Painting the Town FredFor the first time since his high-profile divorce from actress Elisabeth Moss, SNL funnyman Fred Armisen talks about living the bachelor dream, video games and all.

Photo: American Museum Of Natural History, NYC

Mad men: Both Fred and Jason Sudeikis fell for women on the hit retro show. While Fred's now divorced, Jason and January Jones are still going strong.

 Saturday Night Live star Fred Armisen breezes into Le Pain Quotidien on the Upper West Side, fists stuffed into his sweatshirt pockets, a hood pulled over his head, thick glasses pushed up to the bridge of his nose. He looks like your run-of-the-mill 22-year-old hipster whose self-deprecating swagger probably comes with a too-cool-for-school attitude. Except Fred is 44 and the opposite of aloof.

"Oh my gosh, I love this place!" he says as he enters the chain patisserie, with the enthusiasm of someone who's never been out for coffee. "I'm sorry I'm not ordering more food!" he apologizes profusely to the waiter. "Yes! That's me!" he exclaims when the waiter later asks him if he is "SNL's Fred Armenstad." He doesn't correct him.

It's hard to believe this is the man who had tabloids agog this summer when his second marriage—to Mad Men's rising starlet Elisabeth Moss—dissolved after just eight months and he reportedly started dating his co-star, comedian Abby Elliott, 23, soon after. Photos of the scruffy comedian stepping out with Abby appeared in the weekly gossip magazines next to more glamorous staples like Brangelina and Demi Moore. Reports of Fred and Abby canoodling at restaurants in his neighborhood, like Riposo 72, made it into New York City's gossip columns.

Suddenly people were asking: Is Fred Armisen, famed for his impersonations  of David Paterson and Joy Behar, the city's most unlikely lady-killer?

"I'm still not used to the private stuff being out there," he admits, referring to his June divorce and reports he's involved with Abby, a doe-eyed brunette whose father, Chris Elliott, is an SNL alum. Abby and Fred have not confirmed or publicly acknowledged that they are an item, and talkative Fred shuts up like a clam when Abby or Elisabeth, 28, come up. "I have to get used to it. There are people who are good at [discussing their private lives], but I haven't mastered it yet. I'm sorry, but I can't talk about it."

Fred and Elisabeth met on the set of Saturday Night Live in October 2008, when Jon Hamm hosted the show and Elisabeth guest-starred. Fans fell in love with the couple because they seemed like "regular" people—talented actors, one starring in a drama, the other a famous comic, who you might feasibly be friends with. They married in a small, private ceremony in Long Island City and couldn't stop gushing about their relationship on the red carpet. "[He makes me laugh] more than anything in the world," Elisabeth said at the 2009 Emmys. "She makes me laugh," he interrupted her. "No joke. She is the funniest." "Really? That's so sweet!" she cooed.

One year later, Elisabeth filed divorce papers. All too happy to talk about their relationship when it was good, neither of them has commented on why they split. Fred's quick rebound with his co-star also raised eyebrows at work, with some SNL staffers sniping that Fred should have been more subtle about the timing of his next high-profile relationship.

Chilling in his neighborhood on a weekday afternoon, Fred does, however, talk about how his newly resumed bachelor lifestyle suits him to a tee.

"I just feel, like, still, all I really want to do is see my favorite bands play and hang out with my friends," he admits sheepishly. "I play a lot of Grand Theft Auto. I still haven't been able to put things together as a responsible adult. Also, the sound of my own voice doesn't sound like a grown-up."

He rents rather than owns his apartment, for no other reason than it's too much of a hassle to get a mortgage. He goes to shows at the Bowery Ballroom and the Mercury Lounge. He never, ever cooks, prefers texting to talking on the phone and wears the same five pairs of black jeans on rotation. He works out with a trainer "just for upkeep" so that he can indulge his obsession with chocolate and sweets and spends his free time palling around with his thirtysomething co-stars Andy Samberg and Kenan Thompson.

As a single and famous New Yorker with no children, there's no shelf life for Fred's post-adolescent lifestyle. "It does stunt you a bit," he admits. "New York indulges you and makes it OK to live like this. But it should be that way, because it's kind of nice."

In fact, he seems more excited about hanging out with his buddies than settling down. "I always liked feeling like I was a part of something," he says. "I think that's what I like about SNL, I like being part of a group. Even when I'm done rehearsing, I stay at work."

Fred, who spent the majority of his thirties married to British singer Sally Timms of the Mekons, has always been a little hyper. "He was working the door at a club in Chicago," Sally tells Page Six Magazine in an exclusive interview. "The moment I met him he was putting on a show. He thrived on attention, and he could drive you mad. He was always on."

It was 1998, and Sally remembers a 32-year-old Fred who was trying to make it in the music world, asking her if it was too late for him to become a comedian. "He was definitely talented and he has a persona, but it's not like he makes jokes," she says. "Sometimes you don't laugh, you're just confused. He's like Andy Kaufman, in a way, and he has no sense of embarrassment. I told him it wasn't too late, but I'm not quite sure I believed it."

If there's one thing that fame has done to Fred, it's tone him down. "He got calmer when he got more famous," says Sally, who split from Fred in 2004. "It seems to have satisfied some part of his personality. He's an unusual person. I still don't know what makes him tick. I can say that it's much more pleasant to hang out with him now than when he always needed to be the center of attention." The former couple remain friendly. "I'm glad he found a use for his talent," says Sally. "It was either shoot him or put him on screen."

Growing up in Valley Stream, Long Island, Fred admits he was never the guy who got the girl, but he was always the guy who craved the spotlight.

"I didn't have a girlfriend until my last year in high school," says Fred, whose father worked for I.B.M. and whose mother was a schoolteacher.  "I wanted one earlier, but it never happened for me."

In high school, he had a reputation as being an eccentric. "I had this assignment to write a paper about what I would do with my last day on earth," he says. "I wrote that I would just go to stores and smash everything and light everything on fire! I thought it was funny. But then I had to take all these tests and be at the psychologist's all day."

There was an upside to the evaluation: "They determined I wasn't actually crazy." He may have been a bit unconventional—"Punk was my life! I had a huge mohawk!"—but he was sane.

As a kid Fred took solace—away from the mainstream tastes of his classmates—in subversive comedy. He idolized Dana Carvey's impressions on Saturday Night Live. He wrote to his hero, film director John Waters, who actually wrote him back. And he studied Bill Murray's offbeat mannerisms on the talk-show circuit.

"I just always wanted to be famous," Fred says unapologetically. "I admired people on television. I just wanted to be there."

Fred's rise to fame has been a slow burn. After a spell at the School of Visual Arts in NYC, he spent most of his twenties living in Chicago, trying to make it as a drummer with the punk band Trenchmouth.

"I worked so hard to be in a band for eight years, and we didn't get very far," he says. "I didn't make any money. I sublet apartments, I had roommates and we were just in a van all the time. But I loved it. Now I have a nice apartment, and I love my life, but my life then was perfect for then."

His big break came in 1998 when he played the annual SXSW music festival in Austin. Turned off by wonky-sounding seminars on "How to Make It in the Music Industry," Fred decided he'd film a faux documentary about the festival, starring himself as a blind and deaf reporter, a German journalist and a booker for the Knitting Factory.

The hilarious video, shot by Sally Timms, went viral. "That video made the rounds more than anything I'd ever done," he says. "The moment I did that tape, everything changed." The tape got him an act on HBO, which led quickly to his gig on SNL.

With eight seasons of SNL under his belt and more than 20 recurring characters (including crowd-pleasers like Prince, Liberace and Steve Jobs), Fred says he still has "I can't believe this is my life" moments.

After lampooning Governor Paterson for years as a bumbling blind man who runs into cameras, holds charts upside down and constantly rages against New Jersey, he said it was a high to finally meet the lame-duck governor in September when he made a guest appearance on the show.

"I thought of him as a lovable character. I conveniently never thought of it as mocking. Meeting him was, like, the greatest thing ever," Fred says. "He's a genuinely cool guy. We had this moment when we had to duck under the table and wait for our cue to jump up in front of the camera together. And because he's visually impaired, I had to hold his hand. It was this surreal moment for me—just the two of us ducking under the table and holding hands with no bodyguards around, waiting for our cue. It was amazing."

Fred is a ringleader of the present SNL crew, which as a whole is less wild than it was in the days of John Belushi and Dan Aykroyd.

"I drink only as a formality," he says. "I don't like the role of alcohol in music and comedy. I don't like the idea of being drunk. I think it's the loss of control, and I'm not psyched when people are drunk. I don't find it charming."

As for his repulsion toward drugs, "it's not me being a hero—it's just too scary," he says. "I don't get the appeal. What, we're all supposed to feel so great? I don't care about feeling great. This is good enough, I'm fine."

Rather than getting buzzed, he spends his free time making people laugh. In January, Fred, in partnership with Carrie Brownstein of the girl punk band Sleater-Kinney, is launching a new comedy series, Portlandia, that will premiere on IFC.  "My agent asked me what else I wanted to work on, and we just put together a pitch for the show," says Fred. "We'd already shot all these short videos about Portland, but it could be shot in Williamsburg, it could be any place that's sort of hip."

He's aware that getting the green light for a passion project is a gift for a working comedian. "I could never complain about the fame," says Fred. "My life could have been so different. My philosophy now is: If you want to talk about me, go crazy. I'm not on a political campaign. I'm not trying to live a life where everything has to be perfect and positive."

Someday, though, the eternal adolescent says he would like to settle down again. "Down the line, I could see it," he says, fidgeting with his now empty coffee cup and smiling in acknowledgment of the still-star-struck waiter. "I don't want to grow old alone. I think I just don't like being a responsible adult."