Being pretty was always a very big thing growing up.

As a female comic, if you talk about sex in any capacity, you will be branded a 'sex comic,' so I might as well go full force on it.

I'm learning that if you put yourself out there and make fun of yourself first, it really does work. People can't really make fun of you.

I am a woman, so I never want to hide that or be like, 'I'm one of the boys,' because I'm not. I am aware of our audience. We always aim for the right combo of not hitting people over head but still getting our message across.

The thing that's changed the way I do my stand-up act is having kids and getting older and wiser and smarter. There might be a joke or two in the past that I wish I hadn't done, but in the past, you can't have it back.

I love writing comedy and being a part of it, but as a visual, physical presence in a story, I probably am more impactful in drama. It's not really a tribute to my dexterity and wide-ranging talent so much as it is a person finally getting to where they should've been from the start.

In Edna, I created a satiric portrait of my hometown of Melbourne, a large provincial English city paradoxically in far Southeast Asia. She's a theatrical figure, related to vaudeville in some respects. She inhabits a world in which there are comparatively few female exponents of comedy.

Ad agencies do all kinds of market research that ask people what they think they want, and instead, you should be creating things that you want. If you do something and you get it, the rest of the world will get it, too. Trust your own instincts, your own intellect, and your own sense of humor.