Nick Kroll Quotes

It's not that weird, but when I was in Peru, I ate a guinea pig. If you're going to eat guinea pig, you call it cuy. Cute word for such a cute little animal that I ate a few times.

It was easier to know a character's point of view than it was to figure out what your point of view was.

The one place I've seen something really come together is in editing. Sometimes you can save pieces in a way that you're really shocked.

It's a real democratic time for comedy, and I think my special is a sign for that. You don't have to just be a classic stand-up to get a special, or you don't just have to be on Saturday Night Live to do characters and sketch on TV. The web has allowed me to show that there are different ways to make people laugh, and the special is a combination of those things.

I think that being on the road and doing more and more stand-up has allowed me to figure out... like, I don't think I'll ever be Bill Hicks, but I think I'm figuring out what my opinion is on things.

My goal was to do something that incorporated all the stuff I do and have it feel like something new, like it was hopefully taking the stand-up special paradigm and turning it on its head.

I have what I guess is medically known as a farting problem.

My thinking is, if we're setting out to make comedy in which nothing is off limits, then everybody is fair game.

People want to consume what you're putting out there, and you can create a really strong following of fans and admirers, and people who are invested in your career and your comedy.

I found, especially with stand-up, that if a premise works, you can make the joke work. If a premise doesn't work, you can't force it to.

I gave the graduation speech at my high school. Not because I was valedictorian but because the grade voted for me to do it. And I gave a slightly contentious speech. I was a little critical of the administration. But for a long time it said on Wikipedia that I took my balls out and exposed myself to the crowd.

I've decided to just keep doing Oh, Hello, where I play an older man who thinks he's very cultured. That clearly has not gone away.

In real life, you care about other people, but at the end of the day you're like, "I'm acting upon whatever it is that I want or need."

You want to be gentle with the people you're working with if you know them.

It was sort of in the jam-band era and it was at the Capitol Theatre in Port Chester [New York], right where I grew up. I actually went back there a couple years ago when I was on tour for Kroll Show. I performed at that theater, which was really cool to go back to the first place I'd gone to a concert.

I feel like we have so many different ways to express ourselves now, and I relish, I feel very lucky to be doing comedy.

There's just a feeling, when you're just an actor - I have great admiration for people who are just actors. I don't understand it, the idea of waiting to get cast, being at the whim of others. I find it incredibly powerless and frightening, so that's why I've been constantly trying to create my own content.

It's always weird to eat something that is a pet elsewhere.

There's nothing better for hosting a show than a bunch of people daytime-whiskey drunk.

My friends, we all improvise together usually. So we write what I think is a good script but always leave a lot of room to find stuff on the day; and we always do find something. That's the advantage to having actors who are, in their own right, writers.

Mel Brooks came to see Oh, Hello in L.A. Mulaney and I had a meeting with him, and we invited him to come to the show, and he saw the Oh, Hello show live in L.A. To me, he's the most famous person. Having him come to our show that was so inspired by both of us loving The Producers and all his movies.

In general in comedy, there are fewer people making a ton of money and a lot more people making a living. For me, the goal is just being able to make exactly the show I wanted to make.

No doubt there are people who are our guests [ in Oh, Hello] who are more famous, but to me, Mel Brooks is the most famous person. So that was really cool.

I feel incredibly lucky at this moment in my career to get paid to do basically exactly what I always wanted to do. I appreciate that in general. But you know, like any job, a job is a job, and there are days that are going to be boring, or you have a boss you don't like, or people you work with.

I'm sure there are people who say like, "I was wearing weird emo eyeliner," but there's something pretty embarrassing about the jazz phase.

I would be psyched to get a phone call from Al Sharpton. I need to find out who does his hair. It's beautiful. It's a gorgeous mane.

Whether it's corporate investigations or comedy, there are certain inherent truths to trying to get what you want while trying to be a decent person doing it.

Contrary to widespread belief, I do know something about science.

Really, more than anything, The 2000 Year Old Man is a huge influence on all of our comedy, but specifically the live version of Oh, Hello.

When you're playing something, hopefully, if you're doing your best, you're advocating for your character and you're not trying to think too much.

Music was not a big deal to me when I was in middle school. And then I slowly became a big jazz fan. Even more than concerts, a lot of my high school time was spent going to jazz clubs in the city.

I'm really into pandas right now. They're really scratching an itch for me. They're so goddamn cute.

I had PubLIZity, I had Oh, Hello, I had Bobby and Farley - all of these sketches that were really these duo sketches, but the relationship between them is really what catapulted them forward. A lot of that, I think, came from Wayne and Garth, these two similar guys - they're Midwestern metal guys - but in the end, they're quite different because there's an alpha and a beta. And I think that model became very present for me on Kroll Show.

I like an otter. I like a sea lion. I like a walrus. That's my favorite version of a sea creature.

Really, I just love doing comedy. Any form it takes is great, as long as I can keep doing it, you know? If I can do my show and 'The League' while also getting to do other bits, that's awesome.

I was going to have Brian La Croix do a cameo on Degrassi. But, unfortunately, the scheduling didn't work out. When I was in Toronto, they weren't shooting. To me, that would've been a pretty crazy meta experience.

I like to think that the stuff I do is oftentimes collaborative, so to have other people in it felt natural.

Don't watch Kroll Show if you don't have a Nielsen box. I honestly don't care. Feel free to DVR it and not watch it because that will somehow help my ratings maybe, but honestly I'm talking to the four of you with a Nielsen box. If you have a Nielsen box, like, who are you? Where do you live? How do I find you? You're a unicorn and I don't believe that you exist.

My friends and family always thought I was pretty funny, but I don't know if they thought I was get-my-own-show funny.

For me, the goal wasn't to turn the stand-up special on its head, but to do what I do specifically, and hopefully that reads as something new.

Oftentimes the shows that don't work help you get it right.

It's the saddest year in movies. We've got "Manchester," "Moonlight," "Chronic," "Jackie" ... it's sad when "American Honey" is the happiest film of the year and it's about runaways aimlessly trying to figure out their lives with no parental figures.

For me, I was literally trying to stay afloat. I never actually thought I would get my own sketch show. So the idea that one day I would have my own show is pretty wild. But once I got it, I thought, 'Yeah, this is exactly what I always wanted to do.

One of the worst things about being an actor, besides people being nice to you and getting free stuff all the time - but really, one of the worst things is not knowing what's coming next. You could shoot a pilot, and they could have you on hold for six months waiting to find out what is going to happen with the show, and you're locked into it.

You get to have some bigger comedic moments with some very real dramatic stuff. All that in one makes for a fulfilling artistic job.

I think my goal was just to do comedy, honestly. It still is. Whatever form that took or takes, it doesn't matter.

Robert Altman made that movie Kansas City about the jazz scene in the city, and we saw that band all together, and that was an amazing show. That's what I got into. I like jazz.

My best friend, Andrew Goldberg - and this is genuinely not me trying to cross-promote, but this new Netflix show I'm doing called Big Mouth is about me and my best friend, Andrew Goldberg, from childhood - but there was a year when I went to his house after school every day and we watched Wayne's World and ate Doritos.