Doug Walker (comedian)

Douglas Darien Walker was born on November 17, 1981, in Naples, Italy, to his parents Barney and Sandra (1947–2016).[7] His family relocated to the United States after his father's deployment ended. He spent his childhood as a Navy brat, moving from state to state due to his father's career, during which he developed a strong passion for films and television. Walker majored in Communications at Northern Illinois University.

He lives in Chicago with his wife, Robin Poage, whom he married in 2012, and their two cats, Chaplin (a rescued tuxedo cat named after Charlie Chaplin), and Buster (a smaller orange cat named after Buster Keaton that they adopted in 2020).[8]

After graduating college, Walker worked as an illustrator to earn money, and started making videos on the then fairly new YouTube in his spare time, where his early posts of the "Nostalgia Critic" character grabbed viewer attention. Walker has stated that the Nostalgia Critic character is primarily inspired by Daffy Duck and the Queen of Hearts, as well as by comedians Lewis Black, Stephen Colbert, and Bill Murray.[9] In 2008–2009, during the Great Recession, Walker moved his skits from YouTube to independent site That Guy With the Glasses, and later to Channel Awesome.[10] The majority of his skits have since reappeared on YouTube, and form a full web series spanning several seasons. Walker now works as a full-time content creator and staff member of Channel Awesome in Chicago, under the leadership of CEO Mike Michaud.[11] Walker also performs in other videos for Channel Awesome, notably "Doug Reviews" (in which he gives his own personal opinion on media separate from the fictional "Nostalgia Critic"), "Bum Reviews" (in which Walker plays fictional character "Chester A. Bum", a literal bum with a distinctive voice), and "Charity Shoutouts", which are affixed to the end credits of Nostalgia Critic skits, where Walker promotes various international charities to inspire viewers of Channel Awesome to donate to them. Walker works with fellow actors and comedians Malcolm Ray and Tamara Chambers predominantly, along with Rob Walker.[12]

Walker's Nostalgia Critic character will at times compliment an actor in a film he views as otherwise bad (such as when he praised Sacha Baron Cohen as the personification of Time in Alice Through the Looking Glass), and has been known at times to even get a personal response from actors and celebrities, most notably Mara Wilson, a former child actress who had appeared in two films that Walker criticized. In Walker's review of the film A Simple Wish, he surprised viewers with a guest appearance of the real Mara Wilson, who mocked the Critic in turn for bizarre home videos that he had made in the 1990s. Wilson had grown to like Doug Walker after realizing that Nostalgia Critic was merely a fictional character and that the real Doug Walker held no hatred towards her as a person.[13][14][15]

As a character based in satire, Nostalgia Critic episodes balance comedy with some legitimate critical points about films and television, including the rise of crude humour and sexual content in children's media, the overuse of CGI in modern film-making, the spike in Disney live-action remakes, and the ways in which media portrays minorities and historically disadvantaged groups. The episodes often end with a much more mellowed-out Critic speaking calmly about the ultimate pros and cons of each film he reviews, followed by the Channel Awesome logo appearing with a spoken line of comedic dialogue quoted from some part of the episode itself.

Quotations related to The Nostalgia Critic at Wikiquote

• Official Channel Awesome website
• Doug Walker at IMDb
• Official YouTube channel