Mike Reiss to talk about his time on the show

Mike Reiss is to talk about his time as an early writer on The Simpsons in a string of  UK dates this summer – his first live performances in this country.

Reiss’s career in comedy started at Harvard, where he wrote for the Harvard Lampoon, satirical magazine, and after graduating he and fellow student Al Jean were hired by National Lampoon magazine in 1981. 

The pair went on to work on Johnny Carson’s Tonight Show, Alf and It's Garry Shandling's Show before being taken on as two of the first writers on The Simpsons in 1989.

By the third series, in 1991, Reiss and Jean had become showrunners and he won four Emmy awards for his work on the show. Entertainment Weekly described the fourth series, the last he oversaw before leaving the programme, as 'the greatest season of the greatest show in history'.

Reiss later co-created The Critic and wrote screenplays including Ice Age: Dawn of the Dinosaurs and The Simpsons Movie. He also wrote jokes for around two dozen animated films including Despicable Me, the Minions Movie and Kung Fu Panda 3.

His other projects include Queer Duck, an animated series he independently produced in 2000 alongside director Xeth Feinberg, which he describes as the work he is most proud of. 'I don't like how gay people are treated in comedy,' he has said. 'Gay people are nothing besides their gayness. So I created a cartoon that was pro-gay and featured gay animals.' 

Away from television, Reiss claims to have visited 148 countries, and in 2022, he descended to the wreck of the Titanic aboard OceanGate's Titan submersible, a year before the vessel imploded, killing all five people on board.

His stage show, Secrets of the Simpsons — Stories and Scandals from Springfield, includes a Q&A with the audience. 

It opens at Upstairs at the Gatehouse in Highgate, London on July 26, with further dates on August 2 and 3. It also visits the Plaza Theatre, Stockport (July 29), the Crescent Theatre, Birmingham (July 30) and the Komedia comedy club in Brighton (August 6).

Published: 8 Jun 2026