Martin Mull, who performed Colonel Mustard in Clue, Roseanne’s boss Leon Carp within the ABC comedy Roseanne and starred on Norman Lear‘s Fernwood 2 Nite, died Thursday at his residence. He was 80.
The information was revealed by his daughter Maggie Mull, an exec producer on Household Man.
“I’m heartbroken to share that my father handed away at residence on June twenty seventh, after a valiant combat towards a protracted sickness. He was recognized for excelling at each artistic self-discipline conceivable and likewise for doing Pink Roof Inn commercials. He would discover that joke humorous. He was by no means not humorous. My dad can be deeply missed by his spouse and daughter, by his associates and coworkers, by fellow artists and comedians and musicians, and—the signal of a really distinctive individual—by many, many canine. I beloved him tremendously,” she wrote.
Mull broke into performing along with his position in Lear’s cleaning soap spoof Mary Hartman, Mary Hartman and its spinoff Fernwood 2 Night time after being a rustic songwriter and musical comic.
Mull co-starred on Mary Hartman, Mary Hartman as Garth Gimble, the husband of Louise Lasser’s titular character – earlier than Hartman acquired bored with her partner and stabbed him to demise with a Christmas decoration.
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“So he was off the sequence,” director Louis J. Horvitz instructed The TV Academy Basis in 2008. “Norman [Lear] determined Martin was so good he wished to offer him one other sequence. So Garth grew to become Barth, his twin brother, and he now was going to do a parody of the native discuss present. And since our studio was on Fernwood Avenue in Hollywood, Norman referred to as it Fernwood 2 Nite.”
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Ostensibly a late-night discuss present placed on by the denizens of Mary’s small Ohio hometown, Fernwood 2 Nite launched in July 1977 as a summer time substitute for Mary Hartman, Mary Hartman and have become one of many yr’s buzziest exhibits. Mull led because the self-centered, fake-smiling host Gimble, joined by sidekick Jerry Hubbard (Fred Willard) and a forged of characters that included Completely satisfied Kyne (Frank DeVol), who hilariously and continuously was depicted as essentially the most dour individual on Earth. Then there was the pianist who was rolled onstage in an iron lung and the native official who was a affected person of the chinodonist and wore a ridiculous headgear to repair his underbite. Dabney Coleman performed the city’s eternally self-promoting Mayor Merle Jeeter on the sohw, which was retitled America 2Nite for Season 2.
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Mull went on to have roles in Taxi and Golden Women earlier than starring on Roseanne, on which he recurred from Seasons 3-9 as Leon Carp, who first was Roseanne’s (Roseanne Barr) boss on the diner and later her enterprise accomplice at The Lanford Lunchbox. He was a sequence common on Fox’s short-lived 2013 sitcom Dads, enjoying the daddy of star Seth Inexperienced’s character. He additionally co-starred in Fox’s 2018-19 sitcom The Cool Children, reverse David Alan Grier, Leslie Jordan and Vicki Lawrence.
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Amongst his most recognizable roles was recurring as a college administrator within the WB’s Sabrina the Teenage Witch, starring Melissa Joan Hart. Mull performed Willard Kraft, the petty and generally tyrannical VP and later principal of Westbridge Excessive, on greater than 70 episodes of the favored sitcom from 1977-2000 in Seasons 2-4.
Mull’s dozens of TV credit additionally included recurring because the goofy detective Gene Parmesan on Arrested Improvement and a visitor flip as Bob “The Eagle” Bradley on Veep for which he earned an Emmy nomination for Excellent Visitor Actor.
In movie, along with starring alongside Tim Curry in 1985’s Clue, he starred in Paramount’s 1980 movie Serial in addition to roles in Mr. Mother and Mrs. Doubtfire.
His final position was in Apple TV+’s The Afterparty.
Mull additionally had a profession as a voice performing, lending his pipes to TV exhibits together with American Dad!, Danny Phantom, Teamo Supremo and Household Canine and within the 2005 function Hopeless Footage. He additionally guested in voice roles on episodes of The Simpsons, Household Man, Bob’s Burgers, Dexter’s Laboratory, The Wild Thornberrys and others.
Mull additionally launched a lot of stand-up and musical comedy albums throughout his profession, two of which – 1977’s I’m Everybody I Ever Beloved and the next yr’s Intercourse & Violins – dented the Billboard 200 chart. Additionally they included a compilation disc titledNo Hits, 4 Errors: The Better of Martin Mull and Your Residing Room, which spawned the one “Dueling Tubas.” That parody of the instrumental hit “Dueling Banjos” from Deliverance cracked the Billboard Sizzling 100 for a couple of weeks in 1973.
Erik Pedersen contributed to this report.
