Martin Mull, whose droll, esoteric comedy and acting made him a hip sensation in the 1970s and later a beloved guest star on sitcoms including Roseanne and Arrested Development, has died at the age of 80, his daughter said Friday. Mull's daughter, TV writer and comic artist Maggie Mull, said her father died at home on Thursday after "a valiant fight against a long illness," per the AP. Mull, also a guitarist and painter, came to national fame with a recurring role on the Norman Lear-created satirical soap opera Mary Hartman, Mary Hartman, and with the starring role in its spinoff, Fernwood Tonight. "He was known for excelling at every creative discipline imaginable and also for doing Red Roof Inn commercials," Maggie Mull said in an Instagram post. "He would find that joke funny. He was never not funny."
Mull's first foray into show business was as a songwriter, penning the 1970 semi-hit "A Girl Named Johnny Cash" for singer Jane Morgan. He would combine music and comedy in an act that he brought to hip Hollywood clubs in the 1970s. "In 1976 I was a guitar player and sit-down comic appearing at the Roxy on the Sunset Strip when Norman Lear walked in and heard me," Mull told the AP in 1980. "He cast me as the wife beater on Mary Hartman, Mary Hartman. Four months later I was spun off on my own show." On Fernwood Tonight he played Barth Gimble, the host of a local talk show in a Midwestern town and twin to his Mary Hartman character.
Mull often played slightly sleazy, somewhat slimy, and often smarmy characters, as he did as Teri Garr's boss and Michael Keaton's foe in 1983's Mr. Mom. The 1980s also brought what many thought was his best work, The History of White People in America, a mockumentary that first aired on Cinemax. Mull co-created the show and starred as a 60 Minutes-style investigative reporter investigating all things milquetoast and mundane. Mull wrote and starred in 1988's Rented Lips alongside Robert Downey Jr., whose father, Robert Sr., directed.
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In the 1990s, Mull was best known for his recurring role on several seasons on Roseanne, in which he played an openly gay man whose partner was played by Fred Willard. Mull would later play private eye Gene Parmesan on Arrested Development, a cult-classic character on a cult-classic show, and would be nominated for an Emmy, his first, in 2016 for a guest run on Veep. "What I did on Veep I'm very proud of, but ... at my age it's more collective," Mull told the AP after his nomination. "It might go all the way back to Fernwood." Other comedians and actors were often his biggest fans. "Martin was the greatest," Bridesmaids director Paul Feig wrote on X. "So funny, so talented, such a nice guy."
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