My worst moment: 'I'm Dying Up Here's' Erik Griffin and throwing a chair at an out-of-control audience member

For years, TV audiences knew Erik Griffin as the smooth-talking desk jockey Montez Walker on the Comedy Central series "Workaholics."

"What happens in the business is you get pigeonholed," Griffin said. "You're a silly character in one thing, so everything you go out for, you have to be a silly character." That changed when he joined the Showtime series "I'm Dying Up Here," a 1970s-set drama now in its second season about comics in Los Angeles looking to make it big.

Griffin is a standup in real life as well. How close is the show to his own experiences? "Sometimes it feels like my own life," he said. "Like the relationships he has with the young comics; I kind of have a mentor vibe