Vulnerability is huge. I love to see that in characters. It's something I feel like a lot of my comedic heroes have always done.
When I was 15 I lost a tooth and had an implant put in. Cut to 20 years later, I'm doing this part [Andy Bernard] and the script calls for my character to lose a tooth.
You make adjustments according to the specifics of the character.It's something I feel like a lot of my comedic heroes have always done. It's not even necessarily vulnerability, always, but it's an earnestness, a genuine desire to actually do the right thing, but then still make really misguided, stupid decisions along the way.
As an actor, you can really play the intensity and gravity and seriousness of the moment, and just rely on the circumstances being funny. The joke is kind of the situation you're in, or the way you're reacting to something, as opposed to the characters just saying something witty.
When you're playing a fictional character reacting to the real world, it's incredibly difficult and confusing and kind of messes with your values a bit.
What's cool is that in the story of the movie [The Hangover] our characters are also really kind of getting to know each other and bonding over the course of the movie. And I think you're seeing a real, a literal sort of friendship growing both in us as actors and on screen as characters.
The biggest thing that comes out of improv that gets built on is just character traits. You know, for me the singing was born out of improv.
