Zach Woods Quotes

I ended up going to college for visual arts but moved up to New York after I graduated from college in 2006 and started going gung ho to the Upright Citizens Brigade, and I realized that that was what I was really interested in and what I really wanted to do.

I came out of the old Second City in Chicago. Chicago actors are more hard-nosed. They're tough on themselves and their fellow actors. They're self-demanding.

If it weren't for The Groundlings, I would never be on Saturday Night Live.

I actually studied with The Groundlings.

I grew up in Chicago and was a huge fan of 'The Second City', so when I moved to L.A., I was looking for anything that resembled that... then I started 'The Groundlings', so I went to a show and it was very much like 'Second City'. I was so impressed that that same night I went backstage and I went up to the funniest person there.

The Second City

I did, like, one or two plays in high school, but I don't think I realized I wanted to do comedy until I got to college, and I started doing improv and saw the Upright Citizens Brigade perform and did workshops with them.

My first improv was Second City in Chicago. Before that, I worked at - with a partner, doing comedy sketches.

I thought of Second City as just the greatest therapeutic job anybody could ever dream of having.

There was no Groundlings or Upright Citizens Brigade where I was from. Looking back on it, I was trying to do sketch comedy in my stand-up, which is still kind of what I am doing now. To go full-circle here, it's kind of like one-man sketch.

I have been lucky enough to work in all kinds of comedy. I prefer working with other people. I could never do stand-up.

New York is looked at as the grad school of comedy.

I grew up watching 'Big Train,' these collectives of comedians who knew each other, and as a comedy fan you knew who was going out, who were best friends.

I did sketch comedy with a troupe at the Nuyorican Poets Cafe.

I joined the after-school club, School of Comedy, which progressed wildly, and in quite a Hollywood way. It sounds like 'School of Rock', right up to trying to raise money to pay for a venue in Edinburgh.

Something about New York, man: You can do more comedy there probably than you can anywhere in the world. If you're interested in being funny, New York is the place to go.

I don't have any type of sketch-comedy or stand-up background.

I did Second City, and Nia Vardalos also did Second City, so I knew her from there.

I lived with Ilana Glazer of 'Broad City.' She was my roommate for a year and a half. I was living with her just as she was creating and filming 'Broad City.' Both of us, and a lot of my friends, come from the Upright Citizens Brigade theater either in New York or L.A.

It takes a lot of time to write and put up a sketch show, but that's part of who I am. I don't think that ever goes away, that sensibility - especially coming from the Upright Citizens Brigade. That's just who I am.

New York is almost as important as Chicago, improv-wise.

When we left university, in the late '80s, one of the guys had been to the Comedy Store in London, came back very excited and suggested we set up something like it. And so we did.

If you pay attention, stand-up can be great improv training ground. But one of the things that helped me the most was doing warm-up for the 'Mr. Show' tapings way back when.

The world's so big, it's hard to pick one best friend. I like everyone in Venezuela, but in L.A., I hang out mostly with my comedy friends. Guys like Paul Scheer, Rob Riggle, Owen Burke, Ed Helms, Seth Morris - we all kind of came up together doing comedy in New York.

I love UCB Chelsea. There is, to me, no stage like it.