John Cassavetes' films have really altered the way I see film and acting and storytelling and emotion and love, so I see acting as this incredible revealing of human nature and this means of telling our story, sharing our voice with the world. That's what acting is for me. It allows for people to experience things through the character, through the story.

I have trouble sleeping, at the end of the night. There's a lot of stimulus and my brain is processing a lot of different arcs and personalities. I'm always processing things, so I don't sleep.

My brothers and I always did improv stuff in our basement with our friends; we're super nerds, and that was our way of spending a Friday night.

I think there's something really freeing about improv, that it's a collective, creative, in-the-moment piece. That's really exciting and really frustrating, because it's there and gone. There's an amazing interaction with the audience that happens because they are very much another scene partner. How they respond determines the kinds of stories we tell.

All the foundation work you plant in the early seasons pay off in stronger storylines deep into our seasons. I think that only aids in performance.

I think that's why it's difficult for women when they watch TV and we see one version of a woman who is attached at the hip to a guy, and that's kind of her whole thing. You kind of go, 'I don't relate to this, I don't feel this.' You know? Maybe somebody does, but not everyone. That's the other thing about storytelling, is you can't represent everybody. You know, you can't seek to do that. You have to tell stories that you're interested in talking about and characters that intrigue you.

I think in the inception and creation of the characters, improv was the most important part for me, because I wanted to feel at home in those characters. I wanted to feel like I could commit to them. And so much of improv is saying yes and committing, so I think that's where the improv came in. Even if I'm saying yes to the X across the room from me, or the tennis ball on a stick, I have to stay alive.