You were a doctor for seven years before you switched to comedy and acting full time. Did your parents want you to do medicine first? Yeah, I always joke that I was Koreaned into doing medicine.

But there has to be some kind of through line between medicine and com­edy. What do you think it is? I come from an intellectual background — I’m Duke-­educated, I went to a great medical school, I did my residency for three years and I was a partner in my H.M.O., and it is so important for me not to overanalyze what I do as an artist. But in a way, medicine is improv. Medicine is listening, and so is improv: going with the flow, going through trial and error.

Your favorite book is Phil Jackson’s ‘‘Sacred Hoops.’’ In it, he writes about reaching the edge of his raw talent as a basketball player and realizing that he had to find something else. Is that something you related to? You just described every physician. All of us are smart. All of us were good enough to get into medical school, which is pushing yourself to another level. I suppose I reached the limit of my raw talent years ago.

Hey, I wasn’t going to say anything. But I’ve gotten better. That’s why ‘‘Community’’ was such an important experience — it was my acting school. I didn’t know how to cry on camera before I was on ‘‘Community.’’