Nicole Byer

Byer was born and raised in New Jersey and moved to New York City in the early 2000s. She worked there as a waitress for a restaurant and cabaret club. She described how the experience eventually led to her to studying improv, "They would give me a lot of money because they were like, 'You're very funny. You have to get out of here. You're very bad at this [waiting tables].'" Byer's parents both died when she was young, her mother while Nicole was a teen in high school, and her father when she was 21. She has said that comedy helped her work through both her parents' deaths, "it was a blessing that I had found these things before they passed away so I could escape."

She then took classes at the Upright Citizens Brigade, starting improv and sketch comedy in June 2008, the same month that her father died. She continued with improv and sketch comedy before starting her stand-up career in 2013. Byer graduated from the American Musical and Dramatic Academy Certificate Program in Professional Performance.She tours the United States doing stand-up comedy and regularly performs improv with Upright Citizens Brigade in Los Angeles.