Josh Grisetti dies at 44 as Broadway mourns The Marvelous Mrs. Maisel and Something Rotten! star

Some news you never want to write. Josh Grisetti talented, funny, quietly essential in a bunch of shows you probably love has died. He was 44.

What happened

Grisetti died by suicide on Friday, July 10, 2026. The news came from his friend and Something Rotten! co-star Rob McClure, who posted a tribute and shared how much joy came from sharing a stage with him. The theater world responded fast and loud with remembrances, which tells you everything about the kind of colleague and performer he was.

Where you know him from

• The Marvelous Mrs. Maisel: An eight-episode run in the final season as Ralph Emerson, a clean, confident bit of character work that fit right into that show’s machine.
• Something Rotten!: He and McClure played brothers Nigel and Nick Bottom, first on Broadway and then around the country on the national tour. Big laughs, big chemistry.
• It Shoulda Been You (2015): His Broadway breakthrough, originating Marty Kaufman and picking up a Clarence Derwent Award plus a Drama Desk nomination for it.
• Enter Laughing: The Musical ( Off-Broadway): The turn that earned him a Theatre World Award and put a lot of folks on notice.
• The Knights of Prosperity (ABC): The short-lived comedy with a cult afterlife; Grisetti was part of the ensemble mischief.
• Films: James Gray’s The Immigrant and Sam Mendes’s Revolutionary Road both feature him on the big-screen side of things.

How he got here

Grisetti was born in Washington, D.C., grew up in Virginia, and took the craft seriously from the jump. He earned a BFA from the Boston Conservatory, then an MFA from Loyola Marymount University. That mix of formal training and comic instinct is exactly what made him pop whether he was anchoring a musical or sliding into a TV role without breaking a sweat.

The teacher and the writer

In recent years, he put just as much energy into developing new talent as he did into performing. He served as Associate Professor and Head of the Musical Theatre BFA program at California State University, Fullerton, and he wrote the bestselling memoir God in My Head. If you ever talk to his students, you hear the same refrain: generous, specific, and fiercely on your side.

A note on the coverage

One odd thing in early write-ups: a stray subheading calling him a 'bright legal star.' That’s obviously a copy-paste hiccup, but it’s worth flagging because he was the opposite of generic he was deeply himself, and the people who worked with him felt it.

The loss

Grisetti moved easily between New York stages and TV sets, which is harder than it looks. The throughline was always timing and heart. The tributes pouring in from fans, castmates, and former students make it clear the ripple effect of that combination is going to last a long time.