Ike Barinholtz's bumbling exec on The Studio stands in stark contrast to his savvy moves as co-creator of Netflix's Running Point. Robby Klein/Getty Images for IMDb I'm in San Francisco," Ike Barinholtz says via Zoom from his hotel room, then spins his laptop around to prove it. "See? There's Alcatraz." It's now official, though paparazzi photos have all but confirmed it: Barinholtz is in town filming Artificial, Luca Guadagnino's fact-based account of the behind-the-scenes turmoil that saw OpenAI CEO Sam Altman fired and quickly rehired in 2023. Andrew Garfield plays Altman in the film. And Barinholtz? He's Elon Musk. No big deal - just the richest, most recognizable, most controversial dude on the planet. That casting coup caps a watershed year for the 48-year-old Chicago native, still buzzing from having pulled off one of the funniest and most talked about roles of his career: Sal Saperstein on Apple TV+'s uproarious Hollywood send-up The Studio. The foulmouthed movie exec earned Barinholtz his first Emmy nomination, one of 23 for the hit series. Off camera, Barinholtz finds time to be an actual studio exec (hopefully less foulmouthed) on Running Point, the Netflix pro basketball comedy he co-created with Mindy Kaling, in production on its second season. Says Kaling: "Ike is so funny and has so much training. He can do accents, physical comedy, total commitment always. He'll throw vanity out the window if it makes the scene funnier. Sometimes we have to beg him to give a character more dignity, and he'll just squint and go, 'Should they?' That's his whole ethos: Whatever's funniest wins." After two decades of scene-stealing and dues-paying, 2025 already feels like it belongs to Barinholtz, THR's Comedy Player of the Year. Related Stories TV Hollywood Flashback: Little Ron Howard Played for Laughs on 'The Andy Griffith Show' TV 'The Studio': Seth Rogen on Why Record Emmy Noms Might Make His Life Easier and Adding Sarah Polley to Next Season's Writers Room So you're in San Francisco. Can I pry and ask what the work is? Pry! Pry! I am indeed going to play Elon Musk. I don't know if you've heard of him. He's been in the news as of late. You're great at accents. I've known that since Eastbound & Down. How did you master Elon? I definitely have been watching him over the years. It's your standard Pretoria/Canada/Valley girl situation, but with stuttering. It's a trip to play someone who is alive and very powerful, and I hope I don't get put into some kind of mecha gulag or something. Barinholtz, Kathryn Hahn and Chase Sui Wonders create comedic chaos as desperate execs on Apple TV+'s The Studio, which has garnered 23 Emmy noms. Courtesy Apple TV+ It has to be concerning considering how passionate his fan base is. What are you doing to gird your loins for what may come? My loins remain ungirded. What happens will happen. When you get an opportunity to work with someone like Luca and tell a story like this, you just do it and deal with things as they come. Is it going to be a comedy? It's not as openly comedic as, say, Blockers, but it's definitely funny and disturbing. Luca is someone tapped into finding humor and irony even in the darkest subject. L.A. has gone crazy for the Tesla Diner. There are three-hour lines. I'll pass on that one. I'm more excited for Phil Rosenthal's diner, put it that way. It has been an amazing year for you. Does Sal connect with audiences in a new way? He definitely feels like he lives in the same universe as a lot of the other characters I play, in that he's got a lot of id and says some bad things. But the show as a whole really connected with people. Obviously, people in our business connect with it. When you're on any set now, it doesn't matter who is in the crew, they'll say, "I love The Studio." People in the food world have The Bear, and we have The Studio. It's one for us. Is Sal someone that you specifically have dealt with? He's an amalgam of execs I've worked with. I've had the pleasure of knowing a lot of great execs. I've had the displeasure of knowing a couple of shitty ones. The one thing that exists in all of them is this vibe of, "Hey, you want to grab a little food, little drink?" That kind of cutting loose a little bit, talking some shit after work. That is the essence of Sal Saperstein. Barinholtz with Mindy Kaling in season two of The Mindy Project in 2013 ordin Althaus/(C)Fox/courtesy Everett Collection Do you like being asked out for drinks after work? I do! It's funny, in L.A., you don't do that. You go home and you see the family [Barinholtz has three daughters, ages 5 to 10], and you get up. But for the last two episodes of The Studio, we shot on location in Vegas for two weeks. It's crazy because you wrap and it's 9:30 p.m., and you're literally in a casino and everyone's just looking at each other, and Catherine O'Hara is like, "Does ... anyone want to get a martini?" And you're like, "Yes!" You could have made Sal a demon, but for all his foibles, he's prett