Mary Beth Barone

Barone grew up in Stamford, Connecticut, as the youngest of six children in a Catholic family of Italian descent. Her father, surgeon James E. Barone Sr., had briefly tried stand-up comedy in New York during the 1970s. She attended Catholic school in Greenwich for a decade before graduating from Westhill High School.

She enrolled at Boston College to study English. She planned to become a teacher. Two years in, she dropped out at age 20 and moved to Chinatown in Manhattan. Barone is bisexual. She previously dated actor Edward Bluemel, and later dated actor Adam DiMarco before announcing their breakup on Late Night with Seth Meyers in July 2025.

After working at Warby Parker and a wellness app startup, Barone studied improv at the Upright Citizens Brigade under instructors including Amber Petty and Aaron Jackson. She tried stand-up for the first time during an all-women open mic in August 2015. Comedy took over.

In 2019, Barone created Drag His Ass: A Fuckboy Treatment Program, a Brooklyn comedy show examining modern dating culture and masculine behavior. Comedy Central adapted the concept into a 2021 web series. She went viral the same year after distributing an FAQ pamphlet to her family to head off questions about a vacation date. She also ran Coming Clean, a livestreamed series filmed from her bathtub.

She made appearances on The Tonight Show Starring Jimmy Fallon, beginning in March 2021. She released her self-produced stand-up special Thought Provoking on YouTube in March 2024. In July 2026, Netflix released her debut hour-long special, Galaxy Brain, filmed at New York University's Skirball Center for the Performing Arts.

Barone met comedian Benito Skinner at a 2019 comedy show in Bushwick, Brooklyn. The pair began co-hosting a monthly live show together.

Their dynamic carried into audio. In March 2021, they launched Obsessed on Spotify, a weekly show exploring internet culture that ran until March 2023. They followed it with Ride, launched through Dear Media in March 2023. The show debuted in Spotify's top 10 podcasts and was named to The Atlantic's list of the best podcasts of 2023.

Barone moved into television acting with appearances on HBO's That Damn Michael Che and the 2023 Black Mirror episode "Joan Is Awful". She also played Madison in the 2023 short film The Anne Frank Gift Shop, which made the Oscar shortlist for Best Live Action Short.

In 2025, she joined the main cast of Skinner's series Overcompensating. She played Grace, an uptight college student, while working as a staff writer on the production. Her feature script You're My Best Friend was featured on The Black List, and she appeared in the 2025 music video for Ruel's single "Wild Guess".