When we were making 'Arrested Development,' it was the hardest thing I'd ever done. You know, nobody was watching. We weren't getting feedback. The job wasn't paying very well. But the one thing I did feel confident about was: No one will ever be able to do this again. Because no one would be stupid enough to try.

What's realistic to me is that families love each other and stand by each other. What's unrealistic is that they would ever say that.

Television is a very writer-driven business, and it's one of the few parts of entertainment where writers are treated with respect, only because they need you. If they didn't have to treat you with respect, they would be happy to dismiss you.

When you don't have a laugh track, you can make the clothes funny. We can make a sign funny. We can make the way somebody walks funny. The makeup can be funny.

For a lot of comics who aren't as silly or physical but more intellectual, we get looked at as 'alt comics.' No, I'm still a black comic, and there are black people who want to hear my type of black comedy, but that space hasn't been built out for us.

I wasn't one of those kids who stole Richard Pryor records. I wasn't a comedy-nerd kid. I had no concept of stand-up. Actually, the only inkling of stand-up I had was I read one of Paul Reiser's books when I was, like, 12. I found it at a yard sale, and I carried it around with me for six years.

But it was this tough little character part that I was playing, a very funny little guy that I invented over a weekend, because I realized I was not contributing to the humor of this thing. And I had to do something.

I thought there would be a lot of , you know, transferable skills, from acting and comedy, but there weren't that many!