Comedian Rob Riggle names the 9 funniest people in comedy right now

Chris Pizzello/AP

Rob Riggle.

Comedian Rob Riggle is best known for hilariously memorable roles in movies like “21 Jump Street” and “Step Brothers,” as well as for being on “Saturday Night Live” and “The Daily Show.” 

But who are the people who make this funnyman laugh?

We talked to Riggle recently and he revealed the legends and good friends who can get him to crack up.

John Oliver

Riggle shared an office with the host of the HBO hit “Last Week Tonight with John Oliver” for three years at “The Daily Show” and still stays in close contact with him.

“We’ll call each other and just do bits for the first 10 minutes. We won’t talk about anything real,” Riggle said. “It’s just a lot of fun.”

His Upright Citizens Brigade pals

Every Wednesday in Los Angeles, Riggle gets together with the comics he came up with while a member of Upright Citizens Brigade — Owen Burke, Rob Huebel, Jack McBrayer, Seth Morris, and Paul Scheer — to do an improv show called “Facebook” at the UCB Theater on Franklin Ave., and it sounds pretty amazing:

“We’ve been doing it for 15 years and for the last 10 they have been sold out every week. I think when the show stared it was called “MySpace,” that’s how long we’ve been doing it. What we do is we get an audience member onstage and interview them using only their Facebook posts and then we get up and do an improv based on their life,” Riggle said.

“Those guys crack me up,” he said of his UCB crew. “We just still love getting onstage and doing improv together.”

These comic legends

Riggle has to honor the comedy geniuses who came before him.

“Eddie Murphy, Bill Murray, Will Ferrell, those guys mean so much to me because I watched those guys and how they transform and watch the commitment to what they do,” Riggle said. “I admire them.”

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