Background and career
Daniel James Harmon (born January 3, 1973) is an American television writer, producer, and actor. He is best known as the creator and producer of the NBC sitcom Community (2009–2015), creator and host of the comedy podcast Harmontown (2012–2019), and co-creator of the Adult Swim animated sitcom Rick and Morty (2013–present) and its subsequent franchise along with Justin Roiland. Harmon is also co-founder of the alternative television network and website Channel 101 along with Rob Schrab, and creator of the Fox animated sitcom Krapopolis (2023–present).
Daniel James Harmon was born in Milwaukee, Wisconsin, on January 3, 1973. He graduated from Brown Deer High School in Brown Deer, Wisconsin, and attended Marquette University. He briefly attended Glendale Community College in Glendale, California, an experience which would later form the basis of his sitcom Community.
Harmon was a member of ComedySportz in Milwaukee, alongside Rob Schrab, a member of the sketch troupe The Dead Alewives. They produced an album, Take Down the Grand Master, in 1996. Harmon frequently appeared at Milwaukee's Safehouse free comedy stage early in his career. A notable routine was a song about masturbation. Harmon co-created the television pilot Heat Vision and Jack (starring Owen Wilson and Jack Black) and several Channel 101 shows, some featuring Black, Drew Carey, and Sarah Silverman. He co-created Comedy Central's The Sarah Silverman Program and served as head writer for several episodes. Harmon portrayed a highly fictionalized version of Ted Templeman on two episodes of the Channel 101 web series Yacht Rock, a satirical history of soft rock, featuring stories about Templeman's collaborations with The Doobie Brothers, Michael McDonald and Van Halen. He was the creator, executive producer, and a featured performer in Acceptable.TV, a Channel 101-based sketch show airing for eight episodes in March 2007 on VH1. He and Rob Schrab co-wrote the screenplay for the Academy Award-nominated film Monster House. He is credited with writing part of Rob Schrab's comic book series Scud: The Disposable Assassin, as well as the spin-off comic series La Cosa Nostroid.
In 2009, Harmon's sitcom Community, inspired by his own community college experiences, was picked up by NBC to be in its fall lineup. Harmon served as executive producer and showrunner for three seasons until May 18, 2012, when it was announced that Harmon was being terminated from his position on Community as a result of creative conflicts between himself and Sony executives. On June 1, 2013, Harmon announced that he would be returning to Community, serving as co-showrunner along with Chris McKenna; this was confirmed by Sony Pictures on June 10. NBC cancelled the show after its fifth season in May 2014, after which Harmon announced on June 30, 2014, that Yahoo! had renewed the series for a 13-episode sixth season to air online on Yahoo! Screen. In a 2024 interview, returning star Yvette Nicole Brown confirmed that a script for a Community movie is ready, and production is in the works.
On May 23, 2011, Harmon and Jeff B. Davis began co-hosting Harmontown, a monthly live comedy show and podcast at Meltdown Comics in Hollywood. After Harmon's firing from Community, the show became weekly. Harmontown has included a regular segment where the hosts played an ongoing campaign of pen-and-paper role-playing games, first Dungeons & Dragons, and later Shadowrun, with the help of show Game Master Spencer Crittenden. The segment inspired the Seeso original animated series HarmonQuest. The show has included multiple celebrity guests. Harmon and Davis took the show on tour in early 2013, which was the subject of a documentary. The documentary, also called Harmontown, was produced by director Neil Berkeley that follows Harmon, Davis, McGathy, and Crittenden. It premiered at the Austin Film Festival SXSW on March 8, 2014. On September 10, 2019, the Harmontown Twitter account announced that the podcast would be coming to an end, and its final episode was published on December 5, 2019.
During the first season of Community, Harmon also co-founded Starburns Industries with several people including Dino Stamatopoulos, who played a character called Star-Burns on Community. In its first year, the company produced a stop-motion episode of Community which garnered the company an Emmy Award for Outstanding Achievement in Animation. Starburns Industries was then involved in the creation of Rick and Morty and animated films Anomalisa and Bubbles. It has also produced season 2 of Mary Shelley's Frankenhole and the special Beforel Orel for Adult Swim, HarmonQuest for Seeso and VRV and Animals for HBO. In 2013, Harmon published the book You'll Be Perfect When You're Dead. Harmon left the company in 2020. The studio's output declined steadily after the departure, with their only released projects after 2020 being The Freak Brothers and Slippin' Jimmy. In February 2026, it was announced that Starburns Industries would produce the movie adaptation of George Saunders's Booker Prize–winning novel Lincoln in the Bardo.
Sources
Net-worth figure: Celebrity Net Worth (October 2026), in USD. Biography and career facts: the person's Wikipedia article and linked reporting. Snapshot date for all StarWorth figures: 28 October 2026.
