One of the wonderful things about Portlandia - and I'm not just blowing smoke, although I can blow smoke, but I'm not - is that there is an expansive feeling to each segment. It's not reductive. It doesn't seem like sketch comedy.

I watched American TV shows: Starsky & Hutch, Dallas, Rockford Files, Bonanza. And for many summers growing up, I worked on my aunt and uncle's farm in East Anglia. Down the street was an American cemetery for the Second World War, and every Memorial Day an American bomber would fly over that cemetery and drop rose petals.

Actors are the neediest people you're ever going to meet. And their relationship to real life, tenuous though it is because of all the wranglers, the money, everyone throwing everything at them every day of their lives -I think they're pretty much who they were before.

In the British military system, there is a very strict chain of command. Americans just want to win, and the correct strategy may be to speak directly to the men.

If you are the leader, you don't have the right to say things like "Ugh, didn't eat this week I was so busy." "Haven't slept." I look sideways at those signs of bravado, which are intended to make one feel that the person is working so hard. I don't think that way.

My dad is a little Scottish guy with tattoos all over his arms.

I was a section commander in the parachute regiment [in the British army].