Mel Brooks and David Zucker - there are very few people who know silly, and they're usually hugely intelligent, because you have to be intelligent to get it. Like the Marx brothers. I love it.

I am not so concerned with how many Rotten Tomatoes we have - although the good reviews are to be wished for, of course - but I have my hands full in the daily housekeeping of doing Maura right and being truthful to this experience.

Garry Shandling in particular - really had the concept. He really knew it, and it was done so lovingly. He would go beyond the joke, and sort of go into the character. His "funny" was very different, and I really appreciated it.

At the beginning of the Larry Sanders show, you know, we were grateful to get guests. At the end, it was as if we actually were The Tonight Show. People would come on, and it had the same sort of imprimatur as if we were on the air. I've been on a lot of talk shows during that time and since then, and people would come up in the dressing room or in the corridors and say, "You guys got it exactly right." Or they would say, "We have Larry Sanders moments every day."

I think your resources are feeling. Your resources are depth. Your resources are learning. Your resources are touching and feeling. And for me, sobriety helps and aids all of that.

Probably because I'm bald. Don't the bald people always play doctors and principals? Yeah, isn't that funny? And lawyers. A lot of lawyers and judges.

I had a lot of questions where I had to be very frank and clinical. I had to go to school on it about what it could mean physically to be trans and the options that have to be weighed and considered. But I love that. Exploring that opens my worldview in ways that I would never be able to try.