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The problem with comedy audiences - it's like the Coliseum - when they see someone struggling, they don't feel altruistic towards them. They feel slightly repulsed by it.

Usually, like, on 'Mean Girls,' the task that Tina Fey and I set for ourselves was we wanted to maintain a comic intensity throughout the movie, where people just don't really get a break from laughing. And if they do, it's for a brief emotional scene, and then we're going to once again try to knock them on their heels again with comedy.

I never have broken up in comedy, ever. There's something about me that I just don't break on camera - maybe because I'm just so cheap, and I know how expensive it is to shoot - but I broke on 'Sordid Lives,' and I broke on 'The Office.' Those are the only two times in my life.

One thing that bugs me in comedy is when somebody does a fake cry, you know, like they fake cry in a comedy. But in a drama they'll really cry. That bugs me.

I find it really appalling when people talk about comedy.

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.

First and foremost when you're doing comedy, you gotta be relevant and applicable to the times that you're living in. When you try and just do comedy about who is dating who and lifestyle jokes, it gets tiring after a while. It's hard to be funny in that realm.

A lot of comedies fall apart because they just go from joke to joke, and the characters are all sort of being crazy off on their own.