Josh Gad

“I really love the traditional aspects of Judaism. My wife is born and raised a Catholic and I enjoy celebrating those rituals as well. I am very spiritual but not in any way religious, no.”

“I think physical comedy is an amazing asset because it tells a story that's more universal than just language and dialogue. I grew up watching Charlie Chaplin and Buster Keaton. They're very powerful figures in my life.”

“I was being flirted with for 'Modern Family,' which my wife still hasn't let me live down, but it's one of those things where that show is so brilliant because the casting couldn't be any more perfect. It wouldn't have been right for me, and I wouldn't have been right for it.”

“Coming off of 'Book of Mormon,' I had a lot of opportunities. I didn't want to do TV, actually. I really wanted to get paid nothing and keep doing theater at all costs.”

“I was like a Borscht Belt comedian trapped in the body of a 6-year-old. I was channeling Jackie Mason at 7.”

“I don't know if I'd call myself a prodigy, but I was a big forensics competitor in high school, and then during college I spent some time working at speech and debate camps as a coach.”

“I went to drama school for four years at Carnegie Mellon, conservatory training before television comedy. I was doing Shakespeare and Chekov plays. It's about delivering on the promise of a $100,000 education and taking the shackles off and trying the hand at my craft. I'm thrilled with what I've seen so far.”

“When you're doing a show like 'The Book of Mormon,' you're completely spent by the time the show is over.”

“I was a product of a divorced family and I used humor as a weapon to combat sadness. I used comedy to make my mother laugh in light of the darkness that she faced, and to me it became a very powerful tool at a very young age, at six. I saw how therapeutic it could be.”

“The actual truth about Gad is it's one of the original 13 tribes of Israel, so you can actually trace my lineage back to, like, those guys who had, like, a hand in the Bible and have since become very famous from that. So I come from very famous lineage. Granted, they didn't have cameras back then, so none of them had TV shows.”

“When you're doing a pilot, you're doing it in this bubble that almost works against the creative impulse. You don't have time to get to know the actors first, and you have three writers, as opposed to a room full of writers.”

“My idol growing up was Charlie Chaplin. I was obsessed with him. I mean, while other kids were watching Jim Carrey and the likes in the '90s, I was watching Charlie Chaplin films, because I was a bit of a geek. I became obsessed with this idea of physical comedy.”

“Acting comes natural to me. What I do enjoy is meeting people that I've idolized for years. I mean, I was talking about bringing up a child with Edie Falco yesterday.”

“One of my top 10 favorite movies of all time was 'South Park: Bigger, Longer & Uncut.' 'Team America' is a work of genius to me.”

“When you have a kid, it changes your life. It reminds you, this is my life now: I'm responsible for this tiny person. It's so surreal.”

“It's funny because 'The Book of Mormon' is 'The Book of Mormon' now. When I was doing it at the very beginning, and I was a part of it for four years and always believed in it, I never really knew if it was going to be more than a convention for 'South Park' fans.”

“I'm unfortunately very verbose too often.”

“It's funny, because '1600 Penn' was the first time I really started to read the reviews, because I am an executive producer and I wanted to see what people were enjoying and not enjoying as a means to an end, right?”

“I feel like Jim Carrey is probably the closest thing to a true physical comedian that we have working today.”

“Melissa McCarthy just opened this new movie, 'Identity Thief,' and Rex Reed, who's a known critic, wrote a scathing commentary on her weight. I think that weight designation is one of the last frontiers of bullying. I don't know what the right 'ism' for it is, but I think that there's a level of that that's happening that's certainly not okay.”