Dan Harmon Bio
Daniel James Harmon (born January 3, 1973) is an American writer, producer, animator, and actor, best known as the creator of NBC’s Community, the host of Harmontown, and the co-creator of Rick and Morty. He helped found Channel 101 and has been a formative figure in modern television animation and comedy, shaping storytelling through experimental formats and a distinctive approach to character and structure. Harmon’s career spans influential shows such as Community (2009–2015), Rick and Morty (2013–present), and Krapopolis (2023–present), as well as his ongoing Harmontown project and Starburns Industries. His work emphasizes wit, ambition, and a collaborative ethos that has inspired a generation of writers and producers.
Early Life and Background
Daniel James Harmon was born in Milwaukee, Wisconsin, on January 3, 1973. He graduated from Brown Deer High School in Brown Deer, Wisconsin, and attended Marquette University. He briefly attended Glendale Community College in Glendale, California, an experience which would later form the basis of his sitcom Community. His time at community college directly inspired the setting and tone of the acclaimed comedy series.
Harmon was a member of ComedySportz in Milwaukee, alongside Rob Schrab, a member of the sketch troupe The Dead Alewives. They produced an album, Take Down the Grand Master, in 1996. Harmon frequently appeared at Milwaukee’s Safehouse free comedy stage early in his career, where he developed his signature comedic style through live performances including a notable routine that was a song about masturbation.
Path to Television
After building his reputation in Milwaukee’s comedy scene, Harmon partnered with Rob Schrab to co-create Channel 101, an alternative television network and website that showcased experimental short-form comedy programming. Through this platform, he co-created the television pilot Heat Vision and Jack starring Owen Wilson and Jack Black, along with several other Channel 101 shows featuring Black, Drew Carey, and Sarah Silverman. This project became a proving ground for unconventional comedic talent and format experimentation.
Harmon co-created Comedy Central’s The Sarah Silverman Program and served as head writer for several episodes. He portrayed a highly fictionalized version of Ted Templeman on two episodes of the Channel 101 web series Yacht Rock, a satirical history of soft rock featuring stories about collaborations with The Doobie Brothers, Michael McDonald, and Van Halen. He was the creator, executive producer, and a featured performer in Acceptable.TV, a Channel 101-based sketch show that aired for eight episodes in March 2007 on VH1. Harmon and Schrab co-wrote the screenplay for the Academy Award-nominated film Monster House.
Dan Harmon Career
Early Career (1996–2008)
During the early years of his career from 1996 onward, Harmon established himself through various comedy projects and collaborations. His work with Channel 101 showcased his ability to discover and cultivate comedic talent while experimenting with non-traditional television formats. The Channel 101 platform became an incubator for innovative comedy that later influenced his approach to longer-form television storytelling.
His screenplay work on Monster House demonstrated his ability to contribute to major film projects. The film received an Academy Award nomination, validating his skills as a screenwriter outside of traditional television comedy. This project expanded his portfolio and credibility within the entertainment industry.
Community (2009–2015)
In 2009, Harmon’s sitcom Community, inspired by his own community college experiences, was picked up by NBC for its fall lineup. Harmon served as executive producer and showrunner for three seasons until May 18, 2012, when it was announced that Harmon was being terminated from his position on Community as a result of creative conflicts between himself and Sony executives. Despite this setback, the show maintained a devoted fanbase during its network run.
On June 1, 2013, Harmon announced that he would be returning to Community, serving as co-showrunner along with Chris McKenna. This was confirmed by Sony Pictures on June 10. NBC cancelled the show after its fifth season in May 2014, after which Harmon announced on June 30, 2014, that Yahoo had renewed the series for a 13-episode sixth season to air online on Yahoo Screen. The show continued to develop its unique approach to television storytelling with meta-narratives and bottle episodes that became hallmarks of the series.
Harmontown and Harmonquest (2011–2019)
On May 23, 2011, Harmon and Jeff B. Davis began co-hosting Harmontown, a monthly live comedy show and podcast at Meltdown Comics in Hollywood. After Harmon’s firing from Community, the show became weekly. Harmontown included a regular segment where the hosts played an ongoing campaign of pen-and-paper role-playing games, first Dungeons and Dragons, and later Shadowrun, with the help of show Game Master Spencer Crittenden. The segment inspired the Seeso original animated series HarmonQuest. The show featured multiple celebrity guests throughout its run.
Harmon and Davis took the show on tour in early 2013, which was the subject of a documentary also called Harmontown produced by director Neil Berkeley. The documentary premiered at the Austin Film Festival SXSW on March 8, 2014. On September 10, 2019, the Harmontown Twitter account announced that the podcast would be coming to an end, and its final episode was published on December 5, 2019.
Rick and Morty (2013–present)
Harmon and co-showrunner Justin Roiland began developing ideas for an animated show during Harmon’s yearlong break from Community. For its fall 2012 season, Adult Swim ordered a 30-minute animated pilot from Harmon and Roiland. The pilot, Rick and Morty, is about the adventures of a brilliant but mean-spirited inventor and his less-than-genius grandson. The show premiered on December 2, 2013, and was renewed for second and third seasons. In May 2018, Rick and Morty was renewed for a further 70 episodes after Harmon and Roiland came to an agreement with Adult Swim.
In January 2023, Harmon became the sole remaining creator after Roiland was dismissed from the series amidst domestic assault charges. Harmon voiced the recurring character of Bird Person. The series continued under Harmon’s sole creative direction, maintaining its critical acclaim and commercial success through subsequent seasons.
Starburns Industries (2010–2020)
During the first season of Community, Harmon also co-founded Starburns Industries with several people including Dino Stamatopoulos, who played a character called Star-Burns on Community. In its first year, the company produced a stop-motion episode of Community which garnered the company an Emmy Award for Outstanding Achievement in Animation. Starburns Industries was then involved in the creation of Rick and Morty and animated films Anomalisa and Bubbles. It has also produced season 2 of Mary Shelley’s Frankenhole and the special Beforel Orel for Adult Swim, HarmonQuest for Seeso and VRV and Animals for HBO. Harmon left the company in 2020.
Krapopolis (2023–present)
In June 2020, it was announced that Fox greenlit an animated comedy series from Harmon. The series was set in Ancient Greece and is a co-production between Fox Entertainment and Bento Box Entertainment. On May 17, 2021, it was announced that the series would be titled Krapopolis. The series premiered on September 24, 2023, and concluded on May 19, 2024. In July 2024, Fox renewed the series for a fourth season. In May 2025, the series was renewed for a fifth season, ahead of the season 2 finale and the season 3 premiere. The third season is set to premiere on September 28, 2025.
Dan Harmon Awards
Throughout his career, Dan Harmon has received recognition for his contributions to television and film. His Emmy nominations include Outstanding Writing for a Variety Special and Outstanding Original Music and Lyrics for his work on the 81st Academy Awards telecast in 2009. He has won Primetime Emmy Awards for Outstanding Animated Program as executive producer of Rick and Morty in 2018 and 2020. He was also nominated with Chris McKenna for a Hugo award for writing the Community episode Remedial Chaos Theory.
Awards Won
Dan Harmon has achieved significant award recognition for his creative work. He won the Primetime Emmy Award for Outstanding Animated Program in 2018 and again in 2020 for his work as executive producer of Rick and Morty. These awards recognize the show’s innovative approach to animated storytelling and its impact on contemporary television comedy.
| Award | Wins | Year |
|---|---|---|
| Primetime Emmy Award for Outstanding Animated Program (Rick and Morty) | 2 | 2018, 2020 |
Personal Life
In 2011, while writing the character Abed for Community, Harmon realized through researching the character’s traits that he might be on the autism spectrum. A doctor he consulted with agreed. In a podcast interview, he acknowledged feeling a strong connection to the character he had created. Harmon married Erin McGathy in November 2014, and they announced their divorce in October 2015. In 2016, Harmon began dating TV writer Cody Heller. In January 2019, Heller proposed to Harmon and the couple became engaged. Heller adapted a real-life experience with Harmon into the TV series Dummy starring Anna Kendrick as Heller and Donal Logue as Harmon.
Writing Style and Influences
Harmon adapted the hero’s journey, a well-known storytelling framework, for use in television. He calls this technique the story circle. He began developing the technique while stuck on a screenplay in the late 1990s when he wanted to codify the storytelling process to unveil the structure that powers movies and TV shows. While working on Channel 101, he found that many of the directors he was working with claimed they were unable to write plots for television shows. This prompted him to simplify Joseph Campbell’s structure of the hero’s journey into a circular eight-step process that would reliably produce coherent stories.
He has used the story circle technique extensively throughout projects such as Community and Rick and Morty. The circle is divided into eight segments each representing a stage of the plot. A character is introduced, wants something, enters a new environment, adapts to that environment, achieves their goal, encounters problems as a result of this, leaves that world, and is changed as a result. Harmon states that this circular structure of storytelling can be applied both to film and TV.
In interviews, Harmon has cited numerous influences on his work including the films RoboCop and Network, the television shows Cheers, Mr. Show, Arrested Development, Second City Television, and Twin Peaks, the books Slaughterhouse-Five and The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy, and writers and comedians including Garry Shandling, George Lucas, Charlie Kaufman, Woody Allen, and others. He has also noted Dungeons and Dragons, musician Tori Amos, and evolutionary anthropologist Elaine Morgan as influences on his creative process.