Quotes of All Topics . Occasions . Authors
It's understandable why TV hasn't been diverse because a lot of TV writers are white dudes from Harvard. And white dudes from Harvard aren't going to immediately want to write about trans issues. They're not immediately going to want to write about a Filipino family.
I lived with Ilana Glazer of 'Broad City.' She was my roommate for a year and a half. I was living with her just as she was creating and filming 'Broad City.' Both of us, and a lot of my friends, come from the Upright Citizens Brigade theater either in New York or L.A.
I grew up in Southern California, and I particularly did not fit in. I always felt like a fish out of water in my hometown because everyone was very happy, and I was thinking about death and anxiety, and not many other people around me seemed to be thinking about that.
I was kind of an unhappy kid. I always felt like a cynical New Yorker trapped in a little kid's body. I started to get some pretty bad anxiety disorders around puberty, which totally did not work with growing up a mile away from the beach. I started cutting my own hair.
I'm a comedian, and I have my share of anxiety and depression; so do most of my friends. My humor tends to lie in the juxtaposition of extreme lightness - I'm a huge musical-theater fan - and extreme darkness. And so I really like playing with those because that's how I feel.
Jewish, black, Filipino, whatever the specificity is, it's specificity that makes a good story. And I think people are tired of seeing the same old shtick on network television. It's just a group of white people hanging out talking about their jobs. Who cares? We've seen that.
You see so many of these empowering songs where a woman saying, you know, I'm going to go out, I'm going to wear high heels, you know, short skirt or whatever. But the high heels are quite uncomfortable, and so how good about yourself are you really feeling walking out in high heels?
Sometimes I write music, sometimes I don't. I think I'm just writing more what's close to my heart, and musical stuff is close to my heart, and it's fun to write, and when something's fun to write you don't think about what statement you're trying to make or what genre you're trying to hone in on.
The number one thing I am earnestly attracted to is intelligence. Writers are thus the pinnacle of intelligence. While actors are great and awesome, writers literally create new worlds from scratch. What is sexier than that? Personally, I don't know why every person out there isn't dating a writer.
My standards are based on shows I like, like 'Girls' or 'Arrested Development.' And they're all shows that are groundbreaking. I guess in the back of my head, I think, If you're not being groundbreaking, then what are you doing? If you're not being ballsy and honest and vulgar, then what are you doing?
Fashion has always been a source of stress for me because I don't know how to dress myself. I'm short-torsoed with big boobs, and I don't really understand what a belt does. But you get on these shows, and people fit the clothing to you, and suddenly you learn, 'Oh, I should be wearing petite jackets.'
You create your own material to try to get it out there because a lot of people are multi-hyphenates, to use the corporate term. You're creating stuff to be in in order to showcase all your talents. I think the idea of using YouTube and the Internet, you don't have to wait around for a network to buy your show.
When you wrap up your self-worth with your talent, and suddenly you might not be the most talented, that's really scary. And I think that fear is in part why I turned to comedy because I had no expectations of being a comedian. It was exciting to get good at something where I wasn't afraid of not being the best.
The title 'Crazy Ex-Girlfriend' is meant to be a deconstruction of a stereotype, and the whole show is about deconstructing the boxes that we're supposed to be put into. We like taking apart the tropes and the stereotypes and explore the nuances, so 'Crazy Ex-Girlfriend' is a label that we go deep underneath to explore.
It's double talk and double standards. It's like, be honest, but don't be too honest. Look fresh-faced and young, but don't tell us how you got there. God forbid you have plastic surgery, even though we're telling you, 'Oh, you look old.' Be a career woman, but also, why aren't you having kids? Are you some kind of cold shrew?
For myself, the way that I learned comedy was doing it live for four years, and only after doing sketch for four years did I feel confident enough to be like, 'Okay, I feel good about starting to put stuff on the Internet where it lives forever.' As opposed to one time at a college sketch show where it bombs and we never speak of it again.
I didn't have a sense of how to dress. I still don't really, but, like, back then, I truly had no sense of how to dress because I wanted to be a tomboy - I thought I was a tomboy, but secretly wanted to be girly, but didn't know the first thing about making myself girly. So I ended up like wearing just like sweatpants to school with, like, long T-shirts that I got on family vacations. And it was just weird.