There was a time when doing "Zoolander 2" that I was literally flying between the "Zoolander" shoot and "The Leftovers" in Texas and at that point, I was getting comedy whiplash. It was a relief, though, to get to Rome and be like, "Oh my God, I get to laugh on set."

D.C. is a hard city to grow up in. I couldn't find my footing there. Also, I got a late start academically, and I was dyslexic.

I devoured TV - everything from Super Friends in the morning to Dukes of Hazzard and The Love Boat and Fantasy Island at night. I watched it all. There were only four channels, so you could actually consume all of television if you were good at changing the channel.

Any good movie or script usually, if they're doing their job, gives the highest platform possible for an actor to leap off of, and that script was very high up there. It was a very smart, tight script. There was a lot of improv, as well, once we got to the set, but a lot of the original script was also in there.

You can get stuff done in New York that you can't in Los Angeles. If you wanted to get some milk and get your shoes repaired and drop something off at the dry cleaner, that's an all-day adventure in Los Angeles. In New York, you can bang that out in half an hour.

I feel more comfortable writing firmly comedic or slightly comedic stuff.

When I was 13, I kind of got into the punk scene. I realized it was easier to wear a pair of combat boots and jeans and a beat-up T-shirt. I think of it as a uniform: Ya know, if you're a Maytag man, you put on your bow tie. I still have T-shirts from when I was that age.