Travon Free (born 1984 or 1985)[1] is an Americancomedian, actor and writer. He has written forFull Frontal with Samantha Bee,[2]The Daily Show onComedy Central,[3][4] andAny Given Wednesday with Bill Simmons onHBO.
Free won anEmmy Award for his work onThe Daily Show and won anAcademy Award forTwo Distant Strangers in theBest Live Action Short Film category.[5]
Growing up with his mother and grandmother inCompton, California,[1] Free attendedDominguez High School, where he playedbasketball; in 2002, theLos Angeles Times called him the "team's best player".[6]
He attendedCalifornia State University, Long Beach, and playedcollege basketball for theLong Beach State 49ers.[1][7] While injured with atorn meniscus in his right knee that required surgery, he entertained the team with his humor, which was a prelude to his career in comedy.[8] In college, Free took a comedy writing class and performed atLaugh Factory inHollywood andThe Ice House Club inPasadena, California.[3][9]
In 2011, Free started out as a regular host of an online seriesThe Gentlemen's Rant. Free began writing forThe Daily Show in October 2012,[3] after coming in second place in a contest to win a position working for the show.[1][3] For his work there, he won aPrimetime Emmy Award for Outstanding Writing for a Variety Series in 2015.[10][11] He has also hadrecurring roles on the showsTosh.0 andChelsea Lately.[3]
In 2016, Free wrote for the HBO showAny Given Wednesday, and the following year he was hired as a writer forFull Frontal with Samantha Bee. In 2018, he appeared on the cover ofGay Times.[12] He was a producer that year on the HBO seriesCamping.
In 2019, Free joined otherWriters Guild of America members in firing his agents as part of the Guild's stand against theAssociation of Talent Agents and the practice ofpackaging.[13][14]
Free wrote and co-directedTwo Distant Strangers, which won theAcademy Award for Best Live Action Short Film in 2021.[15][16] In 2023, Free co-directedBS High a documentary forHBO, revolving around theBishop Sycamore High School scandal.[17][18]
In November 2018, after a series ofanti-Semitic tweets from 2010 and 2011 were discovered in Free'sTwitter feed, HBO said that the company had no plans to work with him in the future and stated that "This kind of language is deeply offensive and inexcusable." Free apologized, saying that the tweets were "stupid and really offensive jokes."[19]
Controversy emerged in April 2021, after Cynthia Kao posted a video on the social media site TikTok, alleging that Free'sTwo Distant Strangers wasplagiarized from a comedy sketch she had directed in December 2016 titledGroundhog Day For a Black Man.[20] The plot of Kao's film, she claims, is similar to the plot ofTwo Distant Strangers, which are both about a black man trying to relive the same day over and over until he can survive a police altercation. Furthermore, in 2020, during theGeorge Floyd protests, social media news outletNowThis contacted Kao about featuring the film on their Facebook and Instagram pages. The following year,Netflix releasedTwo Distant Strangers in collaboration withNowThis, excluding any credit of Kao's name or that she had anything to do with the original idea for the movie in any way.[21][22]
In 2011, Freecame out asbisexual.[3][23] He lives between New York and Los Angeles and collects shoes.[24]