List of MythBusters cast members
This is a list of cast members of the television series MythBusters on the Discovery Channel. In addition to the core cast members, the MythBusters team includes several honorary MythBusters, and some recurring guests.
Cast
Mythbusters Reboot cast
Jon Lung
Jon Lung is a product designer and graphic designer from Staten Island, New York, known as a co-host on the 2017 revival of the series. Lung and his co-host Brian Louden were selected as hosts after winning the reality television competition series Mythbusters: The Search. This aired in January and February 2016.Brian Louden
Brian Louden is an American pilot and rescue diver from Houston, Texas, known as a co-host on the 2017 revival of Mythbusters. Louden and his co-host Jon Lung won the spots from competition on Mythbusters: The Search, which aired in January and February 2016.Original cast
Recurring experts are sometimes referred to as "Honorary MythBusters".Jamie Hyneman
Jamie Hyneman is a main cast member on MythBusters, along with Adam Savage. His demeanor on the show is calm, logical and no-nonsense, in stark contrast to Savage's more animated, impulsive and energetic persona. The two often have very different ideas for performing experiments and building devices. Hyneman's ideas tend to be more simple and he prefers to reduce a solution to its most basic form. These two experts have competed when testing myths.In numerous interviews, both Jamie and Adam have said that one of the reasons for the show's success is their differences. They have a mutual respect for each other's work, however they do not have a social relationship outside the show. In a 2015 interview, they said their arguments were part of early seasons, but they worked to have such occasions reduced on-camera.
Adam Savage
Adam Savage has been involved in MythBusters since its creation. Savage's demeanor on MythBusters is animated and energetic, providing a foil to Jamie Hyneman's more reserved straight man persona.Savage and Hyneman were the only hosts of the show for the first season of MythBusters. Starting with the second season, members of Hyneman's staff were introduced and began to appear regularly in episodes; Kari Byron, Tory Belleci and welder Scottie Chapman appeared in the second season. In the third season, Chapman was replaced by Grant Imahara, a robot builder and model maker.
Kari Byron
Kari Byron was a co-host until 2014 with fellow co-hosts of the "Build Team," Tory Belleci and Grant Imahara. She and the others also hosted their own segments. She became involved in the show after persistently showing up at Hyneman's M5 Industries workshop in a desire to get hired by his company. She and the other Build Team members were given a more prominent role beginning with the show's second season. Not having had a long history in show business, Byron at first found it difficult to act naturally with this more visible position but gradually became more accustomed to it. Byron first appeared in the background of JATO Rocket Car, the first episode of the show, though her first proper on screen appearance was in episode two, where Adam and Jamie made a mold of her butt to test the myth of getting stuck on an airplane toilet.During the second half of the 2009 season, Byron was on maternity leave and was temporarily replaced by Jessi Combs. In 2010–2011, Byron had her own show, Head Rush, on the Science Channel, geared towards science education and teens.
Byron has also hosted the 2010 and 2011 editions of Large, Dangerous Rocket Ships for the Science Channel. She and Belleci made a guest appearance on the October 3, 2012 episode of the Discovery series Sons of Guns. They test fired some of the weapons in the Red Jacket shop and watched as the staff retested a myth previously busted by the Build Team: that a propane tank could explode if struck by a bullet. On August 21, 2014, it was announced that Byron, along with co-stars Grant Imahara and Tory Belleci, would be leaving MythBusters.
Tory Belleci
Tory Belleci is often considered by fellow MythBusters Kari Byron and Grant Imahara to be more of a daredevil and, as such, often performs the more dangerous stunts when testing a myth. These have included: testing the "Red Flag to a Bull" myth; testing the myth that a human's tongue will instantly stick to a frozen pole, in the "Frozen Tongue" myth; and the "Underwater Blow Dart" myth. One of his more popular stunts, shown several times on the show, was an attempt to jump over a toy wagon on a bicycle; the attempt failed, resulting in Belleci flipping forward, landing on his face and skidding across the pavement, only to immediately respond with an "I'm okay". As a result of doing these stunts, he is often involved in comical accidents while testing myths. According to the October 28, 2012 episode of MythBusters, he suffers from acrophobia.During the "Fall Guys" myth, Belleci fell off a roof, and despite being strapped into a safety harness system, landed in an open window ledge below the drop point, and injured his leg causing substantial bleeding.
He and Byron made a guest appearance on the October 3, 2012 episode of the Discovery series Sons of Guns. They test fired some of the weapons in the Red Jacket shop and watched as the staff retested a myth previously busted by the Build Team: that a propane tank could explode if struck by a bullet.
On August 21, 2014, it was announced that Belleci, along with co-stars Byron and Imahara, would be leaving MythBusters.
Grant Imahara
Grant Imahara joined MythBusters on the invitation of friend and occasional employer Jamie Hyneman and Industrial Light and Magic colleague Linda Wolkovitch. He joined as the third member of the Build Team, replacing former MythBusters welder Scottie Chapman. His colleagues often jokingly referred to him as the "geek" of the Build Team. He often made the robots that are needed for the show and otherwise specialized in operating the computers and electronics for the myths. On August 21, 2014, it was announced that Grant, along with co-stars Kari Byron and Tory Belleci, would be leaving MythBusters.Grant Imahara died on July 13, 2020, after suffering a brain aneurysm.
Christine Chamberlain
Christine Chamberlain was a "MythTern", joining the MythBusters team after winning a Discovery Channel contest; she appeared during the show’s second season. In that role, she primarily assisted hosts Jamie Hyneman and Adam Savage during myth tests. She remained with the program through its third season.She died at age 54, after a six-year battle with cancer, at the Blue Ridge Hospice Inpatient Care Center in Winchester, Virginia.
Scottie Chapman
Scottie Chapman is a former member of the Build Team who was called the "Mistress of Metal" for her work in welding and metal craft. Notable for her tattoos, she departed after the third season. On her MySpace blog, she revealed that she would not be back as a regular, but she appeared in the "Supersize Rocket Car" as well as in the "Young Scientist Special" as part of The Great Ice Debate myth. She also made an appearance in one episode broadcast after her departure that involved an experiment, executed over a number of months, which began when she was with the show and ended after she had left. She was formerly the bassist of the band Fuzz, which would evolve into Weezer.Jessi Combs
Jessi Combs was a cast member on the Build Team for a short time. Her arrival was announced on July 31, 2009, by the Discovery Channel when co-host Kari Byron went on maternity leave prior to giving birth to her first child. Byron left the show on the episode "Dumpster Diving" and Combs replaced her on the show. Combs was an American television personality and metal fabricator who appeared from 2005 to 2008 on the Spike show Xtreme 4x4. Prior to appearing there she appeared on the TLC program Overhaulin' as a guest fabricator.After high school Combs turned down a scholarship to attend an interior design school. In 2004, she graduated from WyoTech in the Collision & Refinishing Core Program at the top of her class. She also took the Street Rod Fabrication and Custom Fabrication and High Performance Powertrain programs.
Combs died in August 2019 in a crash of a jet-powered high-speed race car in southeastern Oregon while attempting to set a new four-wheel land speed record, which was posthumously awarded to her in June 2020 by Guinness World Records.