Lovett was born in Manhattan and grew up in Woodbury, Long Island in a Reform Jewish family of Ukrainian ancestry[2] that operated a box factory started by his grandfather.

[4] His senior thesis, Rotating Linkages in a Normed Plane,[5] led to a related publication on the same topic in American Mathematical Monthly.

[5] He was hired in 2005 to assist Sarah Hurwitz as a speechwriter for then-Senator Hillary Clinton,[5] and he continued to write speeches for her through her 2008 presidential campaign.

[9] Lovett wrote speeches in the Obama administration for three years, working closely with Jon Favreau and David Axelrod.

[10][11][12] In 2011, before Barack Obama ran for reelection, Lovett left the White House and moved to California to become a screenwriter,[13][14] citing a desire to write independently and focus on creative comedy full-time.

[5] He collaborated with Josh Gad and Jason Winer on the television series 1600 Penn, of which Lovett was a co-creator, executive producer, and writer from 2012 until its cancellation in 2013.

[17] Starting in March 2016, Lovett co-hosted The Ringer's political podcast Keepin' it 1600 with former fellow Obama staffers Jon Favreau, Dan Pfeiffer, and Tommy Vietor.

[24][25] In October 2019, Farrow published Catch and Kill, where he publicly announced their engagement after proposing to Lovett in an earlier draft of his book.