Background
Lawrence was born in Miami but grew up in Davie, Florida.
Lawrence was born in Miami but grew up in Davie, Florida.
He attended Western High School and earned a bachelor"s degree from Florida Atlantic University in English.
He currently lives in New York City. When he was 16 years old, he began working at a McDonald"s in southern Florida. He attributes his ability to deal with hecklers to his time spent at McDonald"s working the drive-thru.
In his podcast interview on WTF with Marc Maron, he stated, "Heckling doesn"t bother me because I"ve been yelled at for McNuggets." Lawrence started his career at the age of 15 by performing poetry at open mic nights in 1998.
After realizing that the part he liked most about it was making people laugh, he moved to comedy. In 2010, Mike was named one of the New Faces at the largest comedy festival in the world, Just for Laughs.
He later performed at the festival in 2012 at both the Montreal and Chicago festivals. While in Montreal, he recorded a set for Home Box Office Canada"s Funny as Hell.
In 2011, Mike performed at Lance Bangs" Come Laugh With Us at the Birdgetown Comedy Festival with fellow features Kristen Schaal, Fred Armisen, Jon Daly, and Brett Gelman.
Mike also performed on John Oliver"s New York Stand-Up Show with fellow features Hannibal Buress, Michael Ian Black, and Hari Kondabolu. He regularly opened for Oliver soon after. In 2012, Lawrence also made his first appearance on Conan O"Brien"s television show, Conan.
In 2013, his comedy album Sadamantium was released by Comedy Central Records in conjunction with his half-hour special on The Half Hour.
Sadamantium was recorded at the Nerdist Showroom at Meltdown Comics. The album received positive reviews from The Huffington Post, The Authorised Version Club, America"s Comedy, and The Laugh Button.
In September, he wrote a piece for The Huffington Post called The Five Most Important Things I"ve Learned Doing Comedy in New York That I"d Pass on To Newer Comics where he shares his feelings about comedy and his career. He performed again on Conan in this year.
Lawrence wrote a piece for and was a guest on West. Kamau Bell"s show Totally Biased.