I think it was somewhere around age 3 when I fell down the stairs at my house, and I got up and did a Jerry Lewis impression and got a big laugh. And I thought, "Oooh, I like that. I think I need to do this for a living!"
I'm a comedic actor, not to mix words, but it's something I think about. A comedic actor. I like to think that Christopher Guest, Phil Hartman, Peter Sellers and Alec Guinness are comedic actors. And Dan Aykroyd, too. Those are my heroes.
Some of my biggest influences are people like Steven Wright and Todd Berry. I'm a shy person, and I don't think people who aspire to do comedy think that's an option.
I was a very weird child. I was very shy, so in school I would just mimic stand-up sets of Whoopi Goldberg.
My humour has always come from anger, but I have to make sure I don't just get angry and jump on a soapbox.
At some point I stopped stand-up because I didn't have something to say on a nightly basis.
Back when Jerry Seinfeld was just another comedian hanging around the clubs, I'd imitate him to amuse myself and the other comics. The club owners would say, 'What are you doing that for? Nobody knows him.'
To me, every episode is like a song, and every season is like an album. There's that part of the day when you first get the idea and you say, "This could be really funny." And you sit down and you write it. There's just something that happens there that doesn't happen when you really give it a lot of time beforehand.
I was obsessed with Jim Carrey growing up. It's why I wanted to become an actor.
When I became a standup comic, my hero, one of them, was Richard Pryor, and you know, I think that comedians, like, comedians talk about hacks, and what a hack is, is someone who does stuff that's not original.
I don't get up, get dressed, go out, and think, 'Okay, I gotta find eight jokes.'
I have too many influences to name. I like a wide variety of stuff, which I think has been helpful. I liked every comedian I saw on TV growing up in the '80s. Every comedian.
When I was a young comic just starting out, I was very cautious, as I didn't want to alienate people. George Carlin's bravery became a benchmark. I became perfectly fine with alienating some people in the audience. That just comes with the territory.
As a kid, I loved Paula Poundstone and Richard Pryor. But my mother was a huge influence on my comedy.
Looking back, I didn't realize until years later what a huge influence Red Skelton was in my stage demeanor with the band. I mean, I always liked things that were funny, and later I realized that having a sly sense of humor was a way to get attention and even respect in school.
It's very hard to watch comedy for me, when I'm doing a comedy show, because I either watch a show and I love it, and I'm jealous, or I watch a show and I see all the problems with it, and I'm angry that I watched it.
My kind of childhood comic ideal was Tim Conway. And just because I always loved that he could do so much without saying anything and just his physical comedy. I'd love - I mean, that would be kind of a dream to have him come on and be able to act across from him.
It's starting to feel good, although I don't like feeling too good - that's not where my comedy comes from.
People ask 'do you make a conscious effort not to swear?' - if you're doing silly stuff you're not tempted to put swearing in. All the comics from my childhood, who were funny without swearing, were the people that influenced me. What I do is quite traditional anyway.
I remember watching Margaret Cho with my grandmother on TV. She was my hero, not only because she was funny, but because she showed me that it's okay to be yourself, that it's okay to be a brash yellow girl and to be a strong and brave woman.
I could never be Charlie Chaplin. But the films that were made by people like him, or Gene Wilder, or John Candy, the people that inspired me so much were the people that were able to combine humor with heartbreak so beautifully and fluidly. Those films I think were what inspired me to want to come to L.A. and audition for movies.
I know comedians who go on weird day trips in order to have random experiences they can talk about. They'll go on their own to Thorpe Park waiting for something hilarious to happen. That's really sad.
I kind of was raised at The Comedy Store by comedians. When you see my dad on stage before me and then you see me, you'll see where I got a lot of my stuff.
I'll tell you the truth; I wanted to leave me for Sid Caesar.
Eddie [Murphy] is an icon. He's one of the reason why I started doing comedy in the beginning. He opened a lot of doors for black people.
