Comedian and actor Danny Jolles says his devotion to Washington-area teams isn’t a bandwagon choice—it was handed down by his father, honed across the DMV, and tested by heartbreak like Robert Griffin III’s career collapse and the emotional weight of the Natio
Danny Jolles sits in front of a camera in Los Angeles wearing a black Jayden Daniels Commanders jersey and a burgundy hat topped with the team’s throwback rallying cry, “hail.”
He’s been based in L.A. for more than a decade, long enough that you could expect his loyalty to soften into something more convenient. Instead, Jolles talks like someone still watching the games with the same urgency he grew up with in Fairfax County.
And that’s where his annoyance starts.
Jolles says he gets bothered by people who treat D.C. fandom like a pick-and-choose brand. He specifically took issue with fellow actor and Commanders fan Matthew McConaughey being compared to him.
“He’s not a D.C. sports fan,” Jolles said. “And it kind of annoys me…he just kind of picked our team randomly. And I don’t like it.”
For Jolles, it’s a small distinction. But he treats it like a line you don’t cross.
Known for roles in Hacks, Crazy Ex-Girlfriend and appearances on The Late Show with Stephen Colbert, Jolles says his “full” D.C. sports identity goes beyond the Commanders. He insists he roots for all of it—“Always”—including the UFL’s D.C. Defenders.
“When the USFL or XFL, or whatever they’re calling it now, whenever that thing starts up, and they go, ‘Do we have the D.C. Defenders?’ I go, ‘That’s my team,’” Jolles said. “I’m not well. There’s no decision in my mind of who to root for. I root for the Washington, D.C. team.”
He frames it as a kind of certainty that doesn’t require explaining.
“You’re born into it,” he sounds like he believes, and for him that’s not metaphor.
Born Into It
Jolles says his father set the terms from the start.
“My dad said we root for D.C. Sports,” Jolles said. “I said you got it. That was it. No discussion, no debate.”
Growing up in Fairfax County, he points to his DMV credentials as part of the reason he cares so intensely. He says he was born in D.C., spent the first couple of years in Maryland, and then lived in Northern Virginia—“He touched every part of the region,” he said, and “the region left its mark.”
He also draws a bright line between the DMV and Baltimore.
“I don’t think we need to have a rivalry, but I definitely think we’re not Baltimore,” Jolles said. “Love Baltimore, enjoy Baltimore, great place, hung out in Baltimore — but different sports town.”
To him, it’s not about disrespect. It’s about geography of the heart.
He also says he doesn’t understand people who split their loyalty between Baltimore baseball and D.C. football.
“I just never understood anybody who’s like, ‘Oh, I’m an Orioles fan, but I’m a Commanders (fan)…What’s wrong with you?’” Jolles said.
He came of age without a baseball team and rooted against the Orioles on principle, waiting for the Nationals to exist. When they arrived, he says he was already fully committed.
More than a dozen years into his life in Los Angeles, he describes being among roughly 20 D.C. sports fans who have “assembled” to support each other—and to stay connected to their teams.
The Greatest Casualty
Jolles isn’t just sentimental about championships. Ask him about his biggest D.C. sports heartbreak and he doesn’t start with the Capitals or the Wizards—he goes straight to Robert Griffin III.
Not because Griffin’s story is remembered only through football stats, but because Jolles says he sees something personal in how it played out.
He points to the knee injury and what he calls mismanagement and then describes the spiral that followed. In his words, the grief isn’t really about wins and losses.
“We did have a generational guy, and we blew it for no reason, stupidly,” Jolles said. “I just always have such…that’s probably my greatest heartbreak. It’s wrong. And I just always like — I just feel so bad when I see him sometimes.”
Griffin infamously reinjured his right knee in Washington’s first-round playoff loss to the Seattle Seahawks in January 2013. Jolles says what makes it hurt is what he perceives the franchise did to a person.
“He’s the greatest casualty of that situation,” Jolles said.
The Greatest Season
The flip side of that heartbreak, Jolles says, is the Nationals’ 2019 World Series run.
Born in 1987, he says Washington’s last two Super Bowl titles—January 1988 and January 1992—landed when he was either an infant or a 4-year-old, which meant he didn’t get to feel them the way he feels later triumphs.
For him, the 2018 Capitals’ Stanley Cup is the only championship he absorbed as a conscious adult fan. After that, he says 2019 came along and rewrote everything.
“2019 Washington Nationals is the greatest run ever,” Jolles said. “That season was a magical ride.”
He ranks it above the Capitals’ Cup because, he says, of how it felt while it was happening. He describes a constant sense that the run might end at any moment, that every win carried tension like a borrowed thing.
“The whole season we were playing catch up,” he said. “It was such a chaotic, wild ride of just like, the amount of times it was like, ‘What a run. Hey, it ends today.’ And then it just kept going.”
He recounted how the Nationals started the year 19-31, clawed back to a 93-69 record, entered the postseason as a wild card team, and won the World Series in improbable fashion. That culminated in a come-from-behind Game 7 victory in Houston over the Astros.
He also pointed to a specific detail of the championship series: it was a stretch in which the road team won every game, and Washington celebrated its first World Series title since 1924.
Still Out There Fighting
Even from far away, Jolles says he keeps up. He watches and tracks from afar while arguing with people in Los Angeles who don’t even know what a Capital is.
At the same time, he credits the Capitals as Washington’s best-run organization. He says he’s cautiously optimistic about the Commanders. He also is bullish on the Wizards’ rebuild, pointing to the NBA’s first string of three straight 64-loss seasons.
“I talk myself into anything,” he said. “That’s what I do.”
When he turns back toward media, he doesn’t want neutrality. He wants the local voice—the one that sounds like it belongs to the teams.
“You’re WTOP,” he said. “We all know what we’re here for. I don’t need you to pretend you’re down the middle.”
He says the whole point of listening to local voices over national ones is that it feels personal.
“I want to hear my guys,” he said. “I like to hear my people personally, that’s me.”
He even has an idea about what’s missing from most broadcast booths: a third voice to keep things loose. He points to a short-lived experiment putting comedian Dennis Miller in the Monday Night Football booth alongside Al Michaels and Dan Fouts.
“That was a good idea, I stand by that was a good idea,” Jolles said. “Just wrong person.”
Jolles says the question of what D.C. fans actually want from their sports coverage is part of a WTOP series being rolled out in coming weeks, and he was a fitting starting point.
He also hosted his own sports podcast. Everything But the Scores. which he built around the idea that the stories around the game matter just as much as what happens on the field. The research load of running it alone prompted him to discontinue it. but he says he’d revive it tomorrow if someone gave him “an ounce of money.”.
He ended the interview with an unprompted declaration: if his comedy and acting career opens a door into D.C. sports media, he says he’ll walk through it immediately.
“That,” he said, “would be the peak of my career.”
For a man who treats D.C. sports as something you can’t fake, that’s the clearest sign of where he’s aiming next.
Danny Jolles D.C. sports Commanders Nationals Capitals Wizards Robert Griffin III Matthew McConaughey sports media