As soon as I realized you could be funny as a job, that was the job I wanted.
I never predicted that I'd be a comedian, but it was something that came so naturally to me. I just felt good doing it.
I took an acting class. After the first day, the teacher quit, so they said take another. When I saw 'How to be a Stand-up Comedian,' it resonated. I realized I'd rather make 200 people laugh than make one person cry.
I am not a politician going around bragging about family values or putting myself on some ridiculous virtuous pedestal. I write comedy. And I am an actor. I am not going to solve the nation's problems. I don't actually spend my life in the way the tabloids like to think I do. I actually spend 95 percent of it writing comedy. Sober. Well, nearly sober anyway.
I never sort of thought of myself as a comedy writer, by nature.
When I was little, that was one thing that I was told in a vision: I was going to have my own show when I grew up. And it's going to be funny.
In Britain people might know me more for my comedy writing background, things like that.
By the time I was 7 or 8, I wanted to be a comedy writer.
I think you're a comedian as soon as you start. I don't think there's a moment where you become a full comic.
My foray into comedy was to avoid getting a job.
I love to write humor. If I could make a living doing it that is all I would write.
I didn't audition for 'SNL.' I sent in a tape to 'SNL' the year before I started writing there, but I got the job there through doing stand-up on Fallon.
I was a dedicated, boring student. The last thing I wanted was to be a comedienne.
I decided I'd try my hand as a stand-up comedian, as I loved making people laugh, and appeared at the Latitude Festival, won the 2007 Laughing Horse New Act of the Year, and was a nominee for winner of the 2007 So You Think You're Funny competition.
Like other kids wanted to become firemen or astronauts, I wanted to make people laugh.
My whole life, I knew that I was going to be funny for a living.
I was trying to be a clinical psychologist for years. But I kept getting stuck in comedy.
