Im grateful for my health, glad Im making people laugh, glad my wife still likes me after a lotta years, grateful my daughter is growing, glad I dont take myself too seriously, glad L.A. has Astro Burger, grateful to be coming home to Harlem soon. Its a gratitude list. It works.
You have to be careful what you say in front of comedy writers because they will absolutely make fun of it in the next episode.
Im a huge fan of The Odd Couple, yes, and any comparisons to Tony Randall and or Jack Lemmon are completely welcome. I kind of try to channel those guys, and then add my own neuroses, too.
I started on television, and on sitcoms, and loved them, but then they sort of seemed to be going through sort of an ice age, and they started dying off one by one, and I recognized that, and my representatives recognized that, and we said 'Well, let's look at dramas and other things like that.'
I love telling stories, telling jokes, making people laugh. Ive got no plans to stop doing it.
I love comedy because I can laugh at myself. I dont take myself too seriously.
I have to admit: I have been known to be obsessively neat and like things arranged just so.
With classic sitcoms like MASH, the characters all drove each other crazy, and that's what you loved to see.
A fan once stopped me outside a theatre and gave me as a gift a signed photograph of Sir Laurence Olivier. It was strange, but nice, too.
I hate to admit this, but before we had a baby I was kind of weirded out by breastfeeding. It looked strange, and I was always like, Look away! Ignore it, ignore the boobs in the room, move along, nothing to see here!
I do have a chore schedule - in my mind. I dont tell anyone I have it, but its in my mind.
Frasier and Friends and Seinfeld, they all pissed each other off, said the wrong thing, drove each other nuts, but in the end, it turns out they'd do anything for their friends. TV Land has really found that formula.
It's fun when the writers start writing jokes to you, but also it's fun when the writers will come to you and say 'Hey, listen, we're working on this story and we need to know if you speak any foreign languages.' And I said 'No, I don't. I speak a little Spanish, but I can learn a foreign language.' And they go 'Okay, do you think you can learn Portuguese?' And I go 'Yeah, whatever it takes. If it's funny, I'll do it.' So of course I start looking online and learning Portuguese, and as it turns out, I get the script and it's now Serbian.
