Kay Cannon Quotes

I'd taken some classes at UCB in New York and again at the Magnet Theater and the PIT Theater. I definitely never advanced to where I was on a team or anything like that.

I take class at the Groundlings, and my personal coach is Lesley Kahn.

In college, I didn't perform so much, but when I graduated is when I discovered Second City. Then I realized, 'Oh, there are people who can focus on comedy and especially improvisational comedy and make a career out of it.'

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

I actually studied with The Groundlings.

I moved to Chicago when I was 28, and I wasn't completely idealistic about going to Second City and making a living from comedy, but I knew it would be great for the resume.

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.

After college, I knew I wanted to work in comedy, so the first thing I did was go to where the comedy was. I moved from Charlottesville to Chicago, because that's where The Second City and Improv Olympics are. You have to go wherever you need to go to study what interests you.

My stepfather had a connection with The Second City and told me I should go there. I woke up in a cold sweat one night and said, 'I'm moving to Chicago.' That's how I went to Second City.

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.

The Second City

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

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

And then I graduate two years later, in 1998, with my class. And, since then I've been here in Houston for training basically. And I was very happy to be assigned to this mission.

I'd say I've gone to grad school for comedy being on 'Community.'

I took a Groundlings class in my 20s, and I was terrible. They didn't even pass me to the next level.

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 think it's the wrong way around to say, 'When you get older move to the country.' I think when you get older you move to New York.

Comedy is something that I'm definitely looking to get into. I had a little taste of it and I do intend on going to classes for it because I think it's a different muscle, and it's hard to find female comedians.

Just after graduation in 1966, like many of my contemporaries, I applied for research training at the National Institutes of Health. Perhaps because his wife was a poet, Ira Pastan agreed to take me into his laboratory, despite my lack of scientific credentials.

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

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.

After living in LA for 8 years, I sort of wanted a change, but there's not much production in New York, which is where I primarily live, so I just sort of drifted over to London.

All the guys that entered The Groundlings, like Will Ferrell, already had incredible confidence, but I watched shut down women that didn't even have a personality completely become different human beings because of the training.

I live in Chicago, but my work is always in New York or L.A., so I always have to travel for my job.