I'm Greek-American, and I come from an immigrant-type background, and Greek-American parents want you to be a doctor or a lawyer. Because that's how you make money, and it's very respectable.
Growing up in New Orleans, when you're in seventh and eighth grade, and you're into music, and you're a dorky dude, you know, you listen to the entire Rush catalog and the entire Zeppelin catalog, and you go through these, like, phases of classic rock.
I always did plays, and when I went to NYU - and I didn't go to Tisch, the theater school, because I was like, 'Well, acting's not realistic. You can't make a career out of it.' So I just studied general studies and humanities at NYU, but I was doing plays while I was there. So I was sort of cheating.
Basically, from the pilot of the first season of 'Togetherness,' I was strategically losing weight all the way through and then all the way into Season Two. So luckily, I had the plan, and I had a lot of time to do it. But it's definitely not easy, because I'm from New Orleans and I love to eat.
I directed the play 'Amadeus' with puppets way back in the day for theater. I also studied puppetry at the Eugene and Neil Center with a lot of the 'Sesame Street' people, so I do have a little bit of a history with puppetry.
I was an early peaker, and then I went through a depressive part of my life and had some struggles personally. Things don't always happen as you'd expect them to happen, but there's always a second act.
Acting is something I've done since I was in high school, but I never had a model in my life, whether it was a mentor or a parent, where I could realize that acting could actually be a career.
Aziz Ansari was on 'Parks and Recreation' for, I don't know, what, seven years? And he was a really popular stand-up comedian. He even says that his Netflix show wouldn't have gotten made unless he created it himself. No one was probably willing to put someone like Aziz as the lead in a show until he actually created it himself.
I feel so lucky. When an actor that has been struggling for so long makes the transition into being an actor full-time, it is the most amazing feeling. It's just sort of like a 3,000-pound weight gets lifted from you, and you're able to mostly focus on just being an artist, which is an amazing, blessed luxury I have.