Tony Sam

Tony Sam, also credited as A.W. Sam, is an American stand-up comedian, writer, actor, and Emmy-winning television producer from Chicago, now living in Los Angeles. Born and raised in Chicago, he holds a degree in molecular and marine biology from Florida Atlantic University and worked for several years as a scientist, including studying cranio-facial defects in developing zebrafish embryos at Chicago's Children's Memorial Hospital. In 2006 he co-authored a paper in the medical journal Nature Medicine.

Sam began performing stand-up around 2003 in Chicago and studied improv and sketch at iO Theater and The Second City Training Center. He became known as an alternative-comedy scenemaker, co-founding Chicago Underground Comedy with Brooke Van Poppelen in 2005, a weekly rotating showcase whose original cast included Kumail Nanjiani. His television credits include Food: Fact or Fiction?, Duck Dynasty: The Revival, Josh Gates Tonight, Ridiculousness, and the Netflix home-renovation show Instant Dream Home, which won the Daytime Emmy Award for "Outstanding Instructional and How-To Program" in 2023.

His debut album, Scaredy Cat, was recorded at Acme Comedy Company in Minneapolis and released on Stand Up! Records in 2014, and in 2015 LA Weekly named him one of 12 Comedy Acts To Watch. Jake Krueger of The Comedy Bureau called the album one of the best of 2014, saying it "strikes a great balance between a genuine silliness and unfiltered candor." Under the name A.W. Sam, he published the poetry collections Waste[LA]nd: Poems For L.A. (2021) and Toil (2022).