Quote

There's a lot of pretty funny women out there.

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.

To me, I've never understood why there is any question about are women as funny as men.

At some point in the past, it was decided that women in comedy are never supposed to be shown in an unflattering light. But in comedy, you need all of your tools to be funny.

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.

As a five-year-old in Berlin in 1965, I didn't know that funny women existed. It wasn't until I got back to England that I realised women could be funny.

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 really like funny women. I'm drawn to women like Tina Fey and Amy Poehler and Kristen Wiig, Amy Schumer. They're writers, they're producers, they're actresses. They're brilliant, funny, excellent women.

There are so many funny women in the world, and there has been for so many years, so I'll be happy when people can just move on from that, and things can just be 'comedies' and not 'female' or 'male,' and everyone gets an equal opportunity.

I've never set out to write a funny movie or be a funny comedian as a woman. I am a woman. I don't really have a choice in the matter. My goal is just to be funny.