Michael John Roberts

Michael John Roberts died peacefully at his home in Los Angeles on Wednesday 11 November 2026, surrounded by his family, after a brief illness with glioblastoma, an aggressive brain cancer. He was 48. His death was reported by The Hollywood Reporter on 12 November.

He was survived by his wife, Bree Williamson; their son, McGreggor; his parents, Wendy and Teddy; his sister, Jane; his niece, Gwen, and nephew, Vaughan; and his cousin Hrothgar and his family. Funeral or memorial arrangements had not been made public.

Michael John Roberts was born on 20 December 1977 and grew up in Toronto, Ontario. His mother, Wendy, was a doctor and his father, Teddy, a mechanic. He had a sister, Jane, and was close to his cousin Hrothgar, whom he regarded as a brother.

As a boy he wanted to draw comic books. "I always wanted to be a comic book artist growing up," he said in a 2021 interview, "but somewhere in there I found out that they did the lightning bolts on the DeLorean in Back to the Future by hand and decided that was the job for me!" He studied animation at Sheridan College in Ontario and graduated with honours.

After Sheridan, Roberts moved from junior animator to storyboard artist to director, working in Toronto, New York and London before settling in Los Angeles in the late 1990s. Early credits included Angela Anaconda, The Hoobs and Tales of Rat Fink, and he directed commercials for Honda, Burger King, Kentucky Fried Chicken, ABC and Pulse Electric Scooters, as well as music videos for The Sadies and The Pack A.D.

In 2012 he won the Juno Award for video of the year for Rumbleseat, a six minute animated Western short he created and directed for The Sadies.

At the studio ShadowMachine he co-created and directed all 28 installments of TripTank, the Comedy Central animated sketch show that ran from 2014 to 2016 with voice work from Bob Odenkirk, Curtis Armstrong, Larry David, Niecy Nash, Zach Galifianakis, Kumail Nanjiani and Wayne Brady. In 2015 he designed and directed the title sequence and directed episodes of BoJack Horseman for Netflix. He directed episodes of F Is for Family, starring Bill Burr, in 2017, and was supervising director of the first season of TBS's Final Space in 2018.

He created Dallas & Robo, an eight episode buddy comedy starring John Cena and Kat Dennings that premiered on YouTube Red in 2018, and in 2023 directed all ten episodes of Strange Planet for Apple TV, co-created by Dan Harmon. Working with Mattel Television, he was executive producer and creative producer on Hot Wheels Let's Race: Attack of the T-Rex and executive producer on Masters of the Universe: Tales From Eternia. He also directed the pilot of the animated Backyard Sports special and the first season of MrBeast Lab, where he was a writer and consulting producer on the second season.

Roberts was married to the actress Bree Williamson, and they had a son, McGreggor. In a remembrance of her husband, Williamson wrote that their son "was a source of immense pride" and that Roberts "wanted nothing but the best for him." The family lived in Los Angeles.

Roberts belonged to the generation of animators who helped define adult animated television in the 2010s, from the absurd sketches of TripTank to the opening titles of BoJack Horseman, a series widely credited with showing how much emotional weight adult animation could carry.

He was generous with advice for newcomers. "Make the thing you want to make," he said. "Because everyone in this business wants you to have already done it." He added: "It's a small group of people who put all the pieces together. So that should be really encouraging. If you can muster the energy, you'll get there. Because the line's shorter than you think."