AVC: A lot of people seem to see Second City as a stepping-stone to bigger things for comedians.
SC: It was interesting, because my attitude about moving to Chicago was sort of the opposite, in that I felt New York was too big and too intimidating, and I felt the same thing about Los Angeles. And I thought Chicago would just be a good place to work and get my feet wet and not have that idea of ultimate success. So I personally never really thought about who was in the audience, or who might be scoping for new talent. Chicago was sort of insulated that way. I never felt people were showcasing themselves. I felt like it was about just doing the work, just doing what we were doing, as opposed to, "Boy, I'd better shine tonight, because this will be my big chance." I already felt like I'd made it, just being at Second City. There didn't seem to be much more beyond that that I'd dreamt about achieving. When I was there, I thought, "If I could just do Second City and do a couple of television commercials..." Man, I was set. There was nothing in my mind that was better than that. I would've had it good.
AVC: How did you become involved with The Dana Carvey Show?
SC: I auditioned for it in Chicago, and then again in Los Angeles, and it kind of coincided... My wife got on SNL during the '96 season, so we had moved to New York from Chicago, and then I just auditioned and I started on The Dana Carvey Show around the time she was on Saturday Night Live.
AVC: What was it like, being involved with The Dana Carvey Show? There was some amazing talent involved there.
SC: I don't think they realized what they had when they had it. People like Charlie Kaufman and Robert Smigel and Louis C.K. and Stephen Colbert. There were some very, very strong comedy talents involved with that show. And that was just fun every day. We could not believe we were so lucky. You laughed very hard every day you were in there, because something was so ridiculous and we couldn't believe that ABC was gonna put it on the air. It seemed implausible. Ultimately, it was implausible.
AVC: It seemed like it was too out-there for its time.
SC: I suppose. Well, we polled the audience after the first sketch, which was Dana playing President Clinton and talking about himself as the nurturing president while he breastfed a group of golden retriever puppies. And people were so outraged. That was pre-Monica Lewinsky, that was before his public fall from grace, so people were so offended that we would be poking fun at the President that way. A year or two later, it would've been no problem, but at the time, it was perceived to be in extremely bad taste.
AVC: Well, wasn't that show the lead-in to Home Improvement?
SC: [Laughs.] It was. It was not a family-friendly half-hour. Well, they were expecting Dana Carvey to do something sort of light and frothy, and he wanted to do something much harder and more biting.
AVC: They wanted him to do Church Lady for half an hour.
SC: Exactly. I think they were expecting the Church Lady and Hans and Franz. And that's not what he wanted to do. He wanted to do, you know, he has—I don't even want to use the word edge—he wanted it to be a bit more raucous than those things.
AVC: And then what happened between the cancellation of The Dana Carvey Show and when you started at The Daily Show?
SC: I moved back to Los Angeles for three years and just auditioned and did a couple of failed TV shows.
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