ZACH WOODS

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.

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.

I think that if you're improvising on TV, it's a great way to help the dialogue between actors and writers.

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've played a lot of characters who are creeps or weirdos, with a deep darkness underneath the surface.

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.

When improv is bad, it's excruciating to watch, and to be involved with it is a unique type of torture.

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 don't know anything about tech, but I do know something about slightly socially crippled and overly cerebral guys.

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.

I don't like comedy that makes me feel worse about the world than I already felt before I turned it on.

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.

You can't be a professional rejector of opportunities.

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.

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.

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 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.

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.

If you don't allow your aggression or negative feelings to be expressed in your waking life, then it migrates into your subconscious.

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?

I don't think anyone is hiring me because I look like Chris Hemsworth.

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.

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!'

When I was a kid, my father would read Neil Simon plays with me, when I was going to bed, as bedtime stories.