11 Comedians You Didn’t Realize Were in Mystery Team
Select images courtesy of Getty Images, as noted. Others from screen caps.
When I saw the Derrick Comedy feature film Mystery Team in 2009 at the Brattle Theatre in Harvard Square, my friends and I were its ideal demographic: early teenagers who were very into the YouTube comedy boom and didn’t know independent movies were allowed to look like Mystery Team. It was a big deal to us that D.C. Pierson was there for a talkback, and an even bigger deal that I deleted the group photo he kindly took with us because I didn’t like the face I was making. The film was our favorite thing we had ever seen and still today holds up very well. It acted as an introduction to the world of New York comedy writers and improvisers I would soon become obsessed with, although it’s only upon re-watching the film that I realized the extent to which that world was there the whole time(!)
Aubrey Plaza and Ellie Kemper
This doesn’t really count; these two were the most recognizable cast members outside of the Derrick boys when I first saw the movie. Aubrey Plaza (Kelly) is the movie’s fourth lead, and Ellie Kemper (Jaime, the Mystery Team’s informant/town crier) was famous to any fans of the group from the “Blowjob Girl” sketch (which she has since, fairly, noted she’s not crazy about). The weird coincidence is that the Sundance and limited release premieres of Mystery Team (in January and August respectively) straddle both Kemper and Plaza’s mainstream debuts (the premiere of Parks and Rec and Erin’s first appearance on The Office), which both occurred on April 9th, 2009.
Bobby Moynihan
Moynihan had already joined SNL by the time he played the miserably upbeat grocery store clerk Jordy in Mystery Team, but the casting was inevitable; he had already been active in many of Derrick’s sketches. Still, it’s a joy to see him pop up here now that he’s completed that long and successful tenure at SNL. Jordy is also the perfect proto-Moynihan SNL type—a great foreshadowing of what was to come.
Will Hines
Donald Glover’s Jason is undoubtedly the most hot-headed and reckless of the Mystery Team, so it makes sense that he would land in the office of Principal Stevens, telling him to knock it off. What I didn’t remember about that scene is that Principal Stevens is played by Will Hines, the venerable improv performer and teacher who once rubbed his bare ass on all of Chris Gethard’s possessions (twice) and also wrote the recent and essential How to Be The Greatest Improviser on Earth.
Matt Walsh
Matt Walsh just scored big with a well-earned and long overdue Emmy nomination for his work on Veep, and has a laundry list of great TV and movie appearances to his name, but his role as the drunk office drone Donald Glover buddies up to feels extra special, if only because you can imagine how exciting it was to these UCB kids to have one of the theater’s mythic founders cameo in their movie. Perhaps as a sign of respect, they give him Mystery Team’s best line; admonishing John Lutz and telling him ”sometimes I wish you hadn’t beaten that cancer.”