Nat and Alex Wolff: All About the Famous Brothers and Their Sibling Bond

'The Naked Brothers Band' stars Nat and Alex Wolff are still performing together

Nat and Alex Wolff have come a long way since their days on Nickelodeon.

Nat was born to musician Michael Wolff and actress Polly Draper on Dec. 17, 1994. He became a big brother when his parents welcomed Alex on Nov. 1, 1997. From a young age, the siblings gravitated toward the entertainment industry, with Nat leading the charge via musical performances and Off-Broadway appearances.

The duo eventually gained fame when the 2005 mockumentary-style film The Naked Brothers Band: The Movie was picked up by Nickelodeon as the pilot for a subsequent series of the same name, which aired from 2007 until 2009.

Since then, the brothers have continued making music and learning from each other. "We both push in different directions and we don't go exactly down the same road. In that way, I think it's an interesting counterpoint," Nat told PEOPLE in 2024.

After wrapping up The Naked Brothers Band, they landed other notable acting roles in various films and TV shows. Nat has starred in The Fault in Our Stars and Paper Towns, while Alex’s credits include Hereditary and Oppenheimer.

Here’s everything to know about Nat and Alex Wolff’s sibling relationship, including their shared passion for acting and music.

Nat and Alex's parents are creatives themselves

Their father, Michael, is an accomplished jazz pianist and composer who has performed with over two dozen symphonies throughout his illustrious career, according to his website. He was the bandleader and musical director on The Arsenio Hall Show from 1989 to 1994.

Michael brought his talent closer to home when he became the co-executive producer and music supervisor for The Naked Brothers Band. He also starred alongside his sons on the TV series.

Their mother, Polly, is an actress best known for starring in Thirtysomething, which aired on ABC from 1987 to 1991. She has also worked as an award-winning writer, producer and director, including writing and directing The Naked Brothers Band: The Movie. The mom of two also created the TV series and served as the head writer and showrunner.

“It’s got a lot of irreverence and a lot of reality,” Polly told The New York Times in 2007 of the show. She also shared insight about creating her husband's character, saying, "I write him like a kid and the kids like the adults. The adults make total fools of themselves, and the kids love it.”

They grew up in New York City

Nat and Alex were raised in New York City by their parents, and while their work has taken them to different places, it still holds a special place for them.

"New York is inspiring. New York is alive. ... New York also is family to me, because it’s where our parents are. It’s the home base," Alex told V Magazine in 2021.

As for how the Big Apple influenced their careers, Nat shared, "We were surrounded by a lot of different kinds of music, art."

Most notably, after the September 11 attacks on the World Trade Center in N.Y.C., Nat was inspired by first responders and their efforts during the incidents.

He wrote the song “Firefighters” and performed it with his band, The Silver Boulders, at a benefit concert behind their family’s Lower Manhattan apartment. Alex was also involved in the performance and the show raised over $45,000 for N.Y.C. firefighters' children impacted by the events.

Nat explained that he felt the same sense of togetherness in the city during the COVID-19 pandemic.

“New York got hit so hard ...There was a community feeling that that happened after 9/11, when we were kids," he told V Magazine. "That happened again in the last year, where people in New York feel more bonded together."

The Naked Brothers Band was inspired by something they said as kids

The title that started their careers in Hollywood originated when the brothers were young and climbed out of the bathtub while announcing, “We’re the Naked Brothers Band."

According to a 2007 interview with The Boston Globe, Nat wanted to be a child actor, but Polly thought it would be "too brutal" for him, so she helped him record a show as a compromise.

“Nat decided he wanted to film his own sitcom, so we did a film called ‘Don’t Eat Off My Plate,’ ” Polly told The New York Times. “I pretended to interview his friends and do a documentary.”

With a budget under $1 million, the movie was filmed over five weeks in 2004 using friends and family. “We would sneak into locations and run,” she said of the filming process.

After winning a family feature film award at the Hamptons International Film Festival in 2005, it caught the attention of Nickelodeon and moved forward as the pilot for a mockumentary TV show in 2007.

To tie everything together, Nat followed in his dad's steps, and he wrote all the music for the project.

Nat and Alex are still making music together as adults

After the end of their show in 2009, they continued pursuing music as a duo. Their debut studio album under Nat & Alex Wolff, Black Sheep, hit shelves in October 2011. Throwbacks followed in October 2013, a soundtrack comprised of unreleased songs recorded during their time on Nickelodeon.

They dropped an EP, Public Places, in December 2016 and followed it up with their sophomore album, Table For Two, in June 2023.

"I think it has more of a sound than anything we've ever done. ... a more cohesive sound even though the songs are really different and the production can be different," Alex told PEOPLE of their latest project.

He continued, "It doesn't sound as much like my song or Nat's song. It sounds like our songs, and I think we're going to keep changing our sound every album."

Although their tour for the album, which kicked off with a Boston show in January 2024, is their first together since 2012, some things haven’t changed. The brothers have carried over a tradition of a pre-show chant, which Nat says, "We've been doing that since we were little kids."

They costarred in a movie

In addition to playing music, the brothers acted side-by-side after their Nickelodeon TV show.

They reunited on-screen in Stella’s Last Weekend, written and directed by their mother, Polly. Nat and Alex play brothers Jack and Oliver, with Polly also playing their on-screen mother, Sally, in the 2018 comedy film. The duo also wrote a song for the project.

“Both characters aren’t really us. There are aspects of our personality that through like three years or four years of talking about the script and reading different drafts we kind of pushed our characters into the directions,” Nat said in an interview with BUILD Series.

The following year, Alex made his directorial debut withThe Cat and the Moon. The film premiered in 2019 at the San Antonio Film Festival and stars Alex, along with Skyler Gisondo and Mike Epps.

Nat and Alex are supportive of each other

Like many siblings do, Nat told PEOPLE that he and Alex aren't always on the same page, "but we don't fight when we're making music together."

"We know each other very well and we look out for each other's strong suits and pitfalls," Alex explained. "It's hard to explain except that's probably why it's best done in music. It's not something intellectual. It's more something musical."

Nat also noted that they ultimately "end up meeting in the middle" while working together.

Alex added, "If you're there, you can understand what starts to happen between the two of us. We can balance each other out. And also, it's very natural. It's not a conscious thing where we're trying to manage each other or clip each other's wings. It's really filling in the blanks."

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