Zach Kanin is the co-creator of Netflix’s new sketch comedy, I Think You Should Leave with Tim Robinson, which premiered this week. Kanin co-created the sketch comedy with Tim Robinson, who stars in the series.
Kanin also wrote the show, directed by Alice Mathias and Akiva Schaffer, with John Solomon and Tim Robinson.
All six episodes of the show premiered on Netflix on April 23, 2019.
Since I Think You Should Leave with Tim Robinson premiered on Netflix, it has received positive critical reviews, with an 86 percent approval rating on Rotten Tomatoes.
If you’ve been wondering who the show’s co-creator and writer Zach Kanin is, and you want to know more about his background, experience and previous works, we’ve got everything you need to know.
Who is Zach Kanin?
Zach Kanin was born in Washington, D.C. in September 1983, but his family moved to Newton, Massachusetts, eighteen months after he was born. His father, Dennis Kanin, is the co-founder of the real estate development company New Boston Ventures and was Massachusetts Senator Paul Tsonga’s former Chief of Staff.
Kanin’s mom, Carol, was the finance director for Representative Niki Tsongas, late Senator Paul Tsonga’s widow.
Kanin attended Harvard where he majored in English. He studied painting with Sue Williams. In 2002, he joined the Harvard Lampoon and eventually became the president of the organization.
Kanin is well-known as a cartoonist for several publications including The New Yorker magazine. He revealed in an interview that on the week before he graduated from Harvard, an HR person from The New Yorker called the Lampoon office to ask if anyone wanted to be assistant to cartoon editor Robert Mankoff. Kanin was interested.
He joined The New Yorker in 2005 and became a regular contributor of absurdist cartoons.
He later became involved in film and TV comedy writing. Writer and producer Zach Kanin is known for his work on Saturday Night Live. He joined Saturday Night Live’s writing team in September 2011.
His writing credits also include Michael Bolton’s Big, Sexy Valentine’s Day Special (2017), which he co-wrote with the team of Scott Aukerman, David Ferguson, Mike Hanford, Tim Kalpakis, Claudia O’Doherty, Time Robinson and Joe Saunders.
Zach Kanin worked as executive producer, co-creator, and writer for Comedy Central’s Detroiters (2017). Kanin co-created Detroiters with Sam Richardson, Tim Robinson and Joe Kelly.
Detroiters followed the exploits of local ad gurus Tim Cramblin (Tim Robinson) and Sam Duvet (Sam Richardson).
Many of Zach Kanin’s bios refer to his stature. At 5 feet, 3 inches tall, he is sometimes jokingly described as Harvard Lampoon’s shortest president ever. He published a volume called The Short Book (2007), a book of “Tall Stories, Freakish Facts and the Long and the Short of Being Small”, in which he jokingly explores the pros and cons of “being small in a great big world.” He coined the word “smallotry,” which he defines as bigotry against short people.