Nick Kroll Quotes

My inspiration to do comedy came from many places. Saturday mornings, I would watch Bob Hope and Jerry Lewis movies. I later got into watching stand-ups like Eddie Murphy, who was my main inspiration.

'Saturday Night Live' was actually started with a show that Lorne Michaels and I did at a summer camp called Timberlane in Ontario when we were 14 and 15. We would do an improvisational show with music, comedy and acting.

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

Comedy is really my passion. I started out way before television doing sketch comedy with other women. Very much along the lines of, at the time it was 'Sensible Footwear', but now it's 'Smack The Pony', 'French And Saunders', that kind of thing. That's how I started out.

I was a huge fan of comedy and movies and TV growing up, and I was able to memorize and mimic a lot of things, not realizing that that meant I probably wanted to be an actor. I just really, really amused myself and my friends with memorizing entire George Carlin or Steve Martin albums.

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.

It's totally my dream job. I grew up watching 'Saturday Night Live.' We'd watch it at sleepover parties and quote it.

As a kid I would watch 'SCTV,' 'Saturday Night Live,' 'Monty Python' and 'The Kids in the Hall,' and be amazed that these guys got to be different people every week. It spoke to the acting side in me.

If I had the gift of Jerry Seinfeld, of Bill Cosby, of Lewis Black, these instinctively brilliant comic minds, then you go that route! But you gotta know your limitations. I'm more of an actor, more of a process guy. I did Tom Snyder, just as Danny Aykroyd did on 'SNL.' I did it in the club.

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

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.

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.

My dad would write these sketches for me while I was at 'SNL.'

I never really set out to be a comedian, but as a kid, I loved doing sketches and playing characters. And then a great friend kept telling me I should be a comedian, so I followed her advice and gave it a shot.

Seeing the energy of 'SNL' made me want to be a part of it. If that was a job, I thought, that was the job I wanted. That was my plan. Comedy.

When I graduated, I was director of my school's sketch comedy group, and I knew that I wanted to be writing and performing my own sketch comedy. It kind of made me want to do my own one-person sketch group.

In Australia, I wrote lots of little plays and put them on, and then I worked on a few different TV shows, like the Australian equivalent of 'SNL.' I would write and perform all of my characters.

Who made me laugh when I was growing was Chaplin and the Marx Brothers, and then moving on, there were so many that I was a writer for for many years: I was a writer for the Smothers Brothers, Lily Tomlin, then I started on 'Saturday Night Live' as the head writer the first year we started it.

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

I started in improv and went into different kinds of things.

My preference is for people who can do sketch comedy or situational comedy, where it's not a joke, but it's telling a story.

As far as my sketches, I've always loved 'What's Up With That.' It's just a whole lot of fun, and I love 'Black Jeopardy,' too. Any kind of host capacity, I'm usually pretty good at.

John Belushi made me want to be an actor.

I just watched a ton of comedy and saw a ton of different styles, and eventually you think, 'Oh, yeah, I could be like that.'

I took my pants off in my 'SNL' audition. It was to do a character called Out of Breath Jogger from 1982. I had short shorts on underneath. It eventually aired, so it was worth it!