Matt Besser Quotes

I know how to have a conversation, but I've never done improv. I've never taken improv classes.

Honestly, my biggest education regarding improv comedy actually came on the job working for 'My Boys.'

I'm not an improv guy. I'm not a nerd, I play one on television.

River City Improv set the stage for my career.

Well, actually, the Second City thing came about because I was taking a few improv classes there. I thought that the improv classes would help with my wrestling career, which it has.

I grew up loving David Letterman and Pee-wee Herman, but as far as live performance comedy, all I knew were the Jerry Seinfeld-type comedians of the world, and that's what I thought live performance comedy was all about.

In Miami, I was studying improv as well as acting. Improv is a great tool to have, just for the comedic timing that you get. When I moved to L.A., I started taking classes with The Groundlings, and I loved it. I'm definitely in love with improv and comedy.

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

What I think improv is great for is making dialogue more natural.

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

The word 'improv' always makes me feel a little anxious because I always feel like we'll have to pull props out of a bag and find 800 different ways to talk about a stick, the way you do in theater school.

I was never in an improv group. But when I went to school, we would do it all day long with friends, not knowing what it was called.

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

I like to do as much improv as I can do.

I took an improv class, and after my first class, I was like, 'Oh, I just want to do something like this. This is super fun.'

We come from a live background of sketch improv and standup.

I'm not a comedian. I didn't study sketch comedy; my background isn't that.

I always honestly dreamed of coming to Second City in Chicago, although I've never even been there to see a show. But I did a ton of sketch comedy at the Second City in LA, which (at the time, in a different location) wasn't really a theater, it was just a space where you took some classes.

Many of the people I've worked with over the years came from a sketch-comedy background or an improv background, and I've learned a lot from them.

I grew up watching Letterman, 'Seinfeld,' 'SNL,' and Monty Python movies. But nothing made me want to get into comedy more than when 'Mr. Show' started airing.

We do long-form-style improv. Our focus was characters and telling a long arc story over about an hour and a half. It was closer to a one-act play than one-off sketches.

And the only studies were - Rodney Dangerfield was my mentor and he was my Yale drama school for comedy.

I took one class at Second City called Improv for Actors, and that was it, and that was only because my agent told me I had to.

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

To me, if people really want to improvise, get into classes and learn.