The laugh can’t be the goal, the line after is the goal. So I spent a lot of time trying to get people to deliver the lines not quite as jokingly as people do. Look, it’s different if you’re Nathan Lane, who is a fucking genius. He could get laughs in The Crucible, I bet. But for those of us who aren’t Nathan Lane, if you fail at the laugh and you’re not playing the moment, it’s embarrassing. If you fail at the laugh and you are playing the moment, it doesn’t matter because you have the moment.
