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Roseanne was a huge groundbreaking comedian. Margaret Cho. Ellen DeGeneres, and then on 'Saturday Night Live,' the era of Tina Fey and Amy Poehler sort of helped to bring in an awareness of a new generation of women comedians, often women who were feminist in their comedy, who were unafraid - and this came from the genre of show that was emerging.

I think Amy Poehler and Tina Fey have done so much for women in comedy in the sense that they've normalized it. You don't think, 'I'm going to watch that comedy starring a woman,' you think, 'I'm going to watch that funny show.' They refuse to play the foils for men, or be reduced to the butt of every joke, and I love that about both of them.

I think there have always been funny women, from Carol Burnett to Joan Rivers. When the audience sees a woman, they innately know she's worked twice as hard to get there, she's had to prove that she can be the leader, first, and then be funny on top of it. She has to emit a confidence that she's in control.

There are some really funny women at 'SNL,' man.

I remember watching Gilda Radner when I was a kid and everyone thought she was so funny and no one ever said that she was a funny woman, she was just funny.

The American audience has really opened up to women being A.) funny and B.) kinda crude. 'Bridesmaids' is R-rated, and I think it was a major coup for women to have an R-rated comedy that did really well. Same as 'Bad Teacher.'

I used to like Barbra Streisand films. It was 'Funny Girl' that really turned me on, in a sense, to acting. I remember it specifically being a rainy Saturday afternoon. I couldn't play football, so I stayed in, and I watched 'Funny Girl.'

There are still movies where females are just there to be cool, or they are there to lambaste their husbands and scold. But female comedy characters are changing for the better.

Tina Fey is part of a generation of women who have changed the face of comedy at 'Second City,' 'SNL,' in sitcoms and in film.

I grew up in a time when women didn't really do comedy. You had to be homely, overweight, an old maid, all that. You had to play a stereotype, because very attractive women were not supposed to be funny - because it's powerful; it's a threat.