Anita Hassanandani Reddy Quotes

Whenever I go on a show with a comedian I just counter punch.

When you're a stand-up, you play in front of 600 people, and it's all about timing. I could never do stand-up comedy; it would be way too hard for me.

My stand-up is quite good now, people say. It's just like a big conversation each time. Every gig is a rehearsal.

When you're a standup comic, you get up and you try stuff, and you're always kind of seeing how far you can push things.

When you improvise, you work off the laughs from the audience, but when you step on stage to do standup, it's silent.

I've always been terrible on regular sitcoms with lots of jokes. I don't know how to tell jokes.

I'd rather try and cram in another two gags than leave a pause to say, 'Hey, wasn't that bit funny?'

Here's the thing, with comedy - and I learned this from Will Ferrell - you can't be ashamed. If you're doing comedy, you have to fully commit to the joke. Shame is not part of it. If you act shy or uncomfortable about your body, that makes the audience shy and uncomfortable. And in a comedy you just want them to loosen up and laugh.

A comedian needs to have his own filters, needs to know his audience, how far he can push things.

The best timed joke or the best timed phrase comes at spontaneous moments and just relies on me as the host to be very quick, and that's what I do.

I never used to tell jokes on stage. Now I'm cutting up jokes all night long.

It's funny, the hardest thing to do is to make something look like it's fast, loose and improvised, and get somebody to laugh.

When you're doing stand-up, you can comment if something fails, get a laugh from that.

Richard Lewis is the master at taking a joke that he's told a million times in a row in the past year, on the road, and making it look like he's pulling it out of thin air.

And you can't hide in a comedy scene either. You have to give in to the scene and commit.

The greatest comedian I've ever seen is Jack Benny. He wasn't afraid of the silences.

Sometimes an actor will stumble on the joke, and I'm right on them. Back it up before the audience hears the bad version of the joke, because humor is 90% surprise. If they know what's coming, they won't laugh as hard.

When you're doing stand-up, you want to stand onstage and, to the extent that you can, uncomplicatedly entertain.

I was the kid who always hung back and then dropped the jokes when you least expected it. Timing was everything. My mouth sort of developed over time.

The violence or the vaudeville style of comedy is a technique all by itself. You get up there, and you are a comedian, and you're doing one thing. That is, you're going to make the audience laugh.

I really loved what I was doing being creative and being funny as a stand-up comedian.

You can't just yell jokes at people.

I'm not a comedian, but I love the comedians who know when to get off the stage.

I was not influenced by Jack Benny, and people have remarked on my timing and Jack's timing, but I don't think you can teach timing. It's something you hear in your head.

It is a great rush to come up with a joke that gets a good response from the audience. It's gold!