Listening to a Joel McHale interview is very different from reading one. Anyone who’s seen McHale play Jeff Winger on the NBC (and now Yahoo Screen) sitcom Community, has seen him crack wise about various reality shows on E!’s The Soup, or has caught him on one of his many talk show appearances, knows that he speaks with a sardonic tone that sometimes doesn’t necessarily come through in print.

Except, that is, when he talks about Community and its creator, Dan Harmon. The sitcom, which was picked up by Yahoo for its sixth season in a negotiation that came down the the last day of McHale’s and the other actors’ contracts, is so near and dear to its star’s heart that when he calls Harmon a “genius,” there’s no trace of sarcasm in his voice. The same can be said about the experience of MCing the White House Correspondents’ Dinner, which he did this past spring. Last week, McHale spoke to me about Community, having dinner with the Obamas, and a new campaign he’s doing for the Bayer energy support supplement Berocca.

The negotiations for Community came down to the last day of your contract when this Yahoo deal came through. Did you and Dan Harmon have a game plan if your contracts expired?

No. There was no plan. Zero plan. We knew that there were some negotiations going on, and we knew there were offers, but I knew that they had to come up with enough money to make the show, like a show is. They couldn’t do it for less than what we were already making, because they cut our budget every single year. So, no. It was going to die on June 30th. Yahoo was one of many different networks and internet portals whose names were being thrown around. But you know, everyone had to put up real money, and thank God, Yahoo’s rich, and they really wanted to launch Yahoo Screen.

You’ve been joking around that you can swear now, but in all seriousness, going to a streaming service might be the best way for things to turn out for the show, considering its fan base and the content in the show and the freedom that Dan kind of needs to do it.

Everything you just said, I think is true; they’re going to definitely get behind us and advertise us, and they’ve got the money to do it. They believe in it, and they are excited about it. That alone is really important. So, there’s that, and from a creative standpoint, you can do anything you want. They’re not going to be limited by commercial breaks or length of show. I know the episodes will probably be slightly longer. It’s a great playground for Dan, and I can’t wait to see what he comes up with.

What do you hope that season six looks like? Has Dan come to you with story ideas, that kind of thing?

Oh, I have no idea. Dan hasn’t talked about story ideas at all, and I’d never suggest any sort of storyline to him. I trust him implicitly, and will follow him into any battle.

What do you think Dan brought back to the show last year, as opposed to when he wasn’t there for season four?

Well, he brought the entire show. I mean, Dan is the show. The show is in his brain. Season four was an echo of what seasons one through three and season five are. It wasn’t the show. It was a tribute, almost, to the show. Then when Dan came back, the show came back. It had to be a one-voice show, like, you know, Breaking Bad, something like that.

Was that something that you were feeling while you were doing season four, or was it something you realized after Dan came back?

No, no, I worked hard to get Dan back. I knew that if he came back, the show would be saved. It wasn’t like, “Hope this works again,” nothing like that. We all knew that if Dan’s back, the show’s back.

With Chevy Chase gone and with Donald Glover leaving after a few episodes, was it tough for Dan to try to figure out how to move the show along?

I think Donald’s departure gave Dan a bunch of stuff to work with for Danny [Pudi]’s character, for Abed. So, Abed got, you know, Abed had a lot of interesting things to deal with. The whole group did, because when you’re dealing with a loss, there’s the story right there. Dan is a genius. So, you know, he can take anything and find what’s interesting about it.

Jonathan Banks came in and he looked like he slipped in pretty easily into the ensemble.

He was great. We’re very sad to lose him to Better Call Saul, but yeah. He just was this powerhouse of an actor, and really fun to work with.

At the end of this past season, you guys saved Greendale. It felt like it could have served as either a season or a series finale. Where do you think the show is, creatively, now?

I think last year it was like ending of one of the Harry Potter books. We had saved something, but we also lost something. Again, Dan is so creative that I would never put it past him. I’ve said before, his scripts at the table read are like Christmas gifts. It’s incredible.

How tough was it for you and your co-writers to write for the correspondents’ dinner? Stephen Colbert’s performance in 2006 is the one people look at, where everybody watched on TV and laughed, but everybody who was there was like, “What the heck is this guy?”

But if you go look back on it now, I think Stephen Colbert’s is kind of treated as one of the most brilliant ever.

Do you play to the room, or do you play to the people watching on TV?

You do both. I guess I just felt we needed to write edgy jokes, but right up to the edge. I don’t think it was a conscious thing of, “Do we play to the room?” It was just like, “Let’s find the funniest jokes we can. Let’s make fun of both sides, and make both sides happy, and make both sides mad.” And that was about it. And you know, make fun of the president. Because he has to be in that situation. If you don’t go after him, you’ll be criticized.

When I talked to Conan and Seth Meyers and [Craig] Ferguson and [Jimmy] Kimmel, they were like, “Look, it’s a crazy room. It’s the strangest room you’ve ever been in. It’s exhilarating, but you’re not going to please everybody. There’s no chance of that.” And so, going into that, I was kind of like, “Yeah, I’m just going to do what I do.” That’s what I tried to stick to, and I knew if it was too edgy, everyone would go, “Ooh.” Which they all did—which is a response in a way which to me means they’re afraid to laugh.

Which jokes got that response?

Oh, they didn’t like the sausage-fest joke. I wanted to make a joke about that because everyone kept saying how the correspondents’ dinner was not what it used to be. I was like, “Yeah, well, when it started, women weren’t allowed, or minorities. So, did you want to go back to that?” What else got a big “ooh?” Oh, “The Kardashians are just like Republicans because they’re trying to screw black people.” Yeah, that got a big “ooh.” But I was very happy about that joke.

The Obamas have a good sense of humor.

Yes, he does. He not only has a good sense of humor, but he has a remarkable sense of delivering jokes. I mean, he’s remarkable with his timing. There’s no president like him that’s good at delivering jokes, and as much as the Republicans disagree with him, I don’t think they could argue that. He’s by far the best, and it’s really, it’s kind of exhilarating. Again, I was told by Conan, “The president is really funny, and he is going to kill,” and he actually does the job of a warm-up comic, which is to really get the audience going. It’s really crazy.

How surreal is it to meet the president, then be sitting next to Michelle Obama on the dais?

There is nothing normal about it. You’re getting ready to do this biggest gig of your life, but you’re sitting there talking to one of the coolest, most famous women in the world. She’s the bee’s knees, by the way. She’s as lovely as they get. She’s absolutely everything we could ever hope for in a first lady.

How did you get involved with Berocca?

I got behind it because, you know, it’s vitamins and caffeine, which I do every day. So it wasn’t some crazy blast of sugar and an ingredient from some prison from North Korea.

Yeah, which is good, because you never know what those North Koreans prisons can generate, right?

Well, that’s how they make all their money there. We all think that they’re doing all this brinkmanship with nuclear arms, but really they’re mining basically what amounts to diesel fuel that goes into energy drinks. You know, when I do these things, I want to make sure that I’m comfortable with their creators. And I want it to be funny. And my friends who were at the White House correspondents dinner, they wrote the ad, essentially. I wanted them to be really crazy. And Bayer, who makes the product, it was great. I screamed so much during the filming of that that I think I damaged my voice forever. It was worth it.

Have you gone back to doing standup at all?

I was going to do a tour; I started posting dates, then all of a sudden, Community got picked up again, so I had to cut it short.

How much does it energize you guys to know that the audience that’s considered small on NBC is now very large for Yahoo Screen?

Yeah, I mean, as Dan said at Comic-con, “I guess people are now going to watch the show the exact same way they’ve always watched it,” which is on the internet. We really got clobbered in the ratings, because we were up against the biggest show on television, but we always trended worldwide. We always had this massive support, and then you would show up to Comic-con, and 5,000 people show up, and they turn away thousands. That is not [the sign of] a cancelled show, you know what I mean? People care deeply.

How many seasons do you think the show can go now?

Probably 30.

Would you be on board for all 30?

I’d be on for 40, my friend.

Good to know, and I’m sure Dan, at this point, will be on for all 40…

He better be. He better be.