Terry Gross

No.

But yes, I'm sorry I interrupted you.

Your improv group is the Upright Citizens Brigade, which was co-founded by Amy Poehler.

You've taught there, and you've had some students in improv who became very successful.

Name some of them.

What was it like to see your students and your peers becoming more successful than you?

Well, your improv skills have come in very handy in roles like playing a cockroach for a pest control company.

So tell us what that experience was like.

Explain that.

On a kind of related note, or perhaps not so much, you've been in a lot of commercials earlier in your career.

And like in some of them, like you have one line, like there's one commercial where your line is wedges.

Because the woman in it is choosing between like espadrilles or wedges.

And you're going wedges.

So how do you audition for like, what is the audition like for an ad like that?

If you're just joining us, my guest is Jeff Hiller.

He won an Emmy for his performance in the HBO series Somebody Somewhere.

His memoir is called Actress of a Certain Age.

We'll be right back.

This is Fresh Air.

No, another thing that you've done is you've auditioned a lot for Broadway shows.