a weighted blanket, beta blockers and dogs

Of course, all the time! I have really bad anxiety and I’m an introvert, and as a comic sometimes you can’t find it up there and you lose it for a second. You’re just telling words to an audience but there’s no connection, and that’s when you bomb.

You’ve said you learned in therapy that your compulsive behavior – eating, sex – is just self-medicating your anxiety. Does having that insight help? Oh, definitely. Once you say that to yourself, “Oh, this is anxiety,” you get to say to yourself, “Why am I anxious?” because when something’s bothering you, you don’t name it, you just start eating something. I’m still going to eat the two Twinkies, but when I start opening the second packet, I say to myself, “What’s going on, buddy?” That will get me to two Twinkies instead of eight.

We shot video for many many years. When I would edit the videos and see myself cracking up it ruined the bit. So I got good at keeping a straight face. Practice.

It's slightly annoying. I've been high on camera ONCE in my entire career and it didn't work out well at all. besides that, the most I've had before being on TV is one or two drinks. It's weird when people just ASSUME that I'm high because I'm not yelling. I've never been high on Eric Andre show. It was just one episode of Broad City where I was pretty stoned. I kept fucking my lines up. If you've seen me on the road doing stand up, I've never been high. I've done stand up high a couple times in NYC and that's it.

I think just reminding myself to quit thinking that there’s some kind of perfect show to capture; to remind myself constantly that it is comedy and mistakes are funny. Anything that is too perfect—it kind of becomes too sterile and then it does not feel genuine. If it doesn’t feel genuine then there’s no possible way people are going to feel they saw you.

The tricky part about answering this, is that it is a bit of both. It was totally not set up. And was I mad, yes and no. I was mad that he wrecked my desk, but I was happy that he gave me an excuse to get mad at my guest on TV. I am always nice to my guests. But I love it when things go wrong on television. So I was kind of playing the character of the angry TV host. Because it is funny watching somebody get mad. People don't understand what happened there and give me some grief about it, saying that I should have just let him cut the desk and smiled. But the thing is, that would not have been nearly as funny.

It was pretty crazy. I already had a whole rhythm to my week as a writer, so it took a while to change it up and focus more on performing than on writing. Here's what helped a ton: Rob Klein and Bryan Tucker took over most of the Head Writer job and they're two of the funniest writers I've ever met. Rob and Bryan and I write a lot together for the show. Also Dennis McNicholas who used to be one of the head writers with Tina Fey and Adam McKay started producing WU last year and that was awesome. And our WU writers are the best and made our jobs a lot more fun: Pete Schultz (Leslie calls him "Franklin), Josh Patten (Leslie calls him "Clarence"), Katie Rich (Leslie calls her "Rachel"), and Mega...[Read more]

i would say do it. i would say be brave. you only lose by not trying, you dont lose if you dont achieve fame or glory.

My favorite place to perform is Philadelphia, because that's where i started and that's the place that made me.

I started to take improv classes with Washington Improv Theater at the exact same time I started going around to open mics in DC to watch and if lucky perform. Took about a month of watching before I really got to get on the microphone at any of the shows. So that month of foundations of improv learning with the great Dave Johnson really influenced my approach to standup. Not that I wanted to get up and improvise but the moments of not being funny on stage was easier to cope with after having learned to relax and build from nothing in class.

City of Florida

I’m really used to being onstage now. Next year will be 40 years. But being onstage, it’s not normal. It’s not a normal place. Because everyone is watching you, it’s all heightened. Everything that goes good goes great and everything that goes wrong goes horrible. So that has changed over the years. I’m not as nervous. But I still feel the tension of it.