From The Amanda Show to Saturday Night Live, Taran Killam is reflecting on the sketch comedy pipeline that paved the way for his current career.
The actor and comedian recently praised Amanda Bynes as “one of the most talented people I’ve ever met,” expressing his gratitude for her helping launch his “grown-up acting career” when she cast him on her Nickelodeon variety show, which ran for three seasons from 1999 to 2002.
“It was my first job, literally the last week of high school I got cast on her show,” he recalled on the Fly on the Wall podcast. “We worked together for three weeks then. I went away to college, I didn’t have an agent anymore, I was focused on school. They called me back to do more, they helped me get an agent.”
Killam made his debut on The Amanda Show in 2000, playing the lovesick Spalding in the teen soap parody sketch ‘Moody’s Point’. He credited the show with “started my grown-up acting career.”
“We were friends, we did a movie together, Big Fat Liar,” added Killam of Bynes. “She was the best. It was a very important relationship to me in my life. … She’s truly one of the best.”
Drake Bell, Josh Peck, Amanda Bynes and Nancy Sullivan in ‘The Amanda Show’ (1999-2002) (Nickelodeon Network/Courtesy Everett Collection)
After coming up as a child actor on her own show and Nickelodeon’s All That, Bynes led a number of successful teen movies, before making her final onscreen performance in Easy A (2010). Following a conservatorship that lasted from 2013 to 2022, Bynes has pursued a career as a manicurist.
Although All That and Amanda Show producer Dan Schneider came under fire over claims made in Investigation Discovery’s Quiet on Set, which he has denied in a defamation suit, neither Bynes nor Killam appeared in the docuseries.
