Julio Torres
A quiet alien reporting back on the tragedy of rectangles.
3 specials · 2017–2026
Start with My Favorite Shapes, the breakout (2019 · 57 min · HBO)
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He sits down at a small desk and waits for the room to stop making noise. When he speaks, it is barely above a whisper. He does not pace. He might point a camera at a small plastic toy or a geometric shape and begin to narrate its inner life. He sounds less like a comedian delivering a routine and more like a deposed royal dictating a memoir about his favorite trinkets.
Specials
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Comedy Central Stand-Up Presents
Julio Torres delivers a quietly weird set with a talking crystal.
Comedy Central · 30 min
On stage
Torres sits in a strange space between alt-comedy and performance art, drawing audiences who treat his sets like collective meditation. He commands theaters filled with people willing to lean forward and listen to an adult man argue about the emotional temperature of a color.
He ignores relatable human struggle entirely. He builds elaborate, rigid mythologies for items you can buy in the clearance bin of a craft store. If he decides a piece of acrylic is hiding a dark past, he will spend five minutes interrogating that past. When a crowd does not follow him into the weeds, he doesn’t bail out on the premise. He just looks mildly disappointed that they lack the sensitivity to understand the situation.
Before he started making his own television shows and directing films, his sensibility leaked into the mainstream through his writing for Saturday Night Live. The quiet, deliberate absurdity he wrote into sketches about sensitive boys gazing into plastic wells is the exact frequency he broadcasts on his own stage.
Turning points
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Breakthrough SNL Sketch Papyrus
Torres wrote the acclaimed Ryan Gosling-led digital short about a man haunted by Avatar's font choice, cementing his reputation as SNL's surreal secret weapon.
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Solo HBO Special My Favorite Shapes
Torres presented an unconventional comedy hour using a conveyor belt to showcase inanimate objects, directed by Dave McCary and executive produced by Fred Armisen and Lorne Michaels.
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2019–2024
Peabody Award Wins for HBO Series
Both of Torres's HBO original projects, Los Espookys and Fantasmas, received critical acclaim and were honored with Peabody Awards.
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Directorial Debut with Feature Film Problemista
Torres wrote, directed, and starred in his debut A24 surrealist feature film alongside Tilda Swinton, exploring the struggles of the US immigration visa system.
At a glance
- Born
- , San Salvador, El Salvador
- On stage
- since 2012
- Style
- surrealist, deadpan, absurdist, observational, high concept
- Breakout
- My Favorite Shapes
- Influences
- Charlie Kaufman
- Topics
- Elsewhere
- Wikipedia
Fans also like
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Fred Armisen
Armisen co-created Los Espookys with Torres and produced My Favorite Shapes, connecting over their shared taste for gentle, high-concept absurdity.
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John EarlyA contemporary in the New York alternative comedy circuit, Early appeared in Torres's Legalize Julio initiative and guest-starred on Los Espookys, sharing a theatrical, stylized comedic approach.
Also on screen
- 2017–2019
- The Tonight Show Starring Jimmy Fallon
- 2019–2022
- Los Espookys
- Together Together
- 2021–2023
- The Great North
- 2023–2024
- Problemista
A clip to start with
Julio Torres Stand-Up