Joel Edward McHale was born in Rome on November 20, 1971, the son of Jack McHale, who worked as the Dean of Students at Loyola University’s Rome Center, and his wife Laurie. His father is American and hails from Chicago, while his mother is Canadian and a native of Vancouver. McHale is of Irish and Norwegian descent, and was raised Catholic. He grew up on Mercer Island, Washington, and briefly lived in Haddonfield, New Jersey, before returning to Mercer Island. He attended Mercer Island High School. He received a bachelor’s degree in history from the University of Washington in 1995, and was briefly in the Theta Chi fraternity.

McHale married Sarah Williams in July 1996. They live in the Hollywood Hills with their two sons.

In 2004, McHale began hosting The Soup, a satirical weekly television show on the E! television network. Throughout the show, he takes the audience through the oddities and ridiculous happenings of the week in television. He frequently appears as a co-host on Loveline. He has been a judge on Iron Chef America. He was involved in the American version of the British TV show The IT Crowd. McHale made a guest appearance on the finale of Last Comic Standing’s sixth season, when he recapped the show’s events in his typical format of jokes made popular on The Soup. He also was a judge on season 11 of RuPaul’s Drag Race.

McHale starred in the sitcom Community, which premiered in winter 2009, and continued to host The Soup. McHale made an appearance on the first episode of the fifth season of Tosh.0. He played Rex in Ted (2012) and had a short guest stint on the FX show Sons of Anarchy. He played an NYPD officer in the supernatural horror film Deliver Us from Evil. McHale appeared in 3 episodes between the tenth and eleventh seasons of The X-Files in 2016 and 2018, respectively.

McHale was the host at the 2014 White House Correspondents’ Association annual dinner. He hosted the 2011 Independent Spirit Awards and the 2015 ESPY Awards. In 2016, he appeared as an occasional co-host alongside Kelly Ripa in the ABC morning show Live with Kelly. McHale hosted the 43rd People’s Choice Awards on January 18, 2017 and the 2017 Webby Awards on May 15, 2017.

McHale played the lead role in the CBS sitcom The Great Indoors, which began airing in the fall of 2016. The series was later cancelled on May 13, 2017 due to low ratings.

In 2018, McHale was cast in the recurring role of Chris on the second season of the Netflix horror-comedy series Santa Clarita Diet.

In December 2018, it was announced that McHale was cast as Sylvester Pemberton, the Golden Age Starman in the DC Universe series Stargirl.

In January 2018, it was announced that he would be receiving his own talk show on Netflix in February. The Joel McHale Show with Joel McHale combined celebrity guests, pre-taped sketches and video clips in a half-hour series that focused on pop culture and news from around the world. On August 17, 2018, it was announced that Netflix had canceled the show after 19 episodes, reportedly due to low viewership.

In a 2018 interview on Dax Shepard’s podcast Armchair Expert, McHale revealed he was dyslexic, having discovered this when his two sons were diagnosed.

On April 8, 2019, TVLine reported that McHale would host a revival of the game show Card Sharks for ABC.