I don't think anyone is hiring me because I look like Chris Hemsworth.
If you talk in a way that is too dissimilar to the character, when people are showing up to see you talk about the show, often it seems like it's jarring to them.
I can be such a Little Lord Fauntleroy about what I even audition for.
If I'm doing comedy, I try to improvise a lot. Even if they don't use it, it helps me loosen up and figure out the character.
I think that if you're improvising on TV, it's a great way to help the dialogue between actors and writers.
Sometimes you'll see people give performances in comedy with an ironic detachment where they'll sort of be remarking on the character from outside of it. They're sort of commenting as they're playing the character. I think it's hard not to do that. I've certainly done that.
Sometimes you read pilots and, understandably, they're doing such a frantic tap dance for approval. I get why - it's such an incredibly competitive market.
I've played a lot of characters who are creeps or weirdos, with a deep darkness underneath the surface.
When I was a kid, I wanted desperately to be a jazz musician. I would practice the trumpet for hours, but when I got braces, that messed up my ability to play, so all of a sudden I had all this free time.
By the end of high school, I would do shows at the theater at night and then take the train home and go to school the next morning.
When improv is bad, it's excruciating to watch, and to be involved with it is a unique type of torture.
I'm a very anxious person, and it's hard for me to be in the moment. Improv demands that you be in the moment.
I would like to play romantic parts.
I think in movies, in television, and in advice columns, often there's this idea that what people are really attracted to is confidence. And I think people, especially young men, sometimes misinterpret that to mean being brash, or trying to be an alpha.
I don't know anything about tech, but I do know something about slightly socially crippled and overly cerebral guys.
When I was a kid, my father would read Neil Simon plays with me, when I was going to bed, as bedtime stories.
For the first actual comedy-comedy I did, I took a comedy class in New York, which was full of slightly unhinged people. It was a pretty depressing crowd, very angry and strange people. But then I took a class at the Upright Citizens Brigade, and I loved those people.
This is going to sound pretentious, but I like comedy that addresses something I find either worrisome or interesting in my life.
You can't be a professional rejector of opportunities.
I don't like comedy that makes me feel worse about the world than I already felt before I turned it on.
I kind of feel like the job of actors and writers and people who make television and movies is to keep people company. In whatever modest way I'm able to accomplish that, I want to.
If you don't allow your aggression or negative feelings to be expressed in your waking life, then it migrates into your subconscious.
I always think it's hilarious when the stand-ins come in for 'Silicon Valley,' because it's a complete inversion of the attractiveness quotient that is supposed to exist.
The parts of people that are the most lovable is usually the thing they're least willing to share: the tender, vulnerable side of people that's endearing and magnetic and lovable - that's the part they hide.
I remember seeing the first LEGO movie, almost skeptically. People were like, 'You should really see it!' And I was like, 'A LEGO movie?' And then, I was like, 'This is really good!'
Yeah, I played with LEGOs. We had LEGOs, Lincoln Logs, and Playmobil, and they all occupied the same space. I guess that's fairly common. I'm saying this as if it's a bizarre phenomenon that we had a toy chest.
I think I gravitate towards characters who are slight outsiders.
It's always fun to improvise.
'The Office' was such a great first job.
Just the number of people - 'Silicon Valley''s a relatively small, core cast, whereas 'The Office' was enormous. Also, I feel more of a sense of ownership of 'Silicon Valley' because I've been there from the get-go.
I think a challenge with every sitcom is, how do you maintain things that people are attached to without becoming so reiterative that it just feels like you're sort of watching a reenactment of previous episodes?
Your body - or my body - is just kind of stupid. Like, your body doesn't know whether you're acting something because it's happening or whether you're acting it because it's in the script.
It's funny; I think I'm at a level of recognizability - is that even a word? - where it's just really nice. I think when people are really famous, it can be hard for them because they feel like it's an invasion. But for me, it's just a few times every day when someone will say something sweet and validating, and it's just the best.
I really love 'Fleabag.' I've been harassing my agents, like, 'Can you please get me a meeting with Phoebe Waller-Bridge?' I just want to talk to her.
I would love to do a drama. I did a couple of episodes of The Good Wife, which is more of a drama. I really liked that; I thought it was interesting. A lot of my favorite comedies play out as dramas.Collection: Couple
We went to Comic-Con and there were people dressed up as the characters. There's a whole canon of Ninjago history that I didn't even know about until the process of making the movie had started. Especially at Comic-Con, I realized that people really, really care about this, and I hope they like it because it's meaningful to them. It did actually change my feelings about it.Collection: Meaningful
I'd like to be able to do complex math in my head. Any kind of adversity and I become very anxious, but if you're a robot, you have good equilibrium. I wish I was cooler under pressure, like a robot.Collection: Adversity
A lot of times the movies I think are the funniest are dramas. I feel like dramas are so much funnier because they're actually capturing human beings. Humans are so weird and clumsy, and that, to me, often makes me laugh more.Collection: Drama
Steven Spielberg name is synonymous with Hollywood. You sometimes meet people who revel in their own mythology, and he doesn't feel like that, at all. He's very approachable, accessible and sweet. Even if he wasn't, I'd have to say that because the man runs everything.Collection: Running
I think I gravitate towards characters who are slight outsiders. It's fun to play a character that wants so badly to be included in the normal activities of teenage life, but lacks the literal hardware to do it.Collection: Fun
It's always fun to improvise. What's weird is that when you're recording, you're by yourself, for the most part.Collection: Fun
The days that you record by yourself, you feel like a crazy person because you're saying the same line, 10 different ways, or they ask you for 10 different grunting sounds and you just feel like such a schmuck. It's crazy! When there's other people there, it tethers you to something, in a nice way.Collection: Crazy
I would rather a sex tape make its way out than a video of me doing all of the different grunt sounds. I'm not eager for a sex tape to leak, but in terms of personal humiliation, I'd feel less vulnerable to be in a Kim Kardashian situation than seeing myself grunting in a booth.Collection: Different
If I was a part of secret ninja group my power would be the power of apology. I would just apologize emphatically and freely. And my mech might just be a phone to send apologetic emails from.Collection: Apology
I don't go to see many comedies anymore, because I guess it feels like another day at the office.Collection: Office
I feel all of the archetypes in Silicon Valley probably exist in some other form in other subcultures.Collection: Archetype
I really knew almost nothing about Silicon Valley. I read that Steve Jobs book and watched a bunch of documentaries, and read the book about Mark Zuckerberg. I tried to learn some stuff, but there are consultants on the Silicon Valley show that know so much about it where you can get answers. To me, it's more important to get the particulars about that type of person as opposed to the specifics of the technology world.Collection: Book
When I was a kid my father would read Neil Simon plays with me when I was going to bed, as bedtime stories. All of these old plays like The Odd Couple and Lost in Yonkers - funny but corny plays about Jewish New Yorkers in the mid-20th century.Collection: Couple
I remember as a child listening to comedic musicals and thinking they were a real riot. I had pretty questionable taste in comedy.Collection: Children
For the first actual comedy-comedy I did, I took a comedy class in New York, which was full of slightly unhinged people. It was a pretty depressing crowd, very angry and strange people. But then I took a class at the Upright Citizens Brigade and I loved those people.Collection: Depressing