Tom Rosenthal

Thomas Alan Smith Rosenthal (born 14 January 1988) is an English actor, comedian, and writer. He is best known for his television roles as Jonny Goodman in Friday Night Dinner (2011–2020) and Marcus Gallo in Plebs (2013–2022). He has written and performed three stand-up comedy shows: Child of Privilege (2011), благодаря (2013), and Manhood (2019–2020), the latter of which received critical acclaim at the 2019 Edinburgh Fringe Festival. Early life Thomas Alan Smith Rosenthal was born in the Hammersmith area of London on 14 January 1988, the son of Newsnight producer Christine (née Smith) and television sports presenter Jim Rosenthal. He is of German-Jewish descent through his father, with one of his paternal great-grandfathers being German-Jewish physician and writer Oscar Levy. He was once dubbed a "super-smart child of privilege" by the London Evening Standard. He grew up in Cookham, Berkshire, and read philosophy at King's College London. His early comedic influences were the TV shows Spaced, Brass Eye, and Da Ali G Show. Career In 2011, Rosenthal was cast as Jonny Goodman in the Channel 4 sitcom Friday Night Dinner, alongside Simon Bird, Tamsin Greig, Paul Ritter, and Mark Heap. The sitcom focused on the weekly Shabbat dinner in the middle-class secular Jewish Goodman family in North London. Rosenthal played the younger son and he and Greig are the only two cast members who have Jewish roots in real life. The sixth and final series set the record for the highest audience for any comedy on Channel 4 or E4 for 16-to-34 year olds with a 49.3% share, and the average audience for the series was 3.9 million viewers. Following the death of Ritter in 2021, it was announced that the show would not continue. To celebrate the 10th anniversary of the start of the show, an anniversary special was aired in May 2021.