Martin Mull, the droll comedian, actor, singer-songwriter and painter who found fame on the soap opera satire n and its spinoff , has died. He was 80. Mull died on Thursday at home after a “valiant fight against a long illness,” his daughter, Maggie Mull, .
“He was known for excelling at every creative discipline imaginable and also for doing Red Roof Inn commercials,” she wrote. “He would find that joke funny. He was never not funny.
My dad will be deeply missed by his wife and daughter, by his friends and coworkers, by fellow artists and comedians and musicians, and—the sign of a truly exceptional person—by many, many dogs. I loved him tremendously.” Mull also enjoyed lengthy stints in the 1990s as the befuddled principal Willard Kraft on and as Leon Carp, the gay boss and pal of Connor (Roseanne Barr), on .
He played private detective (and master of disguise!) on and a pharmacist who wasn’t above sampling his product on He earned his only Emmy nomination in 2016 for his performance as political operative Bob Bradley on . The clever Mull starred with frequent collaborator and co-wrote the 1985 Cinemax mockumentary and its 1986 sequel. He also portrayed Colonel Mustard on the big screen in (1985).
More recently, he was one of the old guys on the Fox sitcom and an acid-tripping attorney on Netflix’s . Combining his knack for song and comedy, Mull found early success in 1970 when country music star Jane Morgan recorded his parody “A Girl Named Johnny Cash.
