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When you do something unusual, the audience doesn't 100 percent know what you're up to in the beginning. And if you're doing a character comedy, they haven't learned the characters yet.

There are lots of actors, and you need a way to stand out. Writing comedy sketches was a way of doing that.

With comedy, you really want to work things out beforehand.

Comedies always need to be provocative and catch your attention in a way that dramas don't have to.

All of comedy at some level is trial-and-error, whether it's a stand-up trying out jokes or a comedy show trying stories.

I came from the Groundlings Theatre in L.A., and there, you're guaranteed to at least try something out in front of an audience. At 'SNL,' only the best stuff gets picked, and it's taught me a very defined language of comedy. You learn the structure of a joke, which is not something I was very good at beforehand.

Some comedians will tour and do these classic bits all the time. But now with YouTube and Comedy Central, people see your stuff, and they don't want to hear you do that again.

Coming up with comedy is hard, man. Those bits aren't easy to think of!

You forget that sometimes comedy is just a big night out for people. Almost every show, people come up to me and go, 'This is the first comedy show I've ever seen,' so you want to do well. If you do horribly at somebody's first time seeing live stand-up, well, you've not only tainted yourself, you've tainted a whole art form.

To do comedy, you have to be a pretty good actor to start with.