If you're going to perform, you're going to attract criticism. You can't please everyone all the time. You don't know how things are going to come out. But that's part of the fun of it, the adventure of doing any kind of art.

At school, I was bored with the teachers, and there were moments where I felt they were singling me out.

I'm really grateful for the fact that I have full artistic control over my career. I can choose what film or TV projects I'm interested in doing.

Normally, with stand-up, it's quite solitary, you write the material on your own, you perform it on your own, it's all very much on you. Your own thoughts. You have to sort of modulate your own performance.

Comedy can always be taken the wrong way. If I do a bit that is meant to diffuse racism or sexism, I'm not going to avoid it on the chance that a small portion of the audience might take it the wrong way.

Well, I loved variety in television, I loved sketch comedy. At 'Saturday Night Live,' I stayed almost seven years.

If the goal is to be believable when you're acting, I've got the best idea of what that believability might look and feel like. And because you need a normal guy in a comedy so that the eccentricities can pop, that's a good part for me.

I wanted a half-hour, single-camera comedy with a great lead where I could be No. 2 or 3 on the call sheet, and it was going to get on the air. Those were my criteria, and they sent me 'Cougar Town.' I read it and loved it.