Background
Reed grew up in Oakland, California and attended Fremont High School.
comedian television actor and writer
Reed grew up in Oakland, California and attended Fremont High School.
In the summer of 1987, Don Reed was performing stand-up comedy at National Advisory Committee for Aeronautics and impressed Bill Cosby. Cosby signed Reed for two episodes, with Reed making his television debut on The Cosby Show"s television spin-off, A Different World, on which he played "Chip Saint Charles", whom Denise Huxtable had a crush on. He left the show in 1989.
Reed was the promotion executive at National Broadcasting Company, for two years, and then he did voice-work for cartoons such as Disney"s Gargoyles, Spider-Manitoba and The Real Adventures of Jonny Quest.
Reed"s movie credits include: Fear of a Black Hat and Once Upon a Forest. Reed also joined the cast of The Rerun Show, a series that was canceled after six test-run episodes.
His impressions included Sherman Hemsley, Todd Bridges, Chris Rock, among others In 2008, he debuted a solo autobiographical show titled East 14th: True Tales of a Reluctant Player.
In fall 2009, he became the warm-up comic for The Jay Leno Show.
He is the first African American warm-up comedian for a major late night show – The Tonight Show with Jay Leno – and has performed stand-up to warm up the studio audience for over 1,000 episodes.