Zach Woods: I actually really liked teaching. I started teaching at UC...

I would love to do a drama. I did a couple of episodes of The Good Wife, which is more of a drama. I really liked that; I thought it was interesting. A lot of my favorite comedies play out as dramas.

Zach Woods

couple drama interesting

I'd like to be able to do complex math in my head. Any kind of adversity and I become very anxious, but if you're a robot, you have good equilibrium. I wish I was cooler under pressure, like a robot.

Zach Woods

adversity wish math

A lot of times the movies I think are the funniest are dramas. I feel like dramas are so much funnier because they're actually capturing human beings. Humans are so weird and clumsy, and that, to me, often makes me laugh more.

Zach Woods

drama laughing thinking

Steven Spielberg name is synonymous with Hollywood. You sometimes meet people who revel in their own mythology, and he doesn't feel like that, at all. He's very approachable, accessible and sweet. Even if he wasn't, I'd have to say that because the man runs everything.

Zach Woods

running sweet men

I think I gravitate towards characters who are slight outsiders. It's fun to play a character that wants so badly to be included in the normal activities of teenage life, but lacks the literal hardware to do it.

Zach Woods

teenage fun character

It's always fun to improvise. What's weird is that when you're recording, you're by yourself, for the most part.

Zach Woods

fun

The days that you record by yourself, you feel like a crazy person because you're saying the same line, 10 different ways, or they ask you for 10 different grunting sounds and you just feel like such a schmuck. It's crazy! When there's other people there, it tethers you to something, in a nice way.

Zach Woods

crazy nice people

I would rather a sex tape make its way out than a video of me doing all of the different grunt sounds. I'm not eager for a sex tape to leak, but in terms of personal humiliation, I'd feel less vulnerable to be in a Kim Kardashian situation than seeing myself grunting in a booth.

Zach Woods

humiliation vulnerable different

If I was a part of secret ninja group my power would be the power of apology. I would just apologize emphatically and freely. And my mech might just be a phone to send apologetic emails from.

Zach Woods

ninja apology secret

We went to Comic-Con and there were people dressed up as the characters. There's a whole canon of Ninjago history that I didn't even know about until the process of making the movie had started. Especially at Comic-Con, I realized that people really, really care about this, and I hope they like it because it's meaningful to them. It did actually change my feelings about it.

Zach Woods

meaningful character people

I don't go to see many comedies anymore, because I guess it feels like another day at the office.

Zach Woods

comedy office

I feel all of the archetypes in Silicon Valley probably exist in some other form in other subcultures.

Zach Woods

archetype

I really knew almost nothing about Silicon Valley. I read that Steve Jobs book and watched a bunch of documentaries, and read the book about Mark Zuckerberg. I tried to learn some stuff, but there are consultants on the Silicon Valley show that know so much about it where you can get answers. To me, it's more important to get the particulars about that type of person as opposed to the specifics of the technology world.

Zach Woods

technology important book

When I was a kid my father would read Neil Simon plays with me when I was going to bed, as bedtime stories. All of these old plays like The Odd Couple and Lost in Yonkers - funny but corny plays about Jewish New Yorkers in the mid-20th century.

Zach Woods

couple father kids

I remember as a child listening to comedic musicals and thinking they were a real riot. I had pretty questionable taste in comedy.

Zach Woods

real children thinking

For the first actual comedy-comedy I did, I took a comedy class in New York, which was full of slightly unhinged people. It was a pretty depressing crowd, very angry and strange people. But then I took a class at the Upright Citizens Brigade and I loved those people.

Zach Woods

depressing comedy people

When I was a kid I wanted to be a musician. I used to play the trumpet. I practiced all the time, but I got braces and I couldn't play it anymore, so I had all of this free time.

Zach Woods

braces musician kids

My brother, who's a few years older then me, went to college in New York. He said all of these people from Saturday Night Live do improv together in Upright Citizens Brigade, and I thought, "Oh, that sounds really cool." So when I got braces and couldn't play music anymore, I said to my parents that I wanted to go to New York and take a class at that place. They were remarkably on board with it. I got on the train, went up, took a class and I loved it.

Zach Woods

brother college night

There's some boring advice for improvisers beginning their careers like "see as much of it as you can and do as much of it as you can." Volume, in a way, is the most important thing. Not, like, decibel volume - just immerse yourself in it as much as possible. I'd also suggest that you put a high value on your personal interests and tastes.

Zach Woods

boring important advice

I think sometimes when people start doing improv there's some regression towards trying to replicate the "good" improvisers that they've read about in their improv books or heard about from their teachers. That's understandable, because they're trying to learn technique and stuff, but I actually think that my favorite performers are ones who have unique improv technique but also have a unique point of view that you can feel with them and their performances.

Zach Woods

unique teacher book