Jonah Hill walked onto the stage at Hollywood's Palladium on Saturday night and made one thing clear: he wants to laugh again.
The appearance at SiriusXM's Smartless LIVE marked Hill's first lengthy public solo interview in years. Seated with hosts Jason Bateman, Will Arnett and Sean Hayes, he spent more than an hour running through his career, his family, and his reasons for going quiet — and now coming back.
"I've been gone for a while, so I'm kind of coming back, and I'm excited because I got all, like, serious for a while and I wasn't as happy," Hill told the crowd. "And then I had my family and I got happy, and now all I want to do is be funny again."
That family includes his wife, Olivia Millar, who was in the audience in a private box on the second floor of the venue. Hill spotted her early and called her out. "Real quick, before we go any further, my wife is here. My best friend. Shout out to my beautiful wife, Liv. Where is she? Oh, what's up baby." The couple has a 3-year-old son and a baby, and they left Hill's native Los Angeles to settle in a small San Diego town around the time their first child was born.
The retreat from public life had been deliberate. In August 2022, Hill released a statement announcing he would step back from media appearances due to two decades of anxiety attacks. Saturday's event was a signal that chapter may be closing. His recent Apple TV film Outcome — a Hollywood satire he wrote, directed and stars in alongside Keanu Reeves, Cameron Diaz and Matt Bomer — appears to be the vehicle for that return.
Hill traced his career from the beginning, and the beginning, it turns out, involved a favor from a Hollywood legend. He pushed back on the idea that he's a nepo baby — "My dad's a fucking accountant," he said, referring to his father Richard Feldstein, who has worked as business manager for bands including Guns N' Roses and Maroon 5 — but he acknowledged that a real connection did help launch him. His friend Jake Hoffman, son of Dustin Hoffman, helped get him an audition for David O. Russell's 2004 existential comedy I Heart Huckabees. Dustin Hoffman told the young Hill he should pursue comedy and put him in the room.
He got the part. What followed was a crash course in professional filmmaking, on one of the more turbulent sets in recent Hollywood history. Leaked audio from that production captured Russell berating Lily Tomlin in front of the crew. When Bateman asked what it was like to be a first-timer on that set, Hill didn't soften it. "David O. was fucking nuts at the time," he said, before pivoting quickly. "He was buck wild and I'm like homies with him. He's awesome. Super nice guy. But in that moment in life — and I've had my own, trust me — he was buck wild, dude." Hill called Russell one of the best directors he's worked with.
From that debut, Hill went on to breakout roles in Judd Apatow's Knocked Up and Superbad opposite Michael Cera, then Oscar-nominated turns in Moneyball opposite Brad Pitt and Martin Scorsese's The Wolf of Wall Street alongside Leonardo DiCaprio. He credits The Simpsons with making him fall in love with comedy as a kid — he used to record episodes on VHS and pause during the credits to copy down writers' names so he could send them fan letters.
That instinct, he told the Palladium crowd, never left. It just went dormant for a while. His kids, he said, reconnected him to it. "If you're bummed, you don't feel like being that funny, right? The first thing I thought about when I had my kids and was so stoked, it was like I connected to back when I was just like 12 and I was just being funny for fun."
Outcome is currently streaming on Apple TV.
