Scott Adsit Talks 30 Rock, Improvisation, and Alec Baldwin's Big Ideas
Have you ever performed with a seriously insane comedian?
I see my share of loons. I just performed with someone who had a meltdown on stage. He needed focus, and he was "stealing it," and just being crazy and selfish and childish and having a great time doing it, to the detriment of everybody else. So there are certain people out there. I personally have not had a lot of experience with people who are certifiably insane. I've been lucky. I've gotten very, very lucky. Maybe the people who hire me just turn out to be very intelligent and thoughtful people, but Tina, of course, has worked with the full spectrum of people. She had people coming in and out of SNL for -- whatever that was -- 10 years, where you get the most lovely people and then just crazy, nutjob, insane people to host the show or to be regulars on the show. So from personal experience, I don't have much experience with clinically insane people, but I read the SNL book a few years ago about invisible robots on your shoulder and stuff like that, and I'm sure that kind of behavior is what Tina and the writers use.
Yikes, that improv experience with the selfish performer sounds terrible.
I shouldn't say names, but it was somebody falling into a focus war. This person wanted all the attention, and all the other people lost their moments, didn't get their laughs because one person was stepping on everyone else. It was just insane behavior. It would make sense to an actor, not sure it would make sense to someone who wouldn't be up there. But it was crazy.
You're a Chicago native and vet of Second City. That's like the most ideal way an improvisational actor can begin a career.
I've been doing improv since high school, and I've been getting paid for it since I was 20.
Can you define a nightmare improv scenario and a perfect one?
A nightmare would be when somebody is trying to be funnier than everyone else. And you've got a group scene or two-person scene, and one person decides, "I'm the funny in this," and bulldozes everyone else, and they make sure they're the reason everyone loves the scene. Then what happens is the audience doesn't end up liking the scene because there's no balance to it. A great improv scene is when the only thing you're doing is trying to make your partner or partners look good, and kind of supporting them. This is kind of a boring answer, but the better they look, the better you look. The best scenario is, you're just feeding them what they need to be funny and they're doing the same to you. It's a support-fest.
Do you have a favorite person to perform with?
Wow, that's tough. I've been with really great people. There's a guy who you may not know named David Pasquesi -- he was in Angels and Demons with Tom Hanks. He was my hero at Second City coming up, he was just a few years ahead of me. I would point at him and say, "That's what I want to be." Eventually we somehow hooked up at a festival or something, and we ended up doing a run called Adsit-Pasquesi for awhile. Anytime we're in the same town, we still do it. David just has a focus and a commitment and he's just a fantastic actor. So that was thrilling. I got to do a scene with Pe
ter Boyle once. That was interesting because he was more nervous than I was, because it had been awhile. I ended up supporting him because he was panicky. It eventually worked out, but it was kind of thrilling to be nursing a great actor into the part he was playing.
Wow, Peter Boyle. What's it like meeting and working with legends?
It's really strange. I've been doing shows around town here and ending up performing with people like Martin Short and Andrea Martin, people I've admired -- forgive me -- since I was a kid. What I found out is they're just part of the fraternity. They've had similar experiences, and they've gone much higher and farther than I have, but the things I ended up experiencing are essentially the things they had experienced by the time I was a fan of theirs. That's a complicated phrase. And I guess I realized they were people -- it's a cliche -- I just realized they were so nervous, so excited to perform. That was really encouraging. I have hopefully a long career ahead of me, and I would hate to say to myself, "Oh. Another show." I don't look forward to that. They're not that way, so that's really exciting.
Do you miss Second City at all? Seems like there's a halo of nostalgia around it for most who worked there.
I do miss it. I felt like I was in my niche there. That was really exciting to go into work every day because I was saying whatever I wanted, performing my own ideas, helping people with theirs, and building something together every night in front of 300 people. It was different every night. So there were these amazing things we created that were like paintings or etchings in the sand, because they're just gone. We made these sometimes pristine scenes that could -- if someone was there to record it, or we'd written them down -- they could live forever. But they're gone, and that's really exciting. I miss creating in that way. I still improvise, but there's something about having that audience and that reputation -- the audience walks in trusting you. The hardest part about improv is getting the audience to relax and enjoy themselves because most improv is not very good, and the audience is nervous for the performers the whole time. Not that they don't even like the show, but they feel bad for the performers. [Laughs.] And they don't enjoy the show. So it was nice to go into Second City where people expect a good show, and they get one. Generally, they were the best improvisers in the world. I miss that relationship with that particular audience.
Your work in animation (Moral Orel, the upcoming Mary Shelley's Frankenhole) is awesome. What's it like producing and voice-acting in that format?
I grew up with animation, and it was a huge part of my life coming up. So that's thrilling because I get to see how it works and also watch some amazing artists take what I scribble and make it into something artful. And then the greatest thing is getting to work with my friend Dino Stamatopolous who is the creator of these shows. He did Moral Orel and Frankenhole. We're partners and he is a great friend of mine -- we are nothing alike. We get along really well. That's the best part. It's a much smaller world, because Adult Swim is such an off-in-the-corner network. They're very lenient with us, so pretty much anything we like they'll let us do -- and if we can afford to build it, because all our animation is three-dimensional and stop-motion. It's great to be in charge of something like that. I'm a producer there, and I write and direct and do voices, so it's great to be kind of like a mom-and-pop television show, which is what that feels like.
Finally: 30 Rock ranks in the pantheon of best shows ever. What are your favorite TV shows of all time?
Well, Dick Van Dyke Show. And Monty Python. And I'll say Larry Sanders. [Long Pause.] And Six Feet Under. I think they're are all fine examples of how good TV can be.
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Comments
Great interview. Love Adsit on 30 Rock. There was a while when I would see him on the subway regularly, and I always wanted to shout: "Hornberger!" or otherwise get his attention, but figured he probably would prefer to be left alone on his subway trip to wherever. =)
"The great thing is, I think the writers are all devastatingly intelligent, and they assume that the audience is just as smart as they are too. They’re never writing “down,” they’re always writing “to” exactly what they would laugh at, and respecting the audience as being as smart them."
This is precisely why the show is so good.
re: the Jewish thing. There was also the episode where Tracy brings all these party girls into Pete's office, and one of them says to him: "Your name sounds Jewish; you must be important."
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