How Many Children Does Maya Rudolph Have? All We Know About SNL Host's Family With Director Paul Thomas Anderson
Here's everything to know about SNL Host Maya Rudolph's kids and her famous director partner of over 20 years.
Maya Rudolph, a renowned Saturday Night Live host, has a 20-year film and TV career, making audiences laugh with her impressions of celebrities like Beyoncé and Oprah Winfrey and memorable original characters. She also has a long-lasting relationship with director Paul Thomas Anderson.
Here's everything about Rudolph's family.
How many children does Maya Rudolph have?
Maya Rudolph shares four children with director Paul Thomas Anderson. Their first child, daughter Pearl Anderson, was born in 2005. Two years later, Rudolph left SNL and moved to Los Angeles full-time, where the couple welcomed three more kids. Lucille was born in 2009, and they welcomed Jack in 2011. Their fourth child, Minnie, was born in 2013. She was named after Maya's mother, Minnie Riperton.
Both Rudolph and Anderson have kept their kids largely out of the spotlight, but the Baking It! host does like to talk about her life at home on occasion. She's called her kids the biggest Disney fans and also revealed that she's purposely cultivating their interest in classic movies.
A brief about Maya Rudolph and Paul Thomas Anderson's relationship
Maya Rudolph has been in a relationship with filmmaker Paul Thomas Anderson since 2001 and the couple has SNL to thank for bringing them together. In early 2001, Anderson was so smitten with Rudolph after seeing her on the sketch show that he went to an afterparty specifically to meet her.
“He said he saw me in a sketch and said, ‘That’s the girl I’m going to marry,’ ” Rudolph told Town & Country of their meet-cute. She added, “But I don’t know. I wasn’t there. Maybe he just told me that to be sweet.”
Although they never married each other, Rudolph is happy to call Anderson her husband. "People know what that means. It means he's the father of my child, and I live with him, and we are a couple, and we are not going anywhere," she told the New York Times.
Anderson doesn't often talk about Rudolph, but during a Reddit AMA, a commenter asked how often she makes him "fall over laughing" and he wrote "every day."
A brief about Maya Rudolph and her career
Born in Gainesville, Florida, and raised in Los Angeles, Maya Rudolph is the daughter of singer Minnie Riperton and composer Richard Rudolph. In 2000, Rudolph became a cast member on the NBC sketch comedy show Saturday Night Live (SNL). During her tenure on the show, she appeared in supporting roles in the films 50 First Dates (2004), A Prairie Home Companion (2006), and Idiocracy (2006).
After leaving SNL in 2007, Rudolph appeared in Grown Ups (2010), Bridesmaids (2011), Inherent Vice (2014), Sisters (2015), Life of the Party (2018), and Disenchanted (2022). She also provided voice acting for the animated films Shrek the Third (2007), Big Hero 6 (2014), The Angry Birds Movie (2016), The Emoji Movie (2017), and Luca (2021).
Rudolph starred in the NBC sitcom Up All Night (2011–2012) and co-hosted the variety show Maya & Marty (2016). Since 2017, she has voiced various characters for the animated sitcom Big Mouth, including Connie the Hormone Monstress, which won her three Primetime Emmy Awards.
For her portrayal of politician Kamala Harris on SNL, Rudolph won the Primetime Emmy Award for Outstanding Guest Actress in a Comedy Series. She received three Primetime Emmy Award nominations for playing the Judge in the comedy series The Good Place (2018–2020). In 2022, Rudolph began executive producing and starring in the comedy series Loot.
Rudolph has a production company called Animal Pictures with Natasha Lyonne which has produced Russian Doll, Poker Face, Loot, and the upcoming animated series The Hospital. As of October 2023, Rudolph reportedly separated amicably from Animal Pictures to produce independently.
In January 2023, it was announced that Rudolph would be the spokesperson for M&M's after owner Mars Incorporated supposedly pulled its Spokescandies in light of criticism for its depictions of gender, though a few days later Mars confirmed that their Spokescandies would return in their Super Bowl commercial.
Prior to joining Saturday Night Live, Rudolph was a backing singer and briefly a keyboardist in the band The Rentals, with whom she toured. She appears in music videos for the songs Waiting and Please Let That Be You. She sang backing vocals for Barcelona and My Head Is in the Sun, both from the album Seven More Minutes.
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