Shady Details About Fred Armisen

From "Parks and Recreation" and "30 Rock" to "Modern Family" and "Brooklyn Nine-Nine," think of any great sitcom since the year 2000, and there's a good chance Fred Armisen has graced it at some point. The star has also created some of the best alternative comedy shows, including sketch favorite "Portlandia" and mockumentary series "Documentary Now!," appeared in big screen jokefests "Eurotrip" and "The Dictator," and enjoyed lengthy stints on institutions "Saturday Night Live" and "Late Night with Seth Meyers."

But while Armisen is very much the funnyman on camera, he doesn't always appear to be a barrel of laughs off it. Indeed, the multi-talent has regularly made the headlines for a turbulent love life, which has seen him married three times (and divorced twice). And he's also been accused of everything from ridiculing disabled politicians to ruining entire cities, too. Here's a look at 11 times the prolific jester got super shady. 

In 2011, Elisabeth Moss and Fred Armisen became one of those celebrity couples who split without anyone noticing. Twelve months later, the former spilled the beans in a surprisingly candid interview with Page Six. And it seems fair to say the end of their marriage didn't end in the most amicable of circumstances.

"One of the greatest things I heard someone say about him is, 'He's so great at doing impersonations,'" Moss said in what initially appeared to be a glowing endorsement of his comedy style. However, she then delivered the killer blow. "But the greatest impersonation he does is that of a normal person.' To me, that sums it up."

"I've never told anyone that," Moss added before insisting that she didn't want to spend any more of her life discussing the matter. It was "The Handmaid's Tale" star who'd filed for divorce eight months after she and Armisen walked down the aisle. When asked whether they were ever likely to stay in touch, she answered definitively, "Oh, God, no."

A year after ex-wife Elisabeth Moss delivered her character assassination in a chat with Page Six, Fred Armisen bravely — or perhaps foolishly — agreed to go on "The Howard Stern Show." And as he no doubt anticipated, it proved to be one of the many occasions that the shock jock made his guest uncomfortable.

"She must f***ing hate you," Stern told Armisen (via E! News), referring to Moss' explosive interview. After receiving a fairly non-committal answer, the DJ pressed further, bringing his abilities as a husband into question. To his credit, the "Portlandia" star fully admitted he was a "terrible husband" and regularly been a "terrible boyfriend."

"You sort of withdraw and you sort of get into all the things that you think make you weird," Armisen admitted about the ways in which he deliberately tried to freeze out Moss, who later caused a similar stir with her comments on Scientology. "You sort of disappear into the things that you think are your hobbies." The comedian then claimed that he felt bad for anyone who'd been on the receiving end of such behavior and acknowledged he might need to seek therapy. 

Fred Armisen might not have had much say in the matter. Even so, the funnyman proved to be remarkably open when tackled by Howard Stern about his checkered personal life in 2013. As well as admitting to essentially ghosting second his wife Elisabeth Moss, he acknowledged that he has an insatiable appetite for women.

"I want it all — fast," Armisen told the shock jock (via Us Weekly) about his tendency to jump into a relationship both feet first. "I want to be married ... and then somewhere around a year, two years, I get freaked out." When pressed by Stern about whether he felt entitled to more women, the two-time Peabody Award winner responded, "I don't want to admit that out loud to myself, but that probably is it."

And Armisen's eventful romantic history appears to back that up. As well as walking down the aisle with Moss and first wife Sally Timms, the "Forever" star has also dated, or been linked to, Abby Elliott, Natasha Lyonne, Martha Plimpton, and Alice Lancaster. In 2022, he got hitched for a third time to fellow comedian Riki Lindholme.

Elisabeth Moss isn't the only ex of Fred Armisen to insist the funnyman isn't the all-around good guy he often portrays on screen. Alice Lancaster, an artist based in New York City, might not have been married to the "Documentary Now!" co-creator. In fact, it's not known exactly how long she dated the star. However, she still felt compelled to let the world know that she'd been badly treated.

Unlike Moss, Lancaster used pictures not words to convey her feelings toward Armisen. Indeed, in 2014, the New York Daily News reported that the creative had painted a portrait of the comedian. And the title? "Fred Armisen: Portrait of a Sociopath."

Lancaster also uploaded a picture of her handiwork to Instagram captioned simply #sociopath. She has since deleted the post, but we know her painting was as unflattering to Armisen as its title. On one half of his face, he was depicted with an uncomfortable wild stare, and on the other, he was fast asleep. It seems unlikely, therefore, that the "Late Night with Seth Meyers" house band leader has it hanging in his bathroom.

As well as admitting his shortcomings as a romantic partner on "The Howard Stern Show," Fred Armisen also came clean on a 2016 episode of Marc Maron's podcast "WTF!" And it was unlikely to have made easy listening for his ex-wives.

"I get lost in fantasy a lot ... the fantasy of this person from 'Mad Men,' you know, great actress" Armisen acknowledged (via Pajiba), appearing to indirectly reference second spouse Elisabeth Moss, the star who was later rumored to have got engaged to Tom Cruise. "And then as a person is interesting ... all of a sudden, it's like a slide. Like, 'This is great!'" But the "Moonbase 8" actor went on to add that this sense of euphoria doesn't last long."I have a problem with intimacy, where all of a sudden, there's a real person there ... and now, there's a person behind this." 

Perhaps Moss can take some comfort from the fact that she's not the only partner that's been subjected to Armisen's fickle nature. The funnyman also revealed he'd been similarly hot and cold with his first wife, Sally Timms: "She had this accent, this British woman who is in a band, and then all of a sudden ... something happens in me. It's almost like an amnesia."

Admitting he was a terrible boyfriend and a man who gets too easily caught up in fantasy during his various relationship confessionals, Fred Armisen also revealed he was not exactly a stranger to adultery.

"I'm neither ashamed or proud of it," Armisen told Marc Maron (via Pajiba) during a 2016 episode of the podcast "WTF." "It's just something that happens in my life." The Grammy Award nominee didn't go into specific details about who he'd cheated on or who he'd cheated with. But he did claim that he'd been lucky when it came to such encounters.

"I didn't have a string of children along the way or anything like that," Armisen reasoned. The "Los Espookys" co-creator also saw the positive in his sex addiction, too. "This struggle that I have, I don't have a choice. It could be a lot worse. I could be dead."

Fred Armisen found himself in hot water in 2008 when he delivered an unflattering impersonation of New York Governor David Paterson, which largely centered on his blindness. During the "Saturday Night Live" skit in question, the funnyman ambled around the set as if he had no sense of direction and held up a chart the wrong way round. Yeah, it wasn't exactly his best work.

Armisen's depiction certainly didn't go down smoothly with NBC New York columnist Gabe Pressman, who wrote a piece in defense of Paterson. "He memorizes speeches too and seldom falters when he addresses people. So, to characterize him as a bumbling fool is not only cruel. It's stupid."

Pressman wasn't the only disgruntled viewer. Paterson's own spokesman, Errol Cockfield, reasoned that "SNL" should be able to draw laughs without causing such offense. While speaking to the New York Post, a National Federation of the Blind spokesperson stated, "We have 70 percent unemployment — and it's not because we can't work. Whenever you have a portrayal that calls the basic capacity of [blind people] into question, that's a potential problem."

Alongside creative partner in crime Carrie Brownstein, Fred Armisen spent eight seasons satirizing what they portrayed as America's preeminent hipster city in the sketch show "Portlandia." Unfortunately, the community it spoofed didn't appreciate the joke.

Indeed, in 2015, representatives for the community center and feminist bookshop In Other Words, the setting for two of the comedy's most popular characters, Toni and Candace, uploaded a scathing online message about how the two stars had essentially ruined their hometown. "A show which has had a net negative effect on our neighborhood and the city of Portland as a whole" was essentially the gist of a piece whose title alone, F*** Portlandia, made their viewpoint crystal clear.

The official website post claimed the store had suffered financially, arguing that the flat fee paid by producers wasn't enough to compensate for the store having to change its opening hours. It also referred to one specific incident several months previously in which the show reportedly left the store looking like a bomb site. "They disrespected the space and disrespected our neighbors," a volunteer named Shanti later explained to The Guardian. But it wasn't just Armisen and Brownstein's cleanliness that locals took umbrage with.

"A show which is in every way diametrically opposed to our politics and the vision of society we're organizing to realize." That was just another of the many derogatory statements feminist bookstore In Other Words made about Carrie Brownstein and Fred Armisen's sketch comedy "Portlandia." And it was the duo's attitudes towards one minority group, in particular, which truly got their goat.

Indeed, the official website post argued that the Toni and Candace skits filmed in the store were both "trans-antagonistic and trans-misogynist." The disgruntled establishment also singled out Armisen for donning drag in what they considered to be a "a deeply s***ty joke whose sole punchline throws trans femmes under the bus."

Speaking to The Guardian about the furore, volunteer Shanti claimed that the IFC show was hampering all the good work that the shop had undertaken regarding the affected community. "We're trying to make it more accessible to trans folks and people of color, because it hasn't always been." Neither Armisen nor Brownstein have ever directly addressed the store's concerns.

Fred Armisen famously portrayed pop superstar Prince and the 44th President of the United States Barack Obama during his stint on "Saturday Night Live." But as someone of Japanese and Venezuelan descent, the comedian came under fire for taking on characters with racial backgrounds different from his own.

Armisen appeared entirely unbothered by such concerns when questioned about the issue at the 2011 Rock and Roll Hall of Fame induction ceremony. "I just want to have fun," he reasoned to New York Magazine before adding, "I like wearing outfits and doing things."

Armisen didn't exactly do himself any favors when he revealed his preparation to play such figures. "There's shading on my eyebrows and plastic behind my ears. And there's a little bit of something called Honey, a honey color, that is something I would wear when I play Prince." The comedian acknowledged the political incorrectness of "blackface" in the modern world but confirmed that he was going to keep donning it anyway.

In 2014, Fred Armisen began dating Natasha Lyonne, the actor who, thanks to her role as Nicky Nichols in Netflix's "Orange Is the New Black", became one of those celebs who changed their reputation overnight. The relationship ended up outlasting Armisen's two marriages. But in 2022, Lyonne revealed that the pair had decided to go their separate ways. And bizarrely, Armisen's disdain for a certain water feature was given as the core reason.

"I honestly think we broke up because I wanted a swimming pool," she told The Hollywood Reporter, going on to claim that caused a rift. "It might seem like a mundane reason for a breakup," Lyonne acknowledged. "But during that pandemic, you've got to get your laps — I'm like Burt Lancaster in "The Swimmer.""

Thankfully for Lyonne, she managed to fulfil her aquatic fantasy when she bought a property in LA complete with swimming pool. "So that's the real scandal," the famous redhead added. "I guess I finally am an actual bicoastal."