John KampfeHome, New Jersey Emmys, New Jersey Profiles

Ian Roberts didn’t think he was going to win.

The Secaucus native already had been passed over earlier in the evening for a writing Emmy for his work on Comedy Central’s Peabody Award-winning Key and Peele. It had happened to Roberts four other times in the past couple of years. He figured it would be more of the same when it came time to announce the winner of the Outstanding Variety Sketch Series for which his show also was in contention.

“I had my coat off and I had no intention of going on the stage,” Roberts recalled. “I wasn’t expecting to win.”

But then something funny happened to the funny man. Key and Peele indeed did win an Emmy on that September evening last year in Los Angeles. And that meant Roberts would have to put on his coat and go on-stage to claim his statuette as an executive producer.

“Because you don’t win in the past, you don’t think about winning so it really shocks you when you do win,” Roberts said. “It’s a lot of fun. I’ve always seen people walking around with their statues at the dinner afterwards and thought that would be fun. Now I’m one of those guys walking around with the award.”

Key and Peele, which stars Keegan-Michael Key and Jordan Peele, had its beginnings in the aftermath of the recession of 2008.

“I switched to screenwriting at a certain point about 12 or 13 years ago and we were doing great,” Roberts explained. “We were selling everything we wrote. Then there was a recession and a writer’s strike. It got to the point where some studios declared ‘we are no longer buying scripts.’ So now we couldn’t sell anything. We had Robert DeNiro attached to one of our projects and we still couldn’t sell it.”

He and his partners needed work. Then came a meeting with Key and Peele.

“We hit it off with them,” Roberts said. “They told us a couple of their ideas and we said, ‘let’s do it.’ We put together a pilot and it got picked up. They were just a great bunch of writers and the guys (Key and Peele) were incredibly talented.

“It helped that we were in the age of the internet. We would put about three of the sketches we did from each episode online and the show became really well-known. The writing was pretty painless because it wasn’t a narrative. A sketch is isolated to two or four minutes with one funny idea. Our days would be from 10 AM to 3 PM, which is amazing in this industry. I didn’t realize how good I had it.”

Growing up in Secaucus, winning an Emmy or any award in the entertainment field wasn’t something that the 51-year-old Roberts considered would ever happen to him. Particularly in comedy.

Back then, Roberts thought of himself as an actor. He appeared in two plays at Secaucus High School — a non-singing role in Gypsy and a part in The Importance of Being Earnest. Then he left Hudson County to attend Grinnell College in Iowa.

“All I understood back then was acting and thought that would be what I would do,” Roberts said. “But then I got to Grinnell and I started to do comedy and improv.”

After graduation Roberts decided to pursue his career in the comedy hotbed of … Milwaukee. Actually, the young woman he was dating at the time was from Milwaukee and he followed her there. The romance didn’t last but he decided to stay on. Roberts got involved with a group called Comedy Sports and he began to develop his abilities in improvisational comedy.

“It was good for me,” Roberts said. “I was not ready for the competitiveness. If I went right to New York or LA, I would have been destroyed. I got involved in Comedy Sports, which was short-form improv. I would do okay in shows but in rehearsals we would do long form so you could see what was funny and what didn’t work. I did well in that part.”

Eventually a friend from college reached out to him and convinced him to try his luck in Chicago. It was a life-changing decision.

Roberts joined a theater group called ImprovOlympic. The friendships he made while there formed the foundation for their own troupe, Upright Citizens Brigade.

“I met a couple of guys who were starting a sketch group,” Roberts related. “They were great guys and we all had similar senses of humor.”

Among those “guys” who founded Upright Citizens Brigade were Adam McKay, now Will Ferrell’s partner in Gary Sanchez Productions, and actors/writers Matt Besser and Matt Walsh. They were soon joined by comedian/actress Amy Poehler.

“Adam’s a good friend and he has come to me to write scripts for him,” Roberts explained. “So, we’ve done a lot of work for Will Ferrell’s and Adam McKay’s company. Adam won an Academy Award for best screenplay for The Big Short. Talk about me winning my Emmy; the Academy Award is top of the top.”

Robert has acted in such McKay/Ferrell produced movies as Talladega Nights: The Ballad of Ricky Bobby (“Kyle”) and Anchorman: The Legend of Ron Burgundy (“the stage manager”). He also co-wrote the 2015 Ferrell vehicle Get Hard.

After spartan beginnings in Chicago, the Upright Citizens Brigade has gone on to become one of the top sketch improvisational troupes in the business. The company has theaters both in New York City and Los Angeles where they also offer courses to comedic hopefuls. It had its own show on Comedy Central. In 2013, they self-published a how-to book on their own brand of comedy: Upright Citizens Brigade Comedy Improvisation Manual.

Roberts doesn’t get to perform much with the Upright Citizens Brigade these days. His role as an executive producer — known as a “showrunner” in television industry parlance — occupies much of his time. In addition to Key and Peele, he’s also executive producer for the very funny Teachers, which currently is in its second season on TV Land. And even though he has more than 70 acting credits to his name, he doesn’t appear much in front of the camera any longer either.

“All the acting I do these days is for people who know me,” Roberts explained. “They give me a call; I don’t audition. When I act, I enjoy it if I get a good role but I’m probably more comfortable and having more fun writing something behind-the-scenes and seeing it all come together.”

That behind the scenes work will soon include directing. Roberts is slated to direct an upcoming episode of the USA Network comedy series Playing House. He said he also is “attached” to direct a movie created by comedian Rob Riggle, who had a funny bit playing a school photographer on Teachers during its first season. That project is awaiting pick-up by a studio.

“The stars have to align but we are getting close,” Roberts said.

Roberts has lived with his wife, actress Katie Roberts, and their two children in the Los Angeles area for the past dozen years. He said he does get back about once a year to the East Coast and Secaucus, where his parents Don and Penny still live. His journey to success in a field in which a relative few excel has given Roberts great perspective. He’s happy to share it with those coming up in the business.

“When young people ask me for advice I tell them ‘do what you love and not because you think it’s the right thing,'” Roberts explained. “Do the thing you love because you’ll want to keep on doing it and you’ll get better at it, and when you get better at it good things come from it.”