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When you're the mom in a big family comedy, you have to get your personality when you can.

You see actors who make family work, but it's difficult for any woman.

A woman doing comedy doesn't offend me, but sets me back a bit. I, as a viewer, have trouble with it. I think of her as a producing machine that brings babies in the world.

My mother is very funny. She is from a village; she has a typical village kind of humour. Often she says a lot of things she herself isn't aware is a punch line.

We all know that television is better for women as they get into their 40s. You could be more three-dimensional, not just the wife or the mother.

It used to be that you had to make female TV characters perfect so no one would be offended by your 'portrayal' of women. Even when I started out on 'The Office' eight years ago, we could write our male characters funny and flawed, but not the women. And now, thankfully, it's completely different.

People talk, 'Oh your father's a misogynist, look what he said about women,' like, on 'Howard Stern.' When he gets with Howard Stern, who's a friend of his, he'll joke around, because it's a comedy show. He's allowed to have a personality.

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.

Almost always, when I'm on TV, the producers who call me, who negotiate what we're going to say, is a woman.

Women do come up to me after a show, but it's usually to say, 'Yhank you for making us laugh,' and all that.