Quote

I always have to get my U.K. fix, and 'Downton Abbey' is definitely that. I absolutely love period dramas, but this one is particularly appealing - following the ins and outs of aristocracy as well as the interaction between the rich and the poor.

England is strictly class-based. What's surprising is how many films are still made with a load of people in silly frocks running around gardens and talking in middle-class accents.

Comedy can't be done in a vacuum, and you can't do it on your own. So if you have a community of people, it's a great symbiotic relationship.

I've always been interested in socially political, or overtly political, comedy.

'The Talk-Funny Girl' opens with a glum picture of a desperately poor rural New England family. Poverty has so brutalized the family that the ordinary laws and rules governing humanity have eroded, turning systems of behavior upside down.

I've always been sort of interested in the rural countryside. Things happen out there that are very strange to city dwellers.

I think the world of comedy is a relatively small community, and especially for women in comedy, there just aren't that many people involved.

The Irish and British, they love satire, it's a large part of the culture.

Well not really to get attention, but to entertain, but you know to show some elements of rural life as well, it kind of blended all in, its kind of like a mockery in a sense, kind of stab back at people that have those stereotypical ideas of the south.

Although I've lived in England for more than twenty years, I still have a foreigner's passion for all the details of English history and rural life.