I was a very earthly, matronly, plus-size little girl with a pure heart.
Paula Pell
At my confirmation, where you get the Holy Spirit, I came down the stairs at my party and had torn, like, 80 holes in my pantyhose and said I had the Holy Spirit, and just would do things like that all the time.
I grew up where the repercussion of you having an opinion was being 'cocky,' or people would be mad at you. And I have finally learnt that it is better for them to be mad at you and disagree than you be so mad at yourself all of the time for not speaking up.
My specialty at 'SNL' was doing triage. There was always a great need for someone to say, 'Make this funnier. Give me an ending for this. What's a better big laugh for this towards the end? What's a better physical joke in this?' And I just really, over time, honed that specific thing so well.
All the women I've grown up with at 'SNL' and other areas, and even the women that work with Judd Apatow, all those women are powerful, assertive women that have great material, and they just produce themselves.
I was half Catskills comedian, half 1800s matron.
I'm a late bloomer, so I'm going to embrace it all.
I was born in Joliet, Illinois. It was totally Midwestern - small, little house, two great parents, and a sister and a beagle.
It takes a special kind of family to bathe together in their 40s.
Young, handsome men never flirt with me. I get heat from old dudes that run the parking garages.
It's easy to trick yourself into thinking something's funnier than it is.
Twitter is really - I got very addicted to it just because it's so simple, and it's like a video game for comedy writers to just do a one-liner about something.
Some children challenge themselves to maybe run a marathon or something. I challenged myself to stay up for two days and make cinnamon toast and watch the Jerry Lewis Telethon and laugh and cry.
If you're hired to be a funny person, you have to trust your judgment but also be open because sometimes you think something's funny, and the next day you read it and go, 'Oh, my God.'
You're under the gun at all times because it's live TV. A lot of time, between dress and air, you're having to come with an entire ending to your sketch that gets an even better, bigger laugh - which is terrifying... People are filing into the audience, and you're writing a new joke for the end of it.
I think, as a woman, you have to really make sure that you're taking care of yourself and make sure that you're covered and you have enough material written for you.
Commercials used to have such a serious tone to them or a really corny tone.
I was always a bit of a class clown.
Everyone knows people like that: You're looking at their milky, glazed-over eyes, and you know they're not listening.
My sister was three years older than me, and she was like the stone-cold '70s fox. I looked like a short Polish farm woman, and so our journals were wildly different.
I went to a Catholic girls' school before we moved to Florida when I was 15.
Tina Fey is a very old friend of mine, and I adore her.
When I finally finished writing 'Sisters,' I started getting hired for lots of rewrites.
I think it helps in any comedy room for a woman to have very strong, respected convictions, because then it opens the door up a little bit for other women to have that.
I grew up with an extremely funny dad, and my mom is super funny.
I'm a big hit at parties. Friends ask me to sing B-I-N-G-O all the time. I'm thinking, you know, of maybe putting out a Christmas album or something.
I have worked with many, many talented and dedicated people.
My sister is three years older and super foxy, and I always looked like a 50 year old woman.
'Hudson Valley Ballers' is just the joy of my life.
I was really dramatic, really concerned with love or life.
I'm obsessed with 'Rocky.' We went 13 times to the theater.
My sister's journal was the romantic one with boys, and mine was talking about my rock tumbler. We were so different and so similar.
I'm a plus-size person, so when I tried to go into the Gap, I used to just walk out of there shaking my head because they have nothing that fits me.
I have written before, but I was primarily an actor and improvisational performer.
I've always loved the use of the word 'thick' when it comes to heavy because it's always a positive thing.
Starting probably with Janeane Garofalo and that era of stand-up ladies who were starting to be more brainy and strong and clever, guys started noticing those girls as sexy smart. I always called it smarxy.
I'd always be loaning my sister money, knowing full well I wasn't going to get it back. But she had the kids, and that paid me back.
I think women are taking charge of the origins of a production, which is the most important part. Because you can't be a victim of whatever people ask you to do.
I've got my foot in 'Saturday Night Live,' and my heart is there in a lot of ways, but I'm really pushing myself to do these new projects. It's scary as hell, but it's fun to have other things to keep my creative brain cooking.
It was really fun to start writing movies because you could actually take characters whose voice you enjoy writing in and have actual things happen to them for more than five minutes. It was really fun to thread it together.
I've always felt, even with sketches, that if you don't care about these people, then it doesn't matter.
I was always a total ham, but my dad really taught me that.
I went to college at University of Tennessee.
