Actor Keegan-Michael Key was 8 years old when he saw his first musical. It was “Godspell,” and he was hooked. “I was in the third grade. I thought it was the most magical thing. I thought, ‘Oh, wow, I want to do something like that!’ I wanted to be in a musical so bad after I saw the kids up there were having so much fun. I just remember being absolutely intoxicated by it.”

Little did he know that nine years later he would instigate his love for musicals by playing in the high school production of “Godspell.” And he’s now back to that dream, starring in the second season of “Schmigadoon!” via Apple TV+, a send-up of all the classic musicals of the past. This season the show concentrates on the darker versions of musical theater with parodies of shows like “Cabaret,” “Chicago” and “Sweeney Todd.”

In a way, that initial glance of “Godspell” sealed his fate. Key, 52, admits that he first culled notice as the class clown and his humor often plunged him into trouble. “It was probably from imitating the teacher,” he says.

“They would say, ‘Mr. Key, Mr. Key, would you pay attention, PLEASE.’ I was probably trying to refine my imitation of that teacher. I would also pretend to be cartoon characters of cartoons I liked, and my friends in the neighborhood would laugh. I was in the sixth or seventh grade when I first realized I was funny. In high school I would do the morning announcements of people that I knew how to impersonate. I would do Casey Kasem, ‘Oh, yeah, the doughnut drive’s next week’ (he says in Kasem’s unique voice). I would do Hulk Hogan and people would say, ‘Wow, that’s so cool.’’’

But it was his very first part on stage that convinced him he could do it. “I played the role of a young native American named Billy Yellowcorn in a play at the Detroit Repertory Theatre called ‘Detroit Stories.’ That did change me. It was my first professional job ever, and that really did allow me to say, ‘Oh, my gosh, maybe I can do this for a living. I love this so much.’ I would have gone to school for it, but I got that role and I remember thinking to myself, ‘Maybe this is it. Maybe this will change my life.’

“It changed my confidence because it was one of these roles where it was just me doing a monologue on stage for like seven minutes straight. And I did it. I thought to myself, ‘OK, all right. I did this which means I probably CAN do this. I probably can get through and make this a career.’”

Adopted by social workers Michael Key and Patricia Walsh, Key grew up a Catholic in Detroit. His adoptive parents were not shocked when he announced he wanted to be an actor. “They were liberal for Catholics,” he says. “They were actually very supportive. They didn’t ask me to have a major fallback. They let me do my thing. I was very, very, very fortunate that they said, ‘Look, if that’s what you want to study, go.’ Thank God.”

He did study, earning his master’s degree from Pennsylvania State, but soon found that the world of show biz was not so welcoming. “The hardest time was probably when I got out of graduate school and I moved back home to Detroit and I started a theater with eight of my friends,” he recalls.

“The theater used to be a coffee house and we paid rent, and it was in the part of town that we could afford. And you'd have a roommate. And I was working in the theater and didn’t have any other jobs except at one time I was doing singing telegrams for the Eastern Union telegram place, and I was also doing plays. It was a tough time, but I was also doing what I loved.”

Key first harvested national attention as one of the comedians on “MADtv,” where he unpacked a panoply of quirky characters. Later he teamed up with his very good pal Jordan Peele for “Key & Peele,” a sketch comedy series that nudged the ratings on Comedy Central for five seasons.

Key, who credits his second wife, producer-director Elisa Pugliese, for illuminating his life, has proved his mettle in a variety of ways. He hosted “Brain Games” on National Geographic, voiced Toad in “The Super Mario Brothers. Movie,” hosted Animal Planet’s “Funniest Animals,” has been nominated for comedy writing, made his Broadway debut and costarred in TV shows “Fargo,” “Playing House,” and films “Horrible Bosses2” and “The Lego Movie.”

He admits he’s hopelessly disorganized in his daily life but sports a secret talent: He can whistle like a pro. He says he has devised a method for overcoming his initial fears when he starts a new project.

“I tell myself I can do anything for 30 seconds. And then you can do anything in the world for five minutes, and then you just keep going up the ladder — anything for 10 minutes. If you get through it for 10 seconds, the next thing you know you're actually doing the thing. Sometimes I just jump into the predicament. And then you're in it. If I have to talk myself into it, sometimes if I'm scared to do it, I’ll just go ahead and do it anyway.”