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Rolling Stone
August 11, 2005
BOY WONDER
MTV’s newest star, Andy Milonakis, has a secret
By Andrew Vontz
Andy Milonakis might blow up into the next Johnny Knoxville. Or he might be the next here-today-gone-tomorrow Jesse Camp. But right now the host of MTV’s top-rated new show is at the Los Angeles Farmer’s Market, holding my hand and doing what he does best – acting like a little kid. And with his ample baby fat, red checked shirt and white Velcro kicks, he certainly seems to fit the bill. “Daddy likes pizza!” Milonakis shouts enthusiastically with the lilt of an alternately abled youth as we walk past a father and son holding hands. The dad smiles at Andy, nods his head and says, “Yeah, this daddy likes pizza, too!”
It’s weird and a little bit creepy and kind of hilarious, just like his piece of MTV’s Sunday stew, The Andy Milonakis Show. On his show, Milonakis acts like an ADD-addled twelve-year-old with New York’s Lower East Side as his playground. He’s accosted senior citizens and delivery boys, turned a pancake into a mask, eaten Fruity Pebbles with L’il Jon and bathed in mustard. The production values are so low that it looks like a twelve-year-old might have actually made the show. But in person he drops hip-hop slang and acts like a twentysomething. So just how old is this guy?
MTV isn’t saying. Promo materials for the show are written in the voice of a fifth grader and unfailingly present him as a little kid. Company execs dodge every question about his age. “I think it’s great for us if it gets people talking. Who cares how old he is?” says Tina Exarhos, a vice president of marketing for MTV. So far the plan seems to be working. Despite mostly withering reviews, the show ranks Number One in its time period among viewers twelve to twenty-four.
In fact, Milonakis may well be older than his audience: In a 2003 interview, he told collegehumor.com that he was twenty-seven-years old. “I was lying,” he says, giggling nervously. “I’m this many.” He holds up four fingers. Perhaps he’d like to grab a beer? “You’re gonna have to sneak it to me and convince me that I like the taste,” he says, giggling again.
Bio information on Milonakis is sketchy, but this much is known: He broke into showbiz in the late Nineties making absurd videos that he posted on the Web. At the time, he was working as a network administrator at a New York accounting firm while living with his parents in the suburbs. He moved to the city to pursue comedy and studied at the Upright Citizens Brigade Theater. Soon he was performing standup and working as a club DJ. “I used to spin reggae parties in the Bronx, Jamaican guys coming up with jerked chicken, yeah man, big respect, bumbaclad,” he says.
In the meantime, his Web site drew thousands of visitors including Jimmy Kimmel, who featured Milonakis’ funny/stupid “The Super Bowl Is Gay’ ” music video (Milonakis flails at a guitar while calling a wide variety of things “gay” including coins, cottage cheese, water, and – of course – the Super Bowl) on his show’s premiere. After a bunch of guest appearances, the pair put together The Andy Milonakis Show and MTV picked it up. “What he was doing reminded me of what you do in the mirror when you’re a kid,” says Kimmel.
So how does a grown man end up looking like a preteen? Internet chatter speculates that he has some sort of hormonal disorder (a.k.a. the Gary Coleman Syndrome) or perhaps a wasting disease. “No sir,” says Milonakis, bursting into that goddman kiddy giggle again. But how long can he keep up the façade? “Hopefully the show goes on for a while but I know when people do a certain character for a long time it’s hard for them to get work in movies because they’re known as that one person. I don’t want to be known as the retarded kid forever.”
Milonakis lets go of my hand to order Korean barbecue and a table full of high school kids start yelling his name. “Can I have your autograph?” one bold girl yells across the food court. As the kids crowd around the table, the father and son that we saw earlier walk past. The dad looks pissed. “Daddy likes pizza, huh?” he says, shaking his head in disgust. And Milonakis just laughs.
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