I had a lot of bad jobs but the one big internship I had is I interned for 'SNL' when I was 21 years old and that was the joke. You intern there and you think man, I'm going to be with the writers and the great comedians. Then you're getting everybody sandwiches and then the doors close and then all the great creatives are doing the work.
Jake M. JohnsonIn L.A., if you're in improv, and you're on those stages, all the big agents and managers and producers are watching those shows. They're not flying to Chicago to see the show. People are booking jobs off the stages in L.A. who aren't more talented than the guys in Chicago. But the most guys book out of L.A., and the second is New York.
Jake M. JohnsonI always thought, if you're gonna do TV, you want to play a straight, solid, pillar-of-the-show kind of guy.
Jake M. JohnsonI was in a two-person show [with Oliver Ralli] called the Midwesterners where we wrote all of our own stuff and we traveled the country with it. That's what eventually led me to L.A.
Jake M. JohnsonThere is always going to something very grounded about the characters I play, because of my Chicago roots, because the city is so grounded. Even my wife pointed it out when we were in the city, she said that even the architecture is grounded in Chicago, it's so solid. Because it has to deal with winters. There is something about Chicago that keeps people centered and grounded.
Jake M. JohnsonMy big break was really Liz Meriwether saw me in a movie called 'Paper Heart' and really liked it, and then saw me in a movie called 'Ceremony' because she knew Max Winkler and said, 'I want you to be in 'No Strings Attached,' but you gotta audition for it.' From that it was easier for her to get me in 'New Girl.
Jake M. Johnson