Retta, the Revelation

Seven seasons of acting alongside comedy greats like Amy Poehler, Nick Offerman, Aubrey Plaza, Adam Scott and more instilled two lessons that Retta said she's taken with her to every role she's had since. "One, I learned improvisation. I was always fearful of it," she admitted. "People were always like, ‘You should take an improve class.' I'm like, ‘Nope, not interested.' And then I worked with some of the best [improvisers]. Like, all of them are really, really good at it and it was a safe environment to experiment, so it made me comfortable saying things, trying my own lines, because we used to have fun runs and you could say whatever you wanted. It gave you a freedom to do it."

It was that freedom that led to her second and perhaps most important lesson learned. "I also learned fearlessness from them. I knew that as an actor, it doesn't hurt to be fearless, but I wasn't sure that I could be," Retta said. "I don't necessarily feel that I'm completely fearless, as I'm sure there are still things I'd be afraid to do, but I learned that from them. I saw it from Nick—even from some of our guest stars because we had a lot of great improvisers come to the show. Just watching Megan Mullally gave me a sense of don't be scared to do things."

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