I was young. I was 23 or 24. I just wasn't a fan of the politics of campaigning - of going into that environment and competing and trying to get into the good graces of the writers.

I did not want to be the accompanist to an operatic star. But I was at a very high level for a 16-year-old, and I maintained that. So really good, but more impressive than classically trained. So I had to take a crash course in classical technique because I really wanted to get away with playing this character [in Florence Foster Jenkins] without people saying, "That's not really accurate."

It's amazing to watch somebody who is kind of this sleazy, degenerate lothario, sex-crazed guy become sort of a romantic, settled-down man about to have a baby.

That is what's disconcerting about working on the show, you can't seem to get an instinct about what works and what doesn't. It happens a lot, and in different ways.

The weird part is actually, there were so many exceptionally talented people there [ on "MADtv"]. But it was a disaster. I don't think I enjoyed any of it, really. I had a different sensibility.

To me the ambiguity is, maybe our perception of ourselves is always going to be different than somebody else's perception. There will always be that disparity.

I came in ["MADtv"] kind of late in the season. Some of the producers didn't want me but the network did. It was all (messed up) from the beginning.