Comedy can always be taken the wrong way. If I do a bit that is meant to diffuse racism or sexism, I'm not going to avoid it on the chance that a small portion of the audience might take it the wrong way.
Sentiment: NEGATIVE
You don't service a big, fun premise comedy and then shoot yourself in the foot with too much irony. You need the audience to invest in the fun and the warmth and generally care about the characters.
There is a strong ethical dimension to the best comedy. Not only does it avoid reinforcing prejudices, it actively challenges them.
The thing about comedy is it gives you a platform to expose your own shortcomings, so it becomes a public display of weirdness.
Especially when you deal with comedy, you have got to be really honest because it's the honesty and the spontaneity that causes people to chuckle, that catches people.
People complain that joking about serious subjects is 'making light' of them. Isn't that a good idea? Comedy lets the air out of the bully's tires.
Comedy isn't polite and it isn't correct and it isn't accurate, even. It's just a mess. So that's the way that I approach it.
I think, you know, a lot of the business of comedy is taking your personal experiences and making them relatable to other people.
The odd thing about comedy is that the more personal you are, the larger the audience.
There are some professions that culturally and sociologically take a long time to change, and because of that, there's still sexism in comedy audiences. We shouldn't blame them: I do it too. A woman comes on, and I feel slightly anxious. I'm a woman in comedy, and I do that; I think everyone does.
What I've always said about comedy is if you do it in the right way, you can say anything to anybody because they know where you're coming from. They know it's not malicious.