Maggie Carey Quotes

Doing drama is, in a sense, easier. In doing comedy, if you don't get that laugh, there's something wrong.

In television, there are so many things between you making a joke and the audience seeing it. It's like an assault course.

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.

The basic function of a comic is stand-up because it's so straightforward and simple. If the audience don't laugh, you didn't do your job. I've had some audiences where I didn't care if they laughed or not because they were either too drunk or stupid.

Just because you're laughing, it doesn't mean the audience will, necessarily.

There is nothing more joyful to me than hearing a live audience laugh. Especially when I planned it that way!

Comedy is like math - you can check your answer because you know you've gotten it right if you get a laugh. It just makes sense to me. I feel like because I've had to keep that tool in my box for so long, I'm ready to show it off a bit.

Comedy is much more challenging, because you have to have the same level of belief but you have to make people laugh, and that's definitely a challenge.

In comedy, though, it's good to get feedback from the audience about what they find funny.

I can never tell when something is funny. I just have to do it onstage and find out.

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

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

I remember going to Bob Preston's dressing room because I was losing a laugh - as you do in a long run. He said, 'Give me the script. That's where you're going off the road.' That's comedy. It's never the line itself; it's in the foundation.

The test of a real comedian is whether you laugh at him before he opens his mouth.

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

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

But television, when I was doing it, was all about scoring. You had to make these jokes bang, do whatever you could to make the material really pop. And if it didn't, there was something wrong with the material, or with you.

I like the purity of stand-up because it is all about whether people laugh at your jokes. Either they laugh or they don't.

Comedy can be more difficult than drama. It requires more attention to timing. In the theater, you're always dependent on the audience for the energy, but in comedy the feedback you get is more important. You can judge by the quickness and the length of the laugh just where you stand with the audience.

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

I think everyone's different but in comedy, I try to do my scene to make the director and the other actors laugh. If I can make them laugh and we have the same sensibility, then I'm on the right page.

As a comedian, I'm forced to have a tough skin. Until people laugh, they are detractors. You walk into a new audience where nobody knows you, they go: 'Make us laugh. Show us what you're made of. Prove why we should be listening to you.'

A lot of the time, you're supposed to play to the top of your intelligence, as truthful as possible. But when you're on stage making people laugh, you're still acting. I think it helped me a bunch to go on stage two or three times a week.

With drama, you know if you're having a true moment, but in comedy, if somebody doesn't laugh, then you know you're not being funny. That's a really fun challenge, and that's what draws me to comedy.

Comedy is wonderful when you really nail it and you hear people laughing, but it's not always that easy.