I was made fun of a lot in middle school. When I was in seventh grade, the popular kids paid the most popular guy to ask me out.
I think in a lot of network television, everyone's vaguely Protestant and doesn't really go to church so they can be 'relatable.'
I have noticed when you get a bunch of dudes in a room together, and you just have one woman or two women, the dudes will bro out. And the woman won't get heard.
It's understandable why TV hasn't been diverse because a lot of TV writers are white dudes from Harvard. And white dudes from Harvard aren't going to immediately want to write about trans issues. They're not immediately going to want to write about a Filipino family.
I was doing these music videos online for a couple years, and they'd be doing well to varying degrees. And I released an album, and with the album, I released three new music videos, and one of them was featured on Jezebel.
I'm a comedian, and I have my share of anxiety and depression; so do most of my friends. My humor tends to lie in the juxtaposition of extreme lightness - I'm a huge musical-theater fan - and extreme darkness. And so I really like playing with those because that's how I feel.
I was kind of an unhappy kid. I always felt like a cynical New Yorker trapped in a little kid's body. I started to get some pretty bad anxiety disorders around puberty, which totally did not work with growing up a mile away from the beach. I started cutting my own hair.
When I graduated, I was director of my school's sketch comedy group, and I knew that I wanted to be writing and performing my own sketch comedy. It kind of made me want to do my own one-person sketch group.
I think people like musicals. And when done with a modern comedic sensibility, musical comedy can be the most efficient delivery of both storytelling and jokes.
I grew up in Southern California, and I particularly did not fit in. I always felt like a fish out of water in my hometown because everyone was very happy, and I was thinking about death and anxiety, and not many other people around me seemed to be thinking about that.
Musical theater is an American genre. It started really, in America, as a combination of jazz and operetta; most of the great musical theater writers in the golden era are American. I think that to do a musical is a very American thing to me.
I've loved musical theater ever since I was a kid. My mother's a pianist, and my grandfather was an amateur theater director and stand-up comic. And I was an only child. And I loved attention. So from an early age, my family was teaching old musical songs.
All I listened to until age 18 growing up was musical theater. I liked the escapism of it.
I have my own show at 28 and a Golden Globe. So, yes, I face rejection, but I've also been very fortunate and understand how fortunate I am.
Fashion has always been a source of stress for me because I don't know how to dress myself. I'm short-torsoed with big boobs, and I don't really understand what a belt does. But you get on these shows, and people fit the clothing to you, and suddenly you learn, 'Oh, I should be wearing petite jackets.'
The definition of a musical is that the emotion is so strong that you can't talk anymore, you have to sing. The emotion isn't strong enough when you're just like, 'Let's take a second to sing about lamps!'
I love musical theater so much. When done right, I think comedy songs can be the most efficient form of joke delivery. Songs can be the most efficient and the best forms of conveying emotion. Music is universal. It's worldwide.
I have such pride in furthering the American musical and using it as a way to tell story.
There's so many confusing messages that you're being sent about being pretty but not too pretty, smart but not too smart, ambitious but in a way that makes people comfortable. It's very hard to navigate.
I'm married. I've been with my husband for six years. Now that I know what a healthy relationship is, I find I can write better about the unhealthiness of relationships.
