Ian Edwards was born in England and raised in Jamaica. His family moved to NY when he was 17.The United States is a great place to live, but not when you have a third world accent and are friendless.While he was literally slanging burgers at Burger King in East Meadow, Long Island, he turned to see his co-workers laughing.Another employee Greg Ellis had them on the floor in stitches.Everyone loved Greg, because he was funny, and when you worked with him, he made an 8-hour shift fly by.That's when it hit Ian.He needed to tap into his funny side. In England and Jamaica he was a funny kid, but somehow he’d forgotten that part of him. From then on he became the second funniest person at Burger King.He even made the prince, Greg laugh. One day a customer whose order he’d taken at the drive thru, told him he was funny, and should try stand up. He was 21, and needed to do something with his life.Ian went down to Governors Comedy Club and bombed his ass off. He put on a clinic of, what not to do. Only one joke worked, because he managed to say it right. So Ian figured, once he controlled his nerves, he'd be all right.
Most recently, Ian released his debut album 100% Half Assed on Conan O’Brien’s new record label, Team Coco Records. Ian is the first comedian that they chose to sign to the label and launch this new venture with. The outlets thus far that have interviewed Ian and/or reviewed his album include Entertainment Weekly, The New York Times Magazine, Forbes, Huffington Post, Paste Magazine, Marvel Comics, Thought Catalogue, The Onion AV Club, LA Weekly, Penthouse Magazine, Uptown Magazine, Exlaim!, along with television appearances on Conan and @Midnight and radio interviews on NPR’s Bullseye with Jesse Thorn and Kroq’s Kevin and Bean Show.
Ian was a full time staff writer on season 1 of the new hit ABC show Black-ish, just wrote punch-up on Ice Cube’s Barbershop 3, and has been brought on in an advisory/consultant role for Jerrod Carmichael’s new show for NBC – they have brought Ian on for the first 5 weeks to help them break story lines and really build out and create this world where the show will live. Ian can next be seen in Sean Baker’s feature Tangerine, which just premiered at Sundance to rave reviews and was purchased by Magnolia for theatrical distribution this summer. Furthermore, Ian wrote punch-up and was a consultant on the hit CBS show Two Broke Girls, was a writer/Supervising Producer on season 3 of the Adult Swim show Black Dynamite and appeared in the Jeff Garlin feature, Dealing with Idiots, opposite JB Smoove. .
In previous years Ian was a regular cast member on season 6 of MTV’s hit show Punk’d, was a writer on shows such as SNL, Cartoon Network’s The Boondocks and MTV’s The Lyricist Lounge, and performed as a stand-up on shows such as HBO’s Bad Boys of Comedy, Showtime’s Live Nude Comedy and the Comedy Death Ray Album. Furthermore, Ian just launched and hosts two of his own podcasts on two of the best comedy/podcast networks.Soccer Comics is housed on the All Things Comedy Network, partnered with Laughspin.com and The Preposterous Sessions is housed on The DeathSquad Network.
In addition, Ian has been invited to perform at some of the more prestigious festivals such as Montreal Just For Laughs Comedy Festival, HBO’s Aspen Comedy and Arts Festival, Edinburgh, Bridgetown, San Francisco Sketchfest, Moontower Comedy Festival in Austin and Jeff Garlin and Michael Moore’s festival, Traverse City Winter Comedy Arts Festival. Ian also has had jokes featured in The New York Post and Time Out Los Angeles last year.
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