Jake Plunkett joins Good Company

Jake Plunkett, the director behind some of The Late Show with Stephen Colbert’s most iconic sketches has landed his first commercial home at bi-coastal production company, Good Company. 

The New Jersey native has spent the past six years at the Late Show, mostly losing Emmy’s to John Oliver, except for the one fluke year where he actually won.

Plunkett’s backstory makes no sense and makes perfect sense. He was working as a dancing waiter at a Jimmy Buffet-themed restaurant in Wayne, NJ when he had an epiphany that his true calling was not shimmying his way towards customers with the burger-of-the-day (it was always the mushroom burger, in case you were wondering), but on a TV set. In a desperate attempt to get out of Margaritaville, Plunkett cold-called MTV and asked if they were hiring. Fatefully, they offered him a position as an Executive Assistant, although to Plunkett’s disappointment there was little to no dancing, nor meat products involved. There was however, an opportunity for him to hone his craft and learn the ropes, eventually working his way up to Development Executive where he stayed for five years.

After MTV, came a short, very short, gig at a sports comedy show with Regis Philbin. That show’s claim to fame was that it was among the lowest rated shows of the year. After allowing himself a 10 minute pity party, Plunkett decided to manifest himself a job at 30 Rock, where he worked around-the-clock at SNL for two years. Both his burning ambition to be a director and his wife's aggressive divorce threats redirected Plunkett to direct for Larry Wilmore’s The Nightly Show & for Robert Smigel’s Triumph the Insult Comic Dog Hulu Special.

After his long-term relationship with a rubber rottweiler puppet was over, Plunkett landed at the Late Show where he’s directed and produced all of their major pre-taped sketches for the past six years. “Watching Colbert examine Paul Rudd’s hind legs to determine if he was best in show was the moment I knew Jake could tell a story in thirty seconds,” said Good Co EP Raquel Balsam referring to his “Sexiest Man Alive” sketch. “I immediately connected with Jake and we started to strategize about him jumping into our side of storytelling.”