SCOTT ADSIT

I think most of my tastes were British, as far as comedy went, when I was growing up.

What crushed my soul was hanging out with bitter, desperate comics backstage. They're a different breed than the bitter yet eager psyches in the wings of an improv theatre. Struggling stand-ups have externalized self-loathing into an art form. They're a hunching, quaking, unshaven lot.

I went to film school at Columbia and did that for a couple years, and really thought I was going to be a filmmaker, and then I kind of drifted over to the acting side after that.

I put my foot in my mouth more than I speak properly.

I never looked at my future as comedy. Even at Second City, I always thought of it as acting. I knew I was going to be an actor financially, emotionally, egotistically.

I was doing a show in L.A. called 'Celebrity Autobiography,' where celebrities read excerpts from other celebrities' books and hang themselves with their own rope.

Most sitcoms and cartoons, especially, you can rely on, because they go back to square one at the beginning of every episode.

'Monty Python' and 'The Simpsons' have ruined comedy for writers for the rest of our lives.

Generally, I've found that a heckler in an improv audience is just enjoying the show so much that they want to be in it.

New York has surprised me a couple of times. I was a snob about pizza, but I've found one or two places that allow me to forget deep dish for a while.

I might've been witty, but I didn't have a shtick. So, I never considered myself a comedian.

I'd been an actor in high school, and when I got to college, it was all about film.

I still feel very close to the people I wrote shows with and some of the people I toured with. I feel very close to them, like a family or like college friends who you know and who have seen you at your worst and you spend 14 hours driving a van all piled on top of each other.

I've heard New York actors say Chicago actors intimidate them because apparently we're the real nitty-gritty actors who're in a town where being onstage doesn't necessarily get you anything except your craft.

Wikipedia gets a lot of things wrong.

I enjoy doing physical comedy.

I'm afraid of my mother's paranoia. The more she watches Fox News, the more afraid she gets.

It's hard to tell what is even mainstream anymore because there's so many platforms now. And they're all topics of conversation.

I got an agent when I needed one, when I had a contract negotiation for the first time. I was doing the Second City E.T.C., and I got invited to audition for the last season, it turns out, of 'In Living Color.'

I went to film school at Columbia and did that for a couple years and really thought I was going to be a filmmaker, and then I kind of drifted over to the acting side after that. I'd been an actor in high school, and when I got to college, it was all about film.

I did a bunch of commercial voiceovers in Chicago before I left. For Balducci's pizza, I did a whole series. Actually I was making a good living with voiceover before I left.

'Baymax' is quite different. I think when Don Hall found the title and didn't know it, he researched and saw great potential in the relationship between a boy and a robot.

The hardest part about improv is getting the audience to relax and enjoy themselves, because most improv is not very good, and the audience is nervous for the performers the whole time. Not that they don't even like the show, but they feel bad for the performers.

Every time that you do a play or a show of any kind, really you have this family that you really build something with for a while, and then we all dissipate, but you always have that connection, that eternal kind of intimacy, you'll always have.

You know you're an actor in New York when you're on 'SVU.'