Rich Sommer

“I think not every improviser is a good stage actor. Certainly not every stage actor is a good improviser.”

“I can juggle, not well... I can balance a broom on my chin. I can do very simple carny tricks, a little sleight of hand with cards and coins.”

“The amount of times my wife has rolled her eyes at board games is impossible to count.”

“I wonder if games are maybe a terminus for ideas. Things can be books or movies or operas or plays, but once they're a game, that's where they should end. Things shouldn't start as games and be taken to movies.”

“I was a temp for three years in New York when I was auditioning; when I was cast in 'Mad Men,' I was still a temp. I'm good at making copies; I'm good at typing things. I'm good at killing the day and making it look like I'm doing something.”

“I listen to a lot of podcasts, which are split down the middle between comedy and board game podcasts, and a couple of eclectic ones like 'The Dinner Party' from NPR, where they take an event that happened that week in history and give you a cocktail recipe inspired by it.”

“The worst job I ever had was as a telemarketer for, oh, I don't know, I think I made it about 90 minutes. I quit before lunch. I went in around 10:30 or 11 and said, 'I can't do this.' It was horrific. I had too many people yell at me within that 90 minutes to be able to continue.”

“I don't have the confidence to pull off a moustache.”

“I would like to ban people being allowed to text while in a crosswalk.”

“My only foray into anything stock-market-related was in my eighth grade social studies class. I have steered clear ever since.”

“I don't know if it's the sunshine, or the fact that I actually have a job, but I do like L.A. a lot. In New York, it can be gray and rainy and cold, and you still don't have any money, and you feel like a bad Dickens character.”

“The work that I've gotten in the hiatuses seems to indicate that I will have a little more work after 'Mad Men' than I did when I was scraping by while I was temping in New York, but who knows? People very easily could be like, 'Meh, we're done with that. We've got Jon Hamm. We're good without the weird one with glasses.'”

“I'm very, very fortunate to be in the job that I'm in, and I would love for it to continue forever, but it won't. I have to financially and emotionally prepare for the day that 'Mad Men' will go away, because who knows what my next job is going to be?”

“After 'Urinetown,' 'Avenue Q' and now 'Mormon,' is there an envelope remaining to be pushed?”

“I'm pretty quick to delete something off of my phone if it's become obsolete. And things like RSS readers have made life easier - all of the headlines are going to be related to a topic I'm interested in.”

“I'm very happy to say goodbye to the three-button suits. I hate three-button suits. Some people can pull them off, but they're legitimately really, really skinny. Unfortunately, the only people who actually wear them are, like, Mr. Monopoly, and people like that.”

“Before 'Mad Men,' I definitely had very dry spells and I know what those feel like, and I don't think that ever leaves you as an actor.”

“Three times a year, there's Strategicon convention, and I go for the board games. It happens Presidents Day, Labor Day, and Memorial Day weekends. You go and take a look at the new board games and meet a couple of board game designers, and you can check out games you don't own from the library and then return them.”

“So what's so enticing about doing a play is that you get to do that thing that got you into acting in the first place... There's a real attraction to being able to play, to just play. And that's something that theater affords you.”

“I only aim for fashion that's long dead.”