Tina Fey and Amy Poehler, they made it cool to be funny and to be embarrassed and to look a thousand different ways and show a bunch of different areas of their lives.
Kay Cannon
When I finished grad school, I moved to Chicago proper, and I was at all the different improv schools, taking classes or interning.
I'm actually from a small town about an hour and a half south of Chicago.
Society has this deeply rooted love of seeing women fail.
I was in relays for track where you just bonded with all these different kinds of personalities who were coming together for this one common goal of beating a rival team.
I felt that a cappella was the improv world with music, where it's very serious, and there are groups and competition, and some people become famous, and there's a language we speak from one improviser to another.
'Hot Pursuit,' 'Pitch Perfect 2,' 'Trainwreck,' and 'Spy' were all being done in the last year. All four of those movies I just mentioned are not rom-coms: they're all about women doing different things.
Writers who sit down and write might judge what they're putting down, but I always just try to barf it out. I'm writing crap, but I'll put it down.
You never imagine that the Green Bay Packers were going to be in something you wrote or singing 'Bootylicious.'
No one ever actually said they were resistant because 'Pitch Perfect' was female-centric. When a project is sitting there for a while, you start to speculate about what could be the thing that might be a little tricky about it.
We have a lot of depressed people in the world because they don't know what their purpose is in life.
I started writing because I wasn't getting things as an actor.
I was crazy poor, but I was learning and putting myself out there and getting hired to do whatever gig I could and auditioning.
When I was younger, I wanted my hair to look like Molly Ringwald's.
It's not about having luck; it's about putting yourself in a position of luck.
I was auditioning a lot in L.A., and I was actually getting called back a lot for sitcoms. But I wasn't getting jobs. I even tested for 'Saturday Night Live' and didn't get that.
On the set of 'Girlboss,' I had to keep introducing myself as the show runner - literally, 'Hi, I'm the boss' - to a lot of my crew. My first AD said, 'Why do you keep doing that?' I said, 'Because I get mistaken for an extra.'
'Bridesmaids,' I think, opened up a door to allow women to show a bunch of different women in different ways of being funny. It was kind of like an arrival moment.
I was a writer on '30 Rock' for six years.
Tina Fey is my mentor, whether she likes it or not.
I started writing when I was trying to be an actor, and I happened to be friends with Tina Fey, who happened to have her show '30 Rock' coming out. So Tina, who happens to be a mentor to me, gave me my slot and hired me.
I was the runt of the family, the shortest and the smallest, so I think they perceived me as the one who was like, 'Look at me!' - just trying to get their attention and being a goofball.
I saturated myself with the improv community.
I loved all the people involved with '30 Rock.'
I started writing for myself because I know how to write for myself. I know how to show what I can do.
People try to make women a very specific thing so that we like them.
Second City Las Vegas is very different from Second City in Chicago on the main stage, where they do improv sets. That's how they kind of hone material, kind of work up to new material.
I've seen 'Bring It On,' like, a thousand times.
I wake up around seven, and I give my daughter breakfast. I spend the first hour or two of her day with her.
We're big 'Game of Thrones' fans, so we call our house King's Landing. I have a studio apartment above our garage that we call Winterfell. I go to Winterfell to write.
On '30 Rock,' the hours were really intense, and I was often on set. I'm glad I didn't have a kid then because I don't think I would have ever seen her. I would work 15-hour days, and weekends, too.
When I was in college, I started an improv group, and I did a bunch of plays and some musicals. I have a theater degree. I'm a school person: I like getting homework and having deadlines. When I graduated, I worked right away as an actor.
I played volleyball and basketball, and I did track and volleyball in college.
I was an athlete, so I have kind of an athletic sensibility towards writing. I can work for many long hours without fatiguing.
'Pitch Perfect' was my first screenplay, so it was like my little baby.
Ultimately, I want to direct a movie, so that's another thing, too, where I wonder what that will look like and how will I be able to manage.
I was like, 'I have to start writing for myself, to show people what I can do and what my point of view is.'
I was working at 'New Girl' when I found out there was going to be a 'Pitch' sequel.
I would be writing while I was breastfeeding. I didn't want the computer to be too close to her, so it was at an arm's distance away while I was clickety-clack typing away.
I ran track in college. And that team, that all-lady team that I was on, I can remember just being so incredibly sad that I knew we were all going to leave each other after we graduated and that our lives would change. And even though I was the bridesmaid at all their weddings and stuff like that, it's just not the same, right?
You just tell a good story where you're funny and it makes people laugh.
I have to say, my husband is a big Patriots fan. Like, a huge Patriots fan.
I wasn't, like, pretty enough to be the ingenue; I wasn't 'character' enough to be the goofball sidekick. I'm kind of ethnically ambiguous.
I've got to literally write my own ticket.
I took a class at The Second City, and it became contagious.
I love that feeling, that feeling of team.
It's interesting: when you're kind of 'known' for being a writer, people don't think you've done anything else.
I didn't set out to write some female-empowering movie; I just wanted to write a funny college comedy.
I feel like the guilds are, just to be frank, people I pay money to.
There's still only maybe three female writers or two female writers to 10 guys in any kind of writer's room.
