Zach Cregger

A four-way threat as actor-director-producer-writer, the comedy-inflected Zach Cregger (birthname: Zachary Michael Cregger) is best known as co-founder of the comedy group, The Whitest Kids U’Know, as well as star of various sitcoms, including Friends with Benefits. After winning Best Sketch Group at the 2006 HBO U.S. Comedy Arts Festival, Cregger and The Whitest Kids U’Know established themselves on television, particularly on their comedy show which aired for five seasons from 2007-2011 on IFC.

Cregger’s feature debut as an actor was the MGM comedy, College (2008), directed by Deb Hagan and with Drake Bell, Kevin Covais, Andrew Caldwell, and Haley Bennett. The following year, Cregger partnered with his late WKUK co-player Trevor Moore (who died in 2021) as writer-director-star of the Playboy-themed comedy distributed by Fox Searchlight, Miss March (2009), with Craig Robinson and, in his last screen appearance, Playboy founder Hugh Hefner. Cregger’s second WKUK-related movie was The Civil War on Drugs (2011), again written and directed by Cregger and Moore, with Cregger playing Abraham Lincoln.

Back as an actor in a non-KWUK project, Zach Cregger joined the cast of Bryan Poyser’s Love & Air Sex (2013), with Sara Paxton, Ashley Bell, and Addison Timlin, which premiered at the 2013 SXSW Film Festival. Cregger co-starred in the Lionsgate teen comedy, Date and Switch (2014), with Dakota Johnson, Nicholas Braun, and Hunter Cope, followed by the indie musical comedy, Opening Night (2016), starring Topher Grace, Anne Hache, Taye Diggs, and Rob Riggle.

Cregger switched modes for the drama of Will McFadden’s race-themed Doubting Thomas (2018), with McFadden, Jamie Hector, James Morrison, and Melora Walters. In the biggest creative shift of his career, Cregger was writer-director (and not cast member) of 20^th Century Studios’ horror movie–with no comedy–Barbarian (2022), starring Georgina Campbell, Bill Skarsgård, and Justin Long. Cregger reunited with his KWUK troupe, including Moore in his final feature appearance, in the Sevan Najarian-directed animated comedy, Mars (2022), which Cregger co-wrote with Moore and Sam Brown.