DETROIT — There's funny, there's hilarious, and then there's whatever Tim Robinson is doing.

Call him the king of cringe comedy. The Metro Detroit-raised actor and comedian specializes in portraying outsiders driven to great lengths to act or appear normal, who don't seem to realize how far from normal they've drifted.

They include a man who would rather pry a door off its hinges than admit in front of a prospective employer that he's trying to open it the wrong way, a guy screaming an order of 55 burgers into a fast food drive-thru intercom because he thinks he's getting it paid forward, and a dating show participant who's more interested in riding a recreational zip line into a swimming pool than he is in hitting on the show's contestant.

Those are all characters from Robinson's Netflix sketch comedy series, "I Think You Should Leave," which elevated Robinson from cult TV figure (he graduated from "Saturday Night Live" to Comedy Central's "Detroiters," a bizarro tribute to the local advertising of his youth) to a master of comic discomfort for an entire generation. He not only has a way of making you laugh but also of leaving you squirming, as he identifies a kind of loneliness and desperation to fit in that is taken to such an extreme that it makes you laugh even harder.

Now comes "Friendship," which marks Robinson's first big-screen starring role. In it, Robinson stars as Craig Waterman, an average Joe who develops a man-crush on his cool guy neighbor, played by Paul Rudd. After their friendship sours, Robinson's character tries desperately to smooth things over, which leads to a series of wildly offbeat (and wildly funny) situations. It opens wide on May 23.

While his humor has launched a million GIFs and memes that have become shorthand for a certain stripe of millennial humor, Robinson, who turns 44 next week, says there was no inciting incident that launched his comedy ascent.

"I don't think there was any time where I was like, 'I'm funny,' or, 'I can make people laugh,'" says Robinson, on the phone over the weekend from New York, where he was doing press for "Friendship." "It was something I was interested in, it was something I was a fan of, but it wasn't ever like, 'Oh, I have an ability (to make people laugh).' It's like wanting to skateboard, there's never a point where you're like, 'I'm great at skateboarding,' you're just working at something and you're a fan of it."

Even if Robinson himself can't identify it, those who know him best say it's always been in him. He has always been bitingly funny, he's always been a performer, and he's always known the path on which he was headed and the work it would take to get there.

A crack-up early on

Robinson's big brother, Dan Carron, says his little brother has always been able to command a room, since they were kids growing up in Waterford Township, near the Clarkston border.

"He's been funny his entire life," says Carron, who is a year and a half older than Robinson. (They have the same mother but different fathers, hence the different last names.)

"He was constantly funny and he was always making everyone laugh," Carron says. "Timmy had these characters he would do, and my grandfather would ask him to bring the characters out at family parties. He had this one, Officer Yeah Right, where he would put on these cop glasses and get in everyone's face and rip on everybody in the family, and he'd always say, 'Yeah right!' He was like 8, he was little, and my grandma would have to leave the room and my grandpa would just crack up."

In a loud family — he was one of four brothers, born to a construction worker father and a mother who worked at Chrysler — Robinson stood out because of his quick wit, says Carron.

"Even when he was young, you could just see the talent. The faces he would make, the way he could take on personalities. We'd be walking out of the grocery store and he'd be mocking the cashier on the way to the car, spot on, but exaggerated. He's always been good at that," he says. "We all knew right then, this kid's got something."

Robinson was always interested in learning more about comedy and its mechanics, and he enrolled in a clown class at around 10, just to learn the ins and outs of the craft.

Television was a constant draw, and Carron says his brother would watch TV all hours of the night, which is where his obsession with local advertising — which would later manifest in "Detroiters" — was born.

"He's like a history buff when it comes to television shows. Anything Detroit-related, he can rattle off the theme song to any Detroit commercial, going back to when we were kids. He knew them all," Carron says.

"He was watching TV all the time. Timmy was up at all hours. He was a full-on vampire," he says. "I can remember waking up for school and going into Timmy's room to see if he was up, and he hadn't gone to bed from the night before. He was up watching old shows, everything from black-and-white shows, comedy, a lot of basketball, a lot of sports. But full-on, watching TV a lot."

Rick Williams, who moved from Milwaukee to Clarkston when he was in eighth grade, says Robinson was one of his first friends in town. Williams was immediately impressed with Robinson's sharp humor.

"I come from an environment where we used to play the Dozens, that's just part of our culture," says Williams, of the comic insult game common in Black communities. "A lot of times when I run into my White friends, they're not good at that. But Tim was good at that."

Williams says at Clarkston High School, Robinson hung with a clique of skateboarders and had a laid-back personality, but he could also be the center of attention, depending on the situation.

"He used to have these house parties, and I remember him holding court. He could take over the room," Williams says.

"Tim was always cool. He was cool with people because he was quick with the jokes. You don't really want to be on the bad side of somebody like that, because he has real good jokes," Williams says. "I've seen it go bad for people. If you get him going, you feel like if you say something, he's gonna start lighting you up. He's not trying to hurt you until you come sideways, then his focus is on you."

If he could be a menace with his comedy, he was looking for a place to channel that energy, and a high school trip to Chicago with his mom helped bring things into focus. While there, they took in a show at Second City, the renowned improvisational comedy company, and things immediately clicked for him.

"That was when he was like, 'I'm doing this,'" Carron says.

Second City bound

When he was still a high schooler in the late '90s, Robinson started taking weekend classes at Second City, which was in downtown Detroit at the time, where Hockeytown Cafe is now located. That's where he met Nancy Hayden, who went on to direct him and co-star with him at Second City and at various improv groups over the years.

"Timmy was just a kid when I met him, and he was just as funny then," Hayden says. "Timmy is the funniest person in the world, and I'm not just saying that because we're talking about him. If you talk to 1,000 people, every one of them will tell you he’s the funniest person they know, hands down."

Hayden knew Robinson to be rather quiet and contemplative until it was time to perform, and then a whole other side of him would come out: loud, boisterous, manic. "He really saves it for the stage," she says.

He thrived in that community environment, and it's where he met fellow Detroit comic Sam Richardson, who would go on to be his comedy partner in "Detroiters," and "Key and Peele's" Keegan-Michael Key, who was one of his teachers.

Carron says Robinson took being funny very seriously.

"From an outside perspective, I noticed that his dedication was next level," he says. "Because when we were at party age, we would have parties, and it didn't matter how big the party was, he was doing improv, and he would not miss it for anything. I don't care what you offered. There was nothing that was going to take him away. There could have been two people (in the audience), it didn't matter. He was getting on stage."

That also meant no partying before performing, Carron says.

"I remember one time trying to have a drink with him before a show. And sometimes the audience would just be who we came with. I'd be like, 'Dude, let's have some beers.' Not a chance, Tim would not drink. He always took his performing so serious."

In addition to Second City, Robinson was also performing in Ann Arbor and at Planet Ant in Hamtramck, as well as at Wunderground, an improv space above a hardware store in Royal Oak.

Dave Foydel, whose father, Mike, owned Wunderground and who was also an improv performer himself, remembers Robinson from that time.

"He was always very funny, he was always very quick, and he always had a smile on his face," Foydel says.

Robinson worked his way up to Second City cast member by the time the space moved to Novi, and Hayden recalls performances where Robinson absolutely brought the house down.

He joined the Second City touring team and eventually packed up and left for Chicago, where he joined the Second City troupe there. That led to him being hired by "Saturday Night Live" in 2012, which was his breakthrough, which led to "Detroiters," "I Think You Should Leave" and now "Friendship."

"I don't think there ever really was a Plan B," Carron says.

An unassuming profile

Robinson doesn't love talking about himself, and he isn't a huge fan of doing press. On the phone, he's much more comfortable talking about Detroit spots or skateboarding than he is zeroing in on his work or identifying themes in his comedy.

He does say being raised in Metro Detroit and our proximity to Canada helped inform his comedy tastes at an early age as a young TV obsessive.

"Growing up in the area, you know how we'd get CBC? 'Kids in the Hall' would come on CBC, and it kind of blew my mind," Robinson says. "Obviously, I was a fan of 'SNL,' but seeing 'Kids in the Hall' really opened me up where I was like, 'holy s---, this is special.'

"I always loved comedy, but I didn't know much about it, and I remember that was the first time I saw pretaped sketch comedy, all shot and not live, and that just really spoke to me," he says. "That was a major factor on me, and I was lucky that growing up in the Detroit area that we got it on TV without having cable."

Robinson also chalks up his ability to learn and participate at Second City as fortunate timing. Second City was downtown from about 1993 to 2004, and in Novi from 2005 to 2009, the same years when Robinson was young and looking for an outlet for his creativity.

"I just feel extremely lucky that I was seeking out comedy in that window that it was there," he says, "because if it wasn't there, I don't know what I would have done. If you grow up in a place where you don't have access to something like that, it's tough to go somewhere else because it's a risk, it's scary. But I was lucky enough to have that building and those people and that community that gave confidence to me, like, 'OK, this can be real. There are paths.'"

He credits the area's improv community, including Planet Ant and Ferndale's Go Comedy! Improv Theater, with continuing to foster a thriving environment for comedy in Metro Detroit.

Robinson currently lives in California with Heather, his wife of nearly 20 years (they were high school sweethearts), and their two children. As his profile has exploded, especially following the launch of "I Think You Should Leave" in 2019, he has kept an extremely low-key public profile. He mostly stays out of the spotlight, and his social media presence is largely limited to skateboarding videos.

He says he had a great time making "Friendship" but doesn't know if more movie roles will follow. "Whatever happens, happens," he says.

Plenty of people try to describe his comedy style or what it means in a larger sense, but he's not one of them.

"I just try to do things that make us laugh," he says of himself and Zach Kanin, his comic partner and the co-creator of "Detroiters" and "I Think You Should Leave." The pair met while writing at "SNL."

"That's it, that's the only bar, that's the only brand. Do we think it's funny?" he says. "We're not striving for anything, it's purely if him and I think it's funny. That's the only thought."

An outsider to root for

Even if Robinson isn't keen on elaborating on his own comedy style, Hayden has some theories as to why his brand of humor touches a nerve.

"We all think we're outsiders and Tim plays the outsider better than anyone, ever," she says. "And Tim is an incredibly lovable guy, so we instantly like and root for every single one of his characters, no matter how wrong they are. I think those two things combined are the magic of Tim."

She says she finds it astonishing the way he commits to his characters, and she says there's no winking when he's performing. His sincerity and his belief in the bit are what make them work.

"In his mind, the funniest thing is this guy who cannot read the room and cannot let it go, and won’t let it go, and the only way to get out of the situation is to dig the hole deeper," she says.

At the same time, she says there is something to be said for him just going by what makes him laugh.

"I don’t think he’s got a definition or some sort of comedy tenets that he lives by. I think he is just trying to do the funniest thing," she says.

Robinson hired Hayden as a writer on "Detroiters," and he brought Williams, his friend from high school, on to do the show's theme song.

These days, Carron says when Robinson calls and talks to his son, you can hear the two of them three rooms away.

"It's loud. When he gets on the phone to FaceTime with my son, my son's 6, it's as loud as the show," he says. "You know that constant screaming, chaos, laughing? That's Timmy."

So far, "Friendship" has been warmly received by audiences and critics. The movie, which is written and directed by Andrew DeYoung, has earned a 92% fresh rating on Rotten Tomatoes, and it opened with a promising per-screen average when it hit theaters over the weekend.

It marks a new chapter in Robinson's career and reach, not that Robinson is putting any kind of parameters around what that might mean going forward. As long as people are laughing, he's happy.

"There's not a way to put a finger on it," he says. "I'm just a fan of comedy, and that's it."

'Friendship'

MPA rating: R (for language and some drug content)

Running time: 1:40

How to watch: Now in limited theatrical release; expands nationwide May 23

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