Fresh on the heels of his hilarious hosting gig on Saturday Night Live, Rainn Wilson is enjoying his vacation from The Office as fans get set to check out the comedic TV star in The Rocker, about a failed '80s metal drummer who gets a second chance at musical stardom when he joins his nephew's high school band. At the film's recent press junket in L.A., Wilson filled us in on everything from his own Rock & Roll dreams, whether he's ever performed for a crowds of 30,000, becoming a star at middle age, and whether he loves to get naked.

We were just talking to Emma about the straight face factor because her character is not supposed to smile. Do you see that as a challenge when you know that she's going to have to hold it in?

RAINN WILSON: Yeah, you know it's always great fun to - It's something we do on The Office a lot. It's like knowing when everyone has to have deadpan faces and you have the opportunity to try and make them laugh. You should always go for that and always try and break people. So it's great fun and a great challenge.

It always had to be great fun to develop your drumming technique and the faces that went along with it. Was that always part of it or did that just happen naturally as you started drumming?

WILSON: Yeah, no. I started taking some drum lessons when I knew I got cast in this and the guy also worked with me a lot on being specifically a heavy metal drummer, because that's a whole other art form to itself. I mean you can play guitar, but then like lead guitar in a metal band is a whole different thing. So working the crowd and getting the crowd riled up and using the kick drum, stick tricks, you know cueing the pyrotechniques, and getting the audience involved is a whole part of heavy metal drumming. So that was a lot of fun to play with. And that really informed the character a lot too, you know. Fish is such a heart-on-his-sleeve kind of guy and heavy metal drummer is just all about having a good time and propelling the crowd to have a good time.

One of the things that Fish goes through, I think it's harder for young people to identify with but as you get older you have to give up dreams. You realize, "Okay, I'm never gonna get to learn to fly or whatever it is." You've been able to make your dreams come true and you went into acting, but I'm sure you must have hit a point where you said, "I don't know. If you were driving a moving van or whatever, if this is really going to work." So how about that sense, the fact that Fish gets that second chance is remarkable for a lot of people and I wondered how you identified with that?

RAINN WILSON: I think that I have a lot in common with Fish in that way. I mean, I always was an actor and I was always making a living as an actor, but I didn't get famous until I was in my late thirties and didn't really become a celebrity until I hit forty. So this is a whole like kind of a second life for me as an actor, you know I had my whole life working in theater and doing small parts in film and TV for years and years, but now hosting Saturday Night Live or doing the MTV Movie Awards, and starring in a movie, this is a whole other ballgame. So that's pretty cool.

But I remember being in New York and I was doing a lot of theater and I ran into an old friend of mine and we had done A Mid Summer Night's Dream together and I ran into her down in Greenwich Village. We were talking and at one point she turned to me and said, "Let's face it Rainn you and I are never gonna be movie stars." I think she was moving to the suburbs and was gonna have kids and get a teaching job at a college out there. I kind a thought something about that didn't sit right with me and, at the time, I think I was in my late twenties and I was like, "You know what? That's not right. I'm not gonna give up so easily and so early. I gotta see this acting thing through to the bitter end." So I was pretty determined through my whole career, keep going.

On stage of course you have the experience of being in front of a live audience, whether it's a 99 seat house or a theater with a couple of hundred people. But it's not an arena with a couple a thousand people, even if they're screaming extras being paid to be there. Do you get a sense of what it would be like to be a rock star when you're out there?

WILSON: No. You know, all actors want to be rock stars and all rock stars want to be actors. So there's... No, I haven't ever experienced it. I've never experienced what that's like to be in front of - I've done Broadway and I've had an audience of 1500 or 2000, but I've never had 20,000, 40,000 screaming fans with lighters and beach balls and Frisbees and T-shirts, merchandise. So I would love to experience that. We got a little taste of it in the scenes in the movie. But yeah, that would be awesome.

Do you enjoy being naked? Is that your approach to...

WILSON: I find that question highly inappropriate and I feel uncomfortable right now and... My room is 427. It's right down the hallway. I always enjoy taking my clothes off to comedic effect and I've been making women laugh with my naked body for the last twenty years and hopefully audiences across America will find it just as amusing as many of the ladies I've known.