My career was exploding at the same time that social media itself was expanding. But when my online videos were taking off, I didn’t think, ‘Oh, great! I’m going to be able to parlay this into a career!’ I just wanted to be a comedian. I just wanted to perform live.
People don’t realize it’s not just about being funny, and they don’t know how perceptive a comedian needs to be about human nature. You have to really be able to read a situation and peoples’ emotions.
When you’re a comedian, you’re another race. You’re friends with all these comedians who are white, black and brown. It’s us against the world.
I consider it, the life of being a comedian – they have a right to boo me.
When you’re a comedian, and you show up on set to a job where you’re not writing, and you get handed material that’s as good as we do on ‘Brooklyn Nine-Nine,’ you just feel lucky every day.
As a woman, it seems you can’t just be a comedian; you’re always classed as something else, too, whether that’s ‘beautiful,’ ‘pint-sized,’ ‘larger-than-life’ or in my case, ‘Hattie Jacques-esque,’ ‘the giraffe,’ ‘big.’
The one thing that has helped sustain my career as an actress and a comedian is that people generally view me as fundamentally stupid.
I knew nothing about professional comedians when I became a comedian. I was a rabbi. So I had no professional comedians to learn from.
I’m a very observational type of comedian that points out everyday absurdities.
I’m not a comedian, but I love the comedians who know when to get off the stage.
I don’t think of myself as a comedian.
I started as a stand-up comedian at charity shows in Mumbai.
Certainly, when I left New Zealand, there was no career there as a comedian. I was doing more live gigs than anyone, and I was maybe doing three a week. Even then, it would often be the same people in the audience, going, ‘I saw you on Tuesday, mate!’
My father died when I was 11. He was a vaudeville comedian. He worked in one movie, ‘Ladies of the Chorus,’ as Marilyn Monroe’s father.
When I used to work the road, I remember I used to ask myself in the mirror, literally, like in a movie, back when I was not very good at all, I’d say, ‘What’s it like being the greatest comedian in the world?’
As a comedian, you have to say something that people relate to, or nobody laughs.
Canadian comedians are generally more well-rounded… They have to do a lot more. In order to have a career in this country, you have to do everything. And in the States you can narrow-cast, you can be just a sitcom performer or a stand-up comedian or a sketch performer.
I’ve got quite a strong drive, and that can be slightly deplorable. Struggling to become a famous comedian – there’s something weird about that.
I begged the universe to make me a famous comedian, and it did. So I tend not to ask for any more.
Boys can essentially wee anywhere, and my very scientific theory is that this privilege leads to some of the mind-blowing confidence they show in later life – for example, the number of guys I’ve known who’ve decided to ‘give comedy a go’ after finding out that I’m a comedian.
I’m not a comedian, but I do make people laugh. I’m good at it.
As a standup comedian, I’ve worked almost every New Year’s Eve of my adult life. It’s the best-paying night of the year.
Some comedians tell nice jokes that you can tell to your kids. Some use bad words – they work ‘blue.’ If you don’t want to hear a joke that’s blue, you shouldn’t go to a comedy club where a comedian who makes blue jokes is performing.
Jack Benny was, without a doubt, the bravest comedian I have ever seen work. He wasn’t afraid of silence. He would take as long as it took to tell the story.
I never thought I was going to be a comedian.
As a comedian, I’m forced to have a tough skin. Until people laugh, they are detractors. You walk into a new audience where nobody knows you, they go: ‘Make us laugh. Show us what you’re made of. Prove why we should be listening to you.’
I have never bought into this view that some people have that the job of the comedian is to espouse opinions and change the world – I think the job of a comedian is to be funny.
I would say the more significant factor of my starting late is that I developed a sufficiently thick skin to be able to – just about – handle the knocks that a fledgling comedian takes.
The more you work in this business as a comedian, the closer you get to just being yourself onstage, on camera, the more well received you are.
I don’t consider myself a political comedian because it’s so hard. It takes time away from me saying terrible things about TV.
If I had grown up in London, I wouldn’t have been as keen to become a comedian or a writer. I’d have been able to see a lot of good films and music and comedy. I’d have been distracted. As it was, I had to make it.
There’s something about being a comedian that means you have to not be scared of failing because failing is part of the process.
Richard Pryor is, in my mind, the most honest comedian. He bared his soul to people. I think that’s why everybody loved him so much.
Every comedian wants to play the London Comedy Store, and I was no exception.
Just like a comedian has a certain joke or a jazz musician has a riff that they know will get the crowd, a tap dancer always has a step.
The comedian can put the punchline out there, but it’s the audience that receives it – and has to get it.
I’m not a stand-up comedian; I’m not a satirist.
