Dustin Ybarra, Comedian and Actor: Bio and Credits

Dustin Ybarra is an American stand-up comedian and actor. He is publicly credited under that name, and the major entertainment outlets used for this page do not report a different birth name. His film credits include We Bought a Zoo, Ted 2 and Jordan Peele's Us, and his television work includes ABC's Kevin (Probably) Saves the World and a recurring role on CBS's Ghosts.

Real name and what's documented

People searching for "Dustin Ybarra comedian" or "Dustin Ybarra real name" will find a working actor and stand-up comic billed, in trade stories and on-screen credits, as Dustin Ybarra. The Hollywood Reporter has called him a stand-up comedian since at least 2013. Deadline, in a 2016 development story, described him as a Latino comedian. Neither those stories nor later credit wraps in The Hollywood Reporter, Variety and Deadline attach a different legal name, a stage name, or a confirmed birth date or hometown.

Some unofficial biographies on the open web offer a longer given name, a Texas birthplace and an exact birthday. Those details were not corroborated in the trade-press sources used here, and one widely used film site even gives a conflicting birth year. This page therefore does not treat a longer name, a hometown, or a date of birth as established facts. He works, and is written about, as Dustin Ybarra, and the reliable sources reviewed here do not report a different birth name.

Stand-up and early screen work

Trade coverage has treated stand-up as the starting point of the career, not a sideline. In February 2013, The Hollywood Reporter announced that "stand-up comedian Dustin Ybarra" had been cast to co-star in Fox's Friends and Family, then described as a U.S. adaptation of the BBC series Gavin & Stacey. The magazine said he would play Smithy, the roommate and friend of Jason Ritter's Gavin, in a half-hour single-camera comedy, and it already listed film and television credits of 21 and Over, We Bought a Zoo, Hop and Showtime's Californication. A 2026 Deadline credits wrap later listed Us & Them among his television work. This page records both notices and does not assume they are the same series under two titles unless a source says so.

The same 2026 Deadline article also listed stand-up television credits, including Live at Gotham and Stand-Up Revolution. The trades have not, in the stories reviewed here, published a detailed account of his club years or a widely distributed stand-up special. What they do show is a comedian who was already booking studio films and network pilots while still being identified first as a stand-up.

Deadline reported in 2016 that ABC had put in development a single-camera sibling comedy from Peter Murrieta and Bobby Bowman, starring Ybarra and Felipe Esparza, set in Boyle Heights. The story also said Ybarra had played the co-lead opposite John Leguizamo in the ABC comedy pilot The Kings of Van Nuys and had done an arc on ABC's The Goldbergs. A development order is not the same thing as a series that reached air.

Film

By the early 2010s Ybarra was turning up in studio comedies, usually in supporting parts. The Hollywood Reporter's 2013 and 2015 casting stories both name We Bought a Zoo (2011) and 21 & Over (2013) among his credits; the 2013 story also names Hop (2011). In 2015, announcing a recurring role on NBC's The Player, the magazine identified him as a "Ted 2 actor," confirming that Seth MacFarlane film among his credits as well.

Deadline's March 9, 2026, report on a new Cameron Diaz and Stephen Merchant romantic comedy gave a later, fuller film list: Ted 2, Hop, We Bought a Zoo, 21 & Over and Date and Switch, plus Us, the 2019 Universal film from Jordan Peele, and One of Them Days. Those are the film titles this page is prepared to state, because they appear in those trade write-ups. Other sites credit him with additional movies; unless a comparable source confirms them, they are left off.

The pattern in the documented titles is consistent. He is rarely the lead. He is the recognizable comic presence in someone else's bigger movie, and the trades have been listing him as a working film actor for more than a decade.

Television

Television is where Ybarra has had the most room to recur. Besides Californication and The Goldbergs, already mentioned in Hollywood Reporter stories from 2013 and 2015, The Hollywood Reporter said in July 2015 that he had also had a recurring role on Battle Creek and was joining NBC's Las Vegas-set drama The Player, starring Wesley Snipes, as Donovan, "a high-strung tech wizard who is capable of going unnoticed in a crowd."

The closest thing to a regular series showcase came in 2017. Variety's review of ABC's Kevin (Probably) Saves the World, published September 28, 2017, listed Ybarra in the main cast alongside Jason Ritter, JoAnna Garcia Swisher, Kimberly Hébert Gregory, Chloe East, J. August Richards and India de Beaufort. Variety did not, in that review, pause on Ybarra's character by name; the documented fact is that he was in the billed ensemble of a network series, not a one-off guest.

Deadline later added other television credits: Gotham, Us & Them, and, most recently, a recurring guest-star role on the CBS comedy Ghosts. Taken with the earlier Reporter items, the through-line is a comedian who can work in cable half-hours, network sitcoms, a comic-book crime drama and a broadcast fantasy, without being confined to a single type of show.

Recent work

Deadline's 2026 story is also the clearest recent snapshot. It said Ybarra had joined the ensemble of Amazon MGM Studios' untitled Cameron Diaz and Stephen Merchant romantic comedy, a project Merchant is directing and co-writing, produced in part by Seth Rogen and Evan Goldberg's Point Grey Pictures, with Sherry Cola and Josh Segarra also starring. In the same piece, Deadline pointed to One of Them Days and to Us as film credits, and to Ghosts as a current television presence.

That is a working mid-career slate: a recurring sitcom role, a recent studio film, and another ensemble comedy still ahead. It does not make him a household name, but it does show why a search for "Dustin Ybarra comedian" keeps turning up both stand-up billing and a long list of recognizable titles.