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Q: Who's the actor who plays Pimento in "Brooklyn Nine-Nine"? He's hilarious, and has been a great addition to the show.

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Author: 
Adam Thomlison / TV Media

The comically damaged, violent former undercover cop Adrian Pimento (he really does play it for laughs, believe it or not) is played by Jason Mantzoukas.

He's probably best known as Rafi in the FX sitcom "The League," a comedy about a group of friends in a fantasy football league together. Much like Pimento in "Brooklyn Nine-Nine," Rafi shows up occasionally in the show to inject a bit of extra weirdness into an already weird ensemble of characters.

He's also done film work, most notably playing the nuclear scientist Nadal in the 2012 comedy "The Dictator."

He joked in an interview with Entertainment Weekly that he's become a go-to guy for casting agents looking for "a light brown funny guy," saying that he's been cast as a huge range of ethnicities despite being "100 percent Greek." For the record, his "League" character was Puerto Rican, his "Dictator" character was from the fictional Middle Eastern country of Wadiya, and his "Brooklyn Nine-Nine" character was undercover with the Mafia (though it's never said directly that it's the Italian Mafia).

 

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