Quotes About Ad-lib

In my live show, it will feel like I'm making up everything as I go, and a lot of it I do. I riff with the audience and see what happens.

I'm good with a script.

I'm not very good when I'm given scripts.

There's no real preparing at home for stand-up. You just go and you just do it.

After working with Wayne Brady, Colin Mochrie, and Jonathan Mangum, I said, 'I am never going to talk about improv again.'

Even when I was in school shows, in elementary school doing plays, I'd always go off book and start improvising.

It's an awesome thing to be flung out onto the stage twice a weekend in front of 250 people, and you have to make it up as you go along.

I don't prepare for anything very well. I am not a good actor. I don't read scripts.

You just make it up as you go along.

Generally, there's a lot of ad-lib involved with live TV and things like that, whereas with acting in front of the camera, it was, if you screwed up a line, well, you've got another take, and you also had a script to be able to study, so it wasn't all ad-lib and flying by the seat of your pants, which I like both aspects, actually.

On '8 Out Of 10 Cats,' myself, Jimmy Carr and Jason Manford have got the producers around to our way of thinking - which is to trust us and allow us to ad-lib.

Coming out of 'Shrill,' depending on who's directing, they'll let you ad lib sometimes, you can pitch ideas if you have them.

I've never done an improvised movie as a fictitious character. I think that's the challenge.

I know very few people who have literally improvised a film from start to finish.

My roots are in stand-up, and stand-up is very freeing. There's no script involved; you just fly.

I think the challenge is going out in front of a paying audience with absolutely nothing and trying to entertain them for two hours. Thankfully, I only think about that right before we go on, and then once we're out there, everything's fine.

If you just freestyle, everybody is gonna go, 'Freestyle.'

Like a good play-caller, a good TV guy, if you get going on a good conversation, you can ad-lib a little bit. You keep it going. Just like in a game, if you call a couple plays and they're working, you come back to them.

I prefer improvising, rather than creating comedy out of thin air.

I am not a good cue card reader.

I haven't got an ad lib for people throwing bread rolls at my hat.

The only thing I can recall being allowed to improvise was the little singsong 'I don't know what to do' chant in 'Pierrot Le Fou.' Which I came up with because I literally did not know what to do!

Bob Hope was totally regimented. I go in and say a line like, 'Hi Bob' and I'd have to do it five times, and then Bob would take me to the writers to say the line different ways. He wouldn't let me ad-lib.

The improv, sometimes it works, sometimes it doesn't, but when it does, it's like open-field running.