Biography
Humorist, actor and writer Mo Rocca is best known for his off-beat news reports and satirical commentary. Currently a Correspondent for CBS Sunday Morning News with Charles Osgood, he’s also a panelist on NPR’s hit weekly quiz show Wait, Wait...Don’t Tell Me! and the host of the show Foodography on The Cooking Channel. Rocca spent four seasons as a correspondent on Comedy Central’s The Daily Show with Jon Stewart and four seasons as a correspondent on The Tonight Show with Jay Leno.
The former president and author of Harvard University’s Hasty Pudding Show, Rocca is no stranger to the stage, where his credits include the roles of Vice Principal Douglas Panch in Broadway’s The 25th Annual Putnam County Spelling Bee, and Doody on the Southeast Asia Tour of Grease.
Rocca’s book All the Presidents’ Pets: The Story of One Reporter Who Refused to Roll Over is a tour-de-force of investigative journalism that blows the lid off of a long-held Washington secret: Presidential pets are more than just photo-ops. Equal parts All the President’s Men, Charlotte’s Web and The Da Vinci Code, Pets is the journalistic watershed event of the decade. Really.
Rocca began his career in TV as a writer and producer for the Emmy and Peabody Award-winning PBS children’s series Wishbone. He went on to write and produce for other kids series, including ABC’s Pepper Ann and Nickelodeon’s The Wubbulous World of Dr. Seuss—a pre-school series combining the whimsy of Seuss characters with the magic of Jim Henson puppetry.
Rocca also served as consulting editor at the adult men’s magazine Perfect 10. Doing “pre-school by day and porn by night” helped prepare him for the broad range of topics he’d tackle on The Daily Show, where his eccentric profiles ranged from a man obsessed with first ladies to the point that he dresses as Florence Harding, to a husband/wife pet-mummification team.
A native of Washington, D.C., Mo Rocca earned a bachelor’s degree at Harvard and resides in New York City.
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