After college, I knew I wanted to work in comedy, so the first thing I did was go to where the comedy was. I moved from Charlottesville to Chicago, because that's where The Second City and Improv Olympics are. You have to go wherever you need to go to study what interests you.
Somewhat naively, I entered the BBC's 'New Talent Competition,' believing it was for people who had never tried comedy before. I remember sitting in the dressing room before the show and hearing the other acts - who all knew one another - talking to Rhod Gilbert about how he must be about ready to go 'full-time' as a comic.
I used to tell people I was a comic and they'd be fascinated. Now all you get is: 'Oh yeah, my cousin Steve's a comic.'
There's so many good comedians in D.C. I started hanging out with those guys. Dave Chappelle was there. Actually, Dave was too young to be in the clubs, so when his mom couldn't make it, he would ask me to pretend I was his aunt, so he could do open mike.
I'd say I've gone to grad school for comedy being on 'Community.'
Being a stand-up comic, this isn't a stepping-stone for me; it's what I do, and this is what I'm always going to do. And even if I do a TV show, the only reasons to do a TV show is to get more people to know me to come out to my stand-up shows.
When I started stand-up, the first thing I did was to take an improv class.
When I started, there was no comedy community, no comedy industry; there were comedians.
At some point, all comics have to go out and be retail salesmen doing door-to-door. And this idea of somebody who totally knows their craft having to get up for free in front of a crowd to work out some stuff they're thinking in their head, still, after as much success as you can get, is really interesting.
For me to make a living acting silly for as long as I can get away with it, I think the most viable way to make that happen is to evolve into more traditional comedy. I've really been putting in the work.
I did all this standup comedy in college, and from that point on, I tried to develop myself and get my name back out there.
Before I started doing standup, I knew that I had what it takes to develop an act. I went down to clubs with not many people there, and I just worked on it, man. A lot of my friends are comedians, so that part had a lot of encouragement, even though the shows were very caveman-like.
I basically did comedy there for about a year, and then moved to New York. If I had it to do over again, I would have booked myself on the road for at least a year.
There is so much cross-pollination between the U.S. and Britain in terms of comedians. British TV comedies work well in the U.S. American stand-ups make it big in Britain.
I wasn't even a big comedy nerd. A lot of the comedians I know - a lot of my friends are comedians - they knew a lot about comedy growing up.
I started performing as a stand-up comedian on my own in the mid-1990s.
When you're young as a comic, you don't have a lot of leverage.
I always wanted to be a comedian, but I wasn't sure how you do that.
Stand-up comedians have a very important relationship to Twitter. For them, it's a place to try out material.
The Internet has done nothing but good for comedy all around. Comedians no longer have to rely on TV execs and club owners deciding if they are funny or not.
My second year of college, I started performing comedy at an open mic. It was good to do open mics with the kids. It's a good, safe spot to start, you know?
It's funny - almost every comedian that I started out with moved to L.A., except for my two friends Hannibal Buress and Amy Schumer. And my two friends that are doing the best in comedy, the most successful friends I have, are Hannibal Buress and Amy Schumer.
T.J. Miller and Kumail Nanjiani I met when I was in Chicago, learning how to do comedy.
I did stand-up comedy for a long time in San Francisco, and then I was like, 'You know what? I'm going to move to Los Angeles and try and make it!'
L.A. gets a bad rap, but that's not the case. Everybody's like a real family out here. I think a lot of that comes from UCB Theatre, Amy Poehler, Matt Walsh, Matt Besser, and Ian Roberts. They're really funny, but they're also upstanding people.
