Sagal was raised in a Jewish family inBerkeley Heights, New Jersey,[4] son of Matthew and Reeva Sagal.[5] Matthew was a telecommunications executive, and Reeva was a schoolteacher who became a stay-at-home mother.[6]
Sagal is a 1987 graduate ofHarvard College,[5][6] where one of his college roommates was futureWall Street Journal correspondentJess M. Bravin.[7] Together, they entered a competition to write theHasty Pudding production and were selected to develop their script "Between the Sheiks".[7] Sagal studied English literature at Harvard.[5] While there he wrote and directed other student theater productions.[6] He also spent a summer as a journalist forCycle, a now defunct motorcycle magazine.[8]
After graduating from Harvard, Sagal pursued several different occupations, all connected to the theater or writing. While living in Los Angeles, he appeared as a contestant on the game showJeopardy! in April 1988, in which he placed second.[9]
Sagal then moved to New York to pursue a theater writing career[6] In 1998, he moved to theChicago area, when he became the host ofNPR'sWait Wait... Don't Tell Me! news quiz program.[6]
He was literary manager for the now-defunct Los Angeles Theater Center,[6] a stage director, an actor, a playwright and a screenwriter, and an extra in a Michael Jackson video. He has also been a journalist, an essayist,[10][11][12] a humorist,[11]a travel writer,[12][13] and an author.[14] Sagal has written several plays that have been performed across the United States and internationally.[12][13] Some have also been performed as radio plays or podcasts.[15][12][13][16][17]
Sagal has written screenplays,[18] one for a 1996 science fiction / martial arts thriller,Savage, another forDirty Dancing: Havana Nights, a 2004 sequel to the originalDirty Dancing, adapted from his screenplayCuba Mine,[13][16] which Sagal said bears little resemblance to the poorly-received film.[8]
Sagal on his "We the People" Harley Davidson motorcycle at the National Archives during filming forConstitution USA with Peter Sagal
Sagal had a brief voice cameo as Clown's Joy in the 2015 animated movieInside Out.[19]
He appeared as himself in the "Pay Pal" episode of the animated television seriesThe Simpsons. In that episode characters Lisa and Tumi listened to an episode ofWait Wait... Don't Tell Me! featuring Sagal and announcerCarl Kasell.
Sagal has appeared in three television specials based on his radio show:Wait Wait... Don't Tell Me! (2008),Wait Wait... Don't Tell Me!: A Royal Pain in the News (2011), andWait Wait Don't Tell Me Live! (2013).
Sagal has appeared as himself in documentaries. These include:
Constitution USA with Peter Sagal—PBS TV miniseries documentary in 2013[20][21]
Sagal and theWait Wait... Don't Tell Me! team contributed a feature calledSandwich Monday toThe Salt, NPR's food blog. For five years, each Monday the Wait Wait team ate a new and different kind of sandwich for lunch. Then one of the team members would write a tongue-in-cheek blog post describing the food.[31] Sandwiches included Fritos-toppedPapa John's pizza,[31] latke double-down,[31] Passover Sandwich,[32] andBurger King's YUMBO.[33]
In the early 1990s while he was living in Minneapolis, Sagal was hired to ghostwrite an autobiography of the 1970s pornography directorGail Palmer.[6][15][16] Sagal discovered that Palmer did not direct the pornography movies attributed to her, and that she was a front for her pornographer boyfriend.[6] Peter wrote the book anyway. However, Palmer did not approve of the manuscript, and it has not been published.[6]
In October 2007HarperCollins published Sagal'sThe Book of Vice: Very Naughty Things (and How to Do Them).[6][27] In the book Sagal revisits the Gail Palmer incident and indicates that his exposure to the porn industry led to his writingBook of Vice.[6]Publishers Weekly calledBook of Vice, "a hilarious, harmlessly prurient look at the banality of regular people’s strange and wicked pleasures".[34]
TapingWait Wait...Don't Tell Me! at the Chase Auditorium in Chicago. Left to right, Bill Kurtis, Peter Sagal, US Secretary of Labor Thomas E. Perez, and panel, Paula Poundstone, Luke Burbank, and Faith Salie.Doug Berman, Carl Kasell, Peter Sagal, Rod Abid, Philipp Goedicke, and Emily Ecton at the 67th Annual Peabody Awards Luncheon in 2008
Wait Wait... Don't Tell Me! was designed as a weekly satirical look at the week's news in a quiz format.[18] The host of the show was to be a comedian namedDan Coffey[7] who would quiz panelists, celebrity guests and non-celebrity callers. The show debuted in January 1998[7][13] but had a rocky start. The producers replaced Coffey with Sagal in May 1998.[7][13]
Wait Wait... Don't Tell Me! has become one of the most popular shows on NPR. The radio program is heard weekly by nearly three million listeners on 520 public radio stations nationwide.[13][37] TheWait Wait... Don't Tell Me! podcast is also heard by a million people every month.[13][37] In 2008Wait Wait... Don't Tell Me! was awarded a 2007Peabody Award "For offering a droll, light-hearted alternative to both news and the cottage industry of punditry that surrounds it..."[38]
Wait Wait... Don't Tell Me! has not been without controversy. For instance, in December 2014, Sagal attempted a joke about aDiocese of Brooklyn Christmas ad depicting a young woman taking a selfie with a picture of Jesus. He asked why Jesus did not just take the picture for her, and answered "His hands were occupied." Critics includingFox News hostBill O'Reilly andDallas First Baptist Church senior pastorRobert Jeffress called the joke blasphemous and accused Sagal specifically and the secular media in general of mocking Christianity. O'Reilly stated that if Sagal's comment was salacious he should be fired. When asked about the incident, NPR President and CEOJarl Mohn said, "[T]he show's goal is to poke fun at the news and make people laugh" and he "regrets that we didn't succeed in this case".[39]
Sagal was married from 1994 until his divorce in 2013.[25] In 2018, he married Mara Filler. He has three children from his first marriage and two from his second marriage. Sagal was a longtime resident of the Chicago suburb ofOak Park, Illinois, though he moved toHighland Park, Illinois in 2022.[40]
^"Who's Bill This Time?".Wait Wait...Don't Tell Me!. Chicago, Illinois: NPR. February 6, 2021. RetrievedFebruary 6, 2021.I'm Bill Kurtis. And here's your host, a man whose middle name is not danger, Peter Daniel Sagal.
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