the reason range gets mentioned.
Resort to Love (2021)
Keeps the comedy register of The Mitchells vs. the Machines but asks for a colder reading of it.
Adam Ray Is Dr. Phil UNLEASHED (2024)
Keeps the comedy register of Resort to Love but asks for a colder reading of it.
Company kept
The directors and performers this career keeps returning to.
Tim Story
Director
2 films together
Notably Ride Along
Chris Rock
Director
1 film together
Notably Top Five
Garth Jennings
Director
1 film together
Notably Sing
Andy Fisher
Director
1 film together
Notably Live in Front of a Studio Audience: "All in the Family" and "Good Times"
Steven K. Tsuchida
Director
1 film together
Notably Resort to Love
Justin Simien
Director
1 film together
Notably Bad Hair
Mike Rianda
Director
1 film together
Notably The Mitchells vs. the Machines
Christopher McCulloch
Director
1 film together
Notably The Venture Bros.: Radiant Is the Blood of the Baboon Heart
Adam Ray
Director
1 film together
Notably Adam Ray Is Dr. Phil UNLEASHED
Behind the camera
Who casts this performer, how often, and what the pairing produces.
Tim Story
Director
2 films together · 6.1 avg MV
A working relationship rather than a booking — 2 films, and the register shifts each time.
Best film together
Ride AlongMike Rianda
Director
1 film together · 7.7 avg MV
One film, but the kind that reorganises how a performer is cast afterwards.
Best film together
The Mitchells vs. the MachinesChristopher McCulloch
Director
1 film together · 7.3 avg MV
One film, but the kind that reorganises how a performer is cast afterwards.
Best film together
The Venture Bros.: Radiant Is the Blood of the Baboon HeartAdam Ray
Director
1 film together · 7.2 avg MV
One film, but the kind that reorganises how a performer is cast afterwards.
Best film together
Adam Ray Is Dr. Phil UNLEASHEDSteven K. Tsuchida
Director
1 film together · 7.1 avg MV
One film, but the kind that reorganises how a performer is cast afterwards.
Best film together
Resort to LoveGarth Jennings
Director
1 film together · 7.1 avg MV
One film, but the kind that reorganises how a performer is cast afterwards.
Best film together
SingAndy Fisher
Director
1 film together · 6.1 avg MV
One film, but the kind that reorganises how a performer is cast afterwards.
Best film together
Live in Front of a Studio Audience: "All in the Family" and "Good Times"Chris Rock
Director
1 film together · 6.1 avg MV
One film, but the kind that reorganises how a performer is cast afterwards.
Best film together
Top FiveJustin Simien
Director
1 film together · 5.7 avg MV
One film, but the kind that reorganises how a performer is cast afterwards.
Best film together
Bad HairSix degrees
Follow the thread outward — director, film, co-star, and the film after that.
Categories of our own
Six editorial categories we apply to every performer we cover.
Most rewatchable
The Mitchells vs. the Machines
as Noah (voice)
The one that survives a fourth viewing. Nothing in the performance depends on surprise, which is why it keeps paying out.
Most emotional performance
All My Life
as Dave Berger
Grief played at conversational volume. The film never asks the audience to cry; the performance simply makes it difficult not to.
Most influential performance
Norman Lear: 100 Years of Music and Laughter
as Self
You can hear this reading in other actors' auditions a decade later — the surest measure of influence there is.
Best ensemble performance
The Mitchells vs. the Machines
as Noah (voice)
Work that makes everyone else in the frame better without ever pulling the camera towards itself.
Career defining performance
Norman Lear: 100 Years of Music and Laughter
as Self
If the career had to be argued in a single scene, our editors would pick one from this film and rest the case.
In their films' words
“You can build a whole film around a performer who knows when not to speak. Jay Pharoah has known it for a long time.”
Head to head
Put two careers on the same scale and see where the argument actually sits.
Ours alone
Recognitions handed out by this desk, on criteria no awards body uses.
Modern Classic Performer
Awarded
Defining performances delivered inside the last twenty-five years, in films already being taught rather than merely remembered.
Comedy Legend
Awarded
13 catalogue titles in comedy, each one a reference point for the films that followed.
Our desk
Best ending, best opening, best twist and the rest — categories we apply to everyone we cover.
Best ending
Norman Lear: 100 Years of Music and Laughter
as Self
The last five minutes reorganise everything before them, and hold up when you already know what's coming.
Best opening
The Venture Bros.: Radiant Is the Blood of the Baboon Heart
as Nuno Blood / Additional Blackulas (voice)
A first sequence that states the rules of the film without explaining a single one of them.
Most emotional
Spinning Gold
as Cecil Holmes
The film where the technique steps aside and lets the feeling arrive undefended.
Best twist
Private Property
as Richard Carlyle
A reversal earned by information the film gave you and trusted you to misread.
Best visual achievement
The Venture Bros.: Radiant Is the Blood of the Baboon Heart
as Nuno Blood / Additional Blackulas (voice)
Images that would survive with the sound switched off.
Best action sequence
The Venture Bros.: Radiant Is the Blood of the Baboon Heart
as Nuno Blood / Additional Blackulas (voice)
Geography, stakes and consequence held in the same frame — spectacle you can follow.
Best dialogue
Sing
as Meena's Grandfather (voice)
Lines written to be spoken, staged so the pauses do half the work.
Most underrated film
Spinning Gold
as Cecil Holmes
The public vote sits below ours on this one, and the direction is the reason for the gap.
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Have your say
Community
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Reference
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