Donnie Wahlberg Quotes

But I also know in standup, there's nowhere to hide. You get on stage and you deliver, or you are eviscerated and you are thrown into a pile of bodies at the bottom of a mountain.

The most scared I'd ever been was the first time I sang at a rugby match, Australia versus New Zealand, in front of one hundred thousand people. I had a panic attack the night before because people have been booed off and never worked again... just singing one song, the national anthem.

It's always nerve-wracking when you're hosting 'Saturday Night Live.' You either sink or swim.

When you're onstage and you know you're bombing, that's very, very scary. Because you know you gotta keep going - you're bombing, but you can't stop.

Everybody in comedy has something like that happen to them: They bomb, or no one shows up. You're like, 'Hey, I'm funny, trust me!' And the world collectively goes, 'Yeah, you and everybody else.'

In standup, the feedback is instantaneous, and if it fails, you know you'll be off-stage and hiding in a short time.

A joke bombing on stage doesn't bother me, especially if it's intended to bomb.

Most comics' first gig is either brilliant or horrific.

I did my first set at a talent show, and I couldn't finish because the judges didn't like my jokes. They were 'offensive.'

Writing humor in my column isn't as dangerous as performing it. If I fail in front of a live audience, the humiliation is as great as anything a human being can suffer.

I remember thinking as I was doing the jokes for the first time, "If I can hear that very clearly, I'm not hearing laughter." It just became deafening, this buzzing noise. I mean, it was brutal. It was really terrible. Then I remember thinking, "At least nobody important, or anyone who I really respect, saw that." And then literally right when I went off the stage, Jerry Seinfeld got up and went on. So I was like, "Oh great. Seinfeld saw me bomb." On the other hand, I thought, "At least no one will be thinking of me anymore. They'll just be focusing on him."

It took forever for me to get work because I was a political comic, and now it's become good business, and God knows how long that'll last. You have to do it night after night after night to kind of make it. I still find myself on 'Piers Morgan' or on some show and I think, 'I hope this is funny.'

When you're going for a joke, you're stuck out there if it doesn't work. There's nowhere to go. You've done the drum role and the cymbal clash and you're out on the end of the plank.

I made a few records here and there by default, but I wasn't ever comfortable in that role. I wasn't comfortable on stage. We'll see how it goes this time.

The players never think they project enough. In a hall that seats 3,300 people, it's a very scary thing to play so quietly that you can barely hear yourself.

Though I am still very vulnerable to audiences - and it happens all the time - where for some reason the energy doesn't connect and, since the film is very personal, obviously I am made to feel very vulnerable by that.

I was very bad at projecting my voice. I used to do this Gumby Flower Arranging sketch which involved shouting, and I could never do it right, and at one point my voice went completely.

If I walk out onstage and I get a warm, excited response, it makes me feel so confident and happy, and then it's so easy for me up there.

The worst thing that can happen to a comedian is to do a documentary on your life and you're watching it with an audience and there's not a laugh.

Auditions are just torture. I'm trying to get better at it. It's a very difficult thing to do. You go into a tiny room with a camera with somebody who is doing this with 100 other people, and they're so bored, and then you have to be like, 'Hey! I'm gonna show you what I got!'

Showing your movie to an audience... it's like your kid doing a piano recital. 'Just let it not fail. Please.'

I always have the same thing - which is the fear of not getting a laugh - that I've had from the time I was a kid; obsessing over, 'This joke doesn't quite work, we've got to get this right.' I was always like that, whether I was a member of a six-person ensemble or whether I'm the center of a show.

I'd like to go back to standup. I don't like to think I've done my last gig. At the moment it terrifies me, I get really nervous. It's a great buzz when it goes well.

I'm on national TV in front of millions and I hate making mistakes.

I remember the first time I walked on that stage. Maxine and I were just a duet at the time, and we walked on that stage and did 'Looking Back to See.' Ernest Tubb introduced us at the time. I remember my knees were shaking.