I was like a Borscht Belt comedian trapped in the body of a 6-year-old. I was channeling Jackie Mason at 7.
I love polarizing people.
I think physical comedy is an amazing asset because it tells a story that’s more universal than just language and dialogue. I grew up watching Charlie Chaplin and Buster Keaton. They’re very powerful figures in my life.
Hollywood is the kind of place that takes what you do well in one thing and manufactures it so the joy can be taken out of it.
I feel like Jim Carrey is probably the closest thing to a true physical comedian that we have working today.
When you get into the series, the progression is much different. You actually have breathing room and the chance to sit down with each actor, which was a part of our process, to talk to them about their pasts.
When you’re doing a pilot, you’re doing it in this bubble that almost works against the creative impulse. You don’t have time to get to know the actors first, and you have three writers, as opposed to a room full of writers.
My idol growing up was Charlie Chaplin. I was obsessed with him. I mean, while other kids were watching Jim Carrey and the likes in the ’90s, I was watching Charlie Chaplin films, because I was a bit of a geek. I became obsessed with this idea of physical comedy.
It’s funny because ‘The Book of Mormon’ is ‘The Book of Mormon’ now. When I was doing it at the very beginning, and I was a part of it for four years and always believed in it, I never really knew if it was going to be more than a convention for ‘South Park’ fans.
It’s weird to say, but every time I look at my daughter and I see this little living breathing thing that came from me, that represents all of the hopes and dreams that I would want for her, I see a miracle.
I was a product of a divorced family and I used humor as a weapon to combat sadness. I used comedy to make my mother laugh in light of the darkness that she faced, and to me it became a very powerful tool at a very young age, at six. I saw how therapeutic it could be.
I do have a dirty sense of humor.
I don’t know if I’d call myself a prodigy, but I was a big forensics competitor in high school, and then during college I spent some time working at speech and debate camps as a coach.
How do you top ‘Mormon?’ I get sent scripts all the time and I don’t know what I would do next. What do you do after that? So I think if you do see me onstage, you’ll see me in something dramatic, maybe, or you’ll see me try my hand at something else. Perhaps fail, terribly, but try.
Coming off of ‘Book of Mormon,’ I had a lot of opportunities. I didn’t want to do TV, actually. I really wanted to get paid nothing and keep doing theater at all costs.
Acting comes natural to me. What I do enjoy is meeting people that I’ve idolized for years. I mean, I was talking about bringing up a child with Edie Falco yesterday.
Religion is interesting because it brings out the best and the worst in humanity. It can be a source of good deeds, whether it’s people from different spiritual backgrounds coming together to help other people in need after a crisis. But it’s also a cause for war and bloodshed.
I really love the traditional aspects of Judaism. My wife is born and raised a Catholic and I enjoy celebrating those rituals as well. I am very spiritual but not in any way religious, no.
We use improv in all kinds of fun ways. Sometimes it’s to invent or discover new things, sometimes it’s to weird out the other actors, and sometimes it’s to create a sense of fun, to find new things inside the scripted lines.
I met Jon Lovett, who was just coming off of three years of being a presidential speech writer and had just arrived here to be a comedy writer in Hollywood. I thought he was super green, in terms of this world, but he knows so much about the world that we’re attempting to write about.
I certainly never imagined 80-year-olds singing along, like they were watching Cats. I’m fascinated by that kind of pop cultural zeitgeist that it’s attached itself to.