Josh Brener plays men things happen to. His Big Head in Silicon Valley is the definitive version: earnest, unambitious, hapless and never once worried, which in a series full of flinching is its own kind of comic relief.
Fi1m perspective
The Josh Brener character does not want anything much, and that is the joke. In Silicon Valley (2014–19) his Nelson 'Big Head' Bighetti is earnest, unambitious and hapless, and events wash over him without leaving a mark. Everyone around him is scheming or panicking; he is eating something and waiting to be told where to stand. It is a small trick, played six years running, and we never tired of it.
He had been working towards it for a while. There was childhood acting, then improv and the Hasty Pudding Theatricals at Harvard, then Glory Daze (2010) as Zack Miller, his first regular part in a series. On Maron (2013–15) he was Kyle, Marc Maron's assistant, and in The Internship (2013) he was Lyle Spaulding, his first film, alongside Vince Vaughn and Owen Wilson. Then Mike Judge cast him as Big Head and the type was set.
What he does well is timing, and a particular stillness in the face of catastrophe. Our review of Silicon Valley gave the weight to Thomas Middleditch's Richard, and rightly, but we noticed something about our own viewing: whenever the plot tightened around Richard again, as it did every season, we were glad when the scene cut to Big Head, because he was the one person in the series who did not care, and his not caring let us breathe. Away from the camera he has become a busy voice actor, with parts in DuckTales, Rise of the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles and Star Wars Resistance, where the amiable register travels well.
The limit is obvious and he knows it. The parts are geeky, awkward, tech-adjacent, and they keep coming. He has said as much himself: "When I started to try to pursue a career in acting, it just so happened that what was interesting to a lot people at the time and what a lot of the roles were were tech geek and computer nerd — awkward weird guy." In The Last of Us (2023) he is Murray, one of the supporting players our review felt deserved more room than the scripts allowed, and there are more recent appearances in 3 Body Problem (2024) and Carry-On (2024).
He is good at the man to whom nothing matters. We would like to see what he does with a man to whom something does.
Biography
Josh Brener is an American actor. He was born in Houston, Texas, and graduated from Harvard University, where he served as president of the Hasty Pudding Theatricals.
Brener is known for playing Nelson "Big Head" Bighetti in the HBO series Silicon Valley (2014–2019) and Murray in the HBO series The Last of Us (2023). He has also appeared in the film The Internship (2013) and provided voices in animated series including Rise of the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles (2018–2020) and the 2017 reboot of DuckTales (2017–2021).
He is married to actress and comedian Meghan Falcone.
