PASADENA, Calif. — When he was a kid, comedian Billy Gardell was often in trouble, and not because he was the class clown. “I was one of those kids that didn’t quite fit in. I was still trying to figure out who the hell I was. I was skipping school, I got into a little mischief, but nothing too bad,” he says.

The costar of “Mike & Molly,” says, “I grew up with my stuff. Everybody has stuff growing up. Nobody escapes life. My parents got divorced, we had a few stepfathers. We were relocated a bunch of times. We didn’t have a lot of money and all that — but I come from a working-class town where the humor is based on getting through the day,” says Gardell, who’s looking natty in a white dress shirt and black vest.

“I came from Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, which is a steel town, a hardworking town. They have this habit of, ‘Let’s make light of it so we can get through a tough situation.’ So that’s kind of where my humor comes from.”

Gardell was 9 — with a little brother and a sister — when his parents divorced, but it was high school that really stymied him.

“We went to a very nice high school, but every nice high school (looks out) for the poor kids and puts them in that school. I don’t know why they do that — whether it’s funding or what it is — WE were those kids. We were kind of the outcasts. Trying to figure out who I was in a place that I felt like I didn’t belong was tough for me.”

But if he were bowed by adversity, Gardell wouldn’t be where he is today. Not only is he starring in a hit CBS sitcom, but he’s also hosting the new syndicated game show, “Monopoly Millionaires’ Club,” in which lottery winners from across the nation vie for $1 million under the iconic Monopoly aegis.

Whereas exposing emotions through acting was a tough call for him, he says slipping into the suit and tie of a game show host was easy. “I have not done anything like this before. That’s the cool thing about being a standup comic first. It’s kind of an easy transition to be a host. I just guest-hosted ‘The Late, Late Show,’ and I did very well at hosting ‘Monopoly.’ We (standups) grew up talking to people, and it’s a live audience. It’s a simple thing — for us it is.”

Although he finds himself at the pinnacle after 25 years of struggle, Gardell was three months shy of quitting comedy and had lined up a DJ job with a friend in Pittsburgh when fate intervened.

“I took (comedy) seriously later on, probably around 30. Up until then it was just: Can I tell jokes and get paid? But I really started to take my career seriously around 30, and then at around 38. I thought maybe this is over,” he recalls.

“I hadn’t booked a job in Hollywood for a couple of years, and had a wife and then a 4-year-old child and was on the road 45 weeks a year. I was only seeing them two days a week, and I just got to the point where I was like, ‘This is not more important than my family.’ ”

He decided to ride out one more pilot season.

“That’s when we all go fishing for a show for three months and hope we get a gig. And I only got six auditions in those three months, and the last audition was ‘Mike & Molly,’ and it all changed.”

“Mike & Molly” took off. “And that led to big crowds in theaters and casinos for my standup, which eventually led to this new opportunity, which is hosting the ‘Monopoly Millionaires’’ show, so I’m very blessed. Very, very blessed,” he says.

The father of a son, 11, and married to Patty for nearly 14 years, Gardell says, “She’s been with me through poverty, through the endurance of marriage, through childbirth. She’s been with me through fame. I don’t think they make them like her anymore.

“She worked for an agency out here in the financial department when she first moved out. I’d been out a few years before I met her, and now she’s probably the most wonderful mom I’ve ever seen.”

Another treasure in his life was his grandmother. “I used to watch Johnny Carson with my grandmother, and that was our thing on Friday nights. I’d go over and stay overnight at my grandmother’s, and we would watch Johnny Carson, and I told her, ‘I want to be a comedian.’

“And she said, ‘If you really want that, and you really work hard at it, you can do it.’ I trusted her so much I never really asked anybody else what they thought.”