Bernard Sahlins Quotes

Acting-wise, I haven't done a lot of comedy, so I would love to work with Jane Lynch. I think she's hilarious.

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.

I came up through Second City, so I'm used to playing 20 characters every night who are very different from each other. I wouldn't want my career to be any different.

I'd never really done comedy before 'Community,' so getting to work day in and day out with all these great people, directors, writers, and actors, I feel like I've learned a lot.

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

I was at Second City L.A., going through the conservatory, and I graduated in 2004 and I got 'SNL' in 2005.

I was very serene, and I still am, until I start talking in another voice, then suddenly I have a lot of volume and I'm frantic. But I didn't want to be one of those people who's always talking in accents in real life, so I started doing sketch comedy.

At this point, I feel fairly comfortable in terms of performance. I think having a sketch background actually helps a lot. Because my background is acting, and stand-up, in a lot of ways, is acting.

I went to Second City, where you learned to make the other actor look good so you looked good and National Lampoon, where you had to create everything out of nothing, and SNL, where you couldn't make any mistakes, and you learned what collaboration was.

I joined an improv group in college, which was a lot of fun. After I graduated, I moved to Chicago to try to get into the Second City.

My experience is at The Groundlings Theater, where we created different characters and did sketch comedy. And sometimes the characters were outrageous, but they always came from a real place. So even working there, we had to create characters from the people that we knew.

I really just love making comedies; I love doing characters.

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.

I've done a lot of drama in my career, but I'm actually more comfortable doing comedy.

When I first did 'Best in Show,' I had never done any improvisation.

Yeah, well I've always played comedy. My background is musical comedy theatre and that's really where my training is. As an actor, that's my training.

The Second City

I remember on 'Dr. Katz,' there was no script really at all. There were just scene outlines.

I got my degree in acting and theater, and then I had a teacher who told me to take a class with The Groundlings. And for a second, I thought, 'Well, I don't know about that. I'm a serious actress.' And then I did, and I loved it, and I said, 'Ah, well, I guess this is what I'm going to do now.'

I always do a little bit of improv. I did some of 'The Office,' a tiny bit in 'Extras,' a bit more in 'Derek.'

There's different kinds of improv. There's Second City improv where you try to slowly build a nice sketch. There's stuff you do in college coffee houses where you just go joke, joke, joke. Bring another funny character with a funny hat on his head. Christopher Guest is more the line of trying to get a story out.

I don't want to do procedural: I want to do longform.

'Portlandia' is 100 percent improvised, and I came into this business not knowing anything.

In sketch comedy, wear your character like a hat, not a suit of armor.