Riki Lindhome

Biography:

Riki Lindhome was born in Coudersport, Pennsylvania, and raised in Portville, New York. She is of Swedish and Norwegian descent, and graduated from Portville High School in 1997. She earned a degree in communications and film from Syracuse University in 2000.

In 1997, Lindhome won the JFK Profiles in Courage essay contest, hosted by the John F. Kennedy Library. Her winning essay focused on Congresswoman Carolyn McCarthy, who entered politics after her husband was killed in the 1993 Long Island Rail Road shooting.

Lindhome began acting without an agent, landing a role in the short film Backseat Detour and an early TV appearance on Titus. She played Cheryl, a student on crutches, in a 2002 episode of Buffy the Vampire Slayer. In 2003, she joined The Actors’ Gang and performed in Embedded, which led to her casting in the Oscar-winning film Million Dollar Baby (2004), where she portrayed Mardell Fitzgerald, the sister of Hilary Swank’s character.

She had a brief role in Gilmore Girls in 2002, and returned in later seasons as Juliet, a health-conscious student. Her film work includes roles in Pulse (2006), Changeling (2008), My Best Friend’s Girl (2008), and The Last House on the Left (2009), where she played Sadie, a violent antagonist. She also had TV guest roles in The Big Bang Theory (as Ramona Nowitzki), Pushing Daisies, and Criminal Minds.

In 2011, Lindhome appeared in Nuthin’ But a Glee Thang, a parody video on Funny or Die. From 2010 to 2013, she hosted the podcast Making It with Riki Lindhome, featuring interviews with creatives in entertainment. She guest-starred in Enlightened (2011–2013) and played supporting roles in Much Ado About Nothing (2012), Fun Size (2012), and Hell Baby (2013), in which she drew attention for a notably long full-frontal nude scene.

In 2015, she co-created and starred in the Comedy Central series Another Period alongside *Natasha Leggero, playing Beatrice Bellacourt, part of a satirical aristocratic family in early 20th-century America. That year she also played Becky, Fozzie Bear’s girlfriend, in The Muppets, and guest-starred in Fresh Off the Boat and Brooklyn Nine-Nine. She voiced Poison Ivy in The Lego Batman Movie (2017).

In 2018, she appeared as Shaina, a recovering addict, in Kidding, and had a role in Under the Silver Lake as a casual romantic partner. She was featured in Laughing Matters, a SoulPancake documentary about comedians and mental health, and had a supporting role in the star-studded film Knives Out (2019) as Donna Thrombey. Starting in 2020, she voiced Kimberly Harris, the protagonist’s emotional younger sister, in the animated series Duncanville. She also played Officer Julia Robson in The Wolf of Snow Hollow (2020).

In 2022, Lindhome voiced Royal Assistant Beep Beep in King Tweety and appeared as Dr. Valerie Kinbott, Wednesday Addams’s court-ordered therapist, in Netflix’s Wednesday. She later guest-starred in The Muppets Mayhem (2023) as a fan who steals a band van.

In 2024, she played Maud in the horror film Afraid and premiered a one-woman musical titled Dead Inside at the Edinburgh Fringe Festival. The show came to the U.S. the following year and was staged at Woolly Mammoth Theatre Company in Washington, D.C., in July 2025.

Outside of her performance work, Lindhome is writing the script and co-writing lyrics (with Kate Micucci) for the upcoming animated musical film Steps, also serving as executive producer.

In her personal life, Lindhome has a son, born via surrogate in March 2022. She married comedian Fred Armisen on June 1, 2022, though she clarified on The Adam Carolla Podcast (April 27, 2025) that they began dating while she was already expecting, and Armisen is not the child’s biological father.