I'm portraying out characters, I'm portraying femme characters, characters that are really outside of the box. I never thought I would get that opportunity to portray those characters at all, much less have a career that I have.

When I moved to L.A., I had no intention of really pursuing acting. I wanted to focus on stand-up. It's crazy to me that my acting career took off much faster than my stand-up career.

I didn't want to do Chekhov or Shakespeare. So I switched my major from acting to costume design. Eventually, I got a job working as a wardrobe assistant for a theater company. I would dress the actors, fix their costumes, do the quick changes for them and all that stuff.

I had a rough start when I moved to L.A. I couldn't find a job, so I couch-surfed for the first two years.

What's great about comedy, obviously, is that you set up a situation that people assume one thing and then you break the assumption. That's basically the backbone to comedy. You set up a situation, let people make an assumption, and then you break the assumption.

When I first began to write fiction, I didn't think I was a comic writer; I thought I was a serious writer. I was surprised when the first novel I wrote was regarded as a funny novel.

Once an actor told me he went to the Shakespeare School of Acting, and I said, 'I went to the Shakespeare of Acting, too' and he said, 'Oh really?' And I said, 'I went to Shakespeare Elementary School in Chicago.' He didn't take the joke well, he didn't laugh and didn't think it was funny - I thought it was funny. It's all the same to me.

I think comedy is funnier when it's real.