Really I just want to get on with my job, which is to pretend to be lots of different people. Simple as that.

The goal is always just trying to stretch yourself as an actor.

I've played all these extreme guys, but playing an everyman type has its own challenges.

I had a really fantastic dialect coach that I worked very well with, and I was constantly surprised by the different intonations that the Russian dialect has.

It so fascinates me how we always laugh when somebody falls on a banana peel, how comedy and injury are often so interwoven. I've always been a sucker for that.

I'll do whatever I can do to remain employed. I'm just not precious about doing comedy or doing drama. I never want to do something in order to prove to other people what I can do.

Making music on TV used to be as common as commercials. In the '60s and '70s, prime time was stuffed with variety shows headlined by such major and treasured talents as Carol Burnett, Red Skelton, the Smothers Brothers and Richard Pryor, who had a very brief comedy-variety hour on NBC that was censored literally to death.

For me, a great joke is an idea expressed in extremely concentrated form.