In standup, you don't have anything near you except a microphone. There's something a lot more self-conscious feeling when there's cameras coming in for close-ups. It makes you very aware.

It was a free-for-all with music when I was growing up. My mother was a huge music fanatic so I was listening to everything from country to heavy metal to Indigo Girls to Elton John. I guess when I was really young I didn't like Willie Nelson, and she obviously loved him. Now I do too, I'm so thankful to her for playing his music nonstop.

I get kind of, um, bored by all the sexuality and gender labels because I feel like that's where the problem comes in, when people feel that they need to have these particular identities. If you didn't have these labels, and you just acted on how you genuinely felt at any point, then you wouldn't have anything to contend with.

I just absolutely adore Denver and the Boulder area. Having lived there several times, it feels like home to me.

My father was a very funny man, and one of my strongest recollections is hearing him laugh. He didn't like people who had no sense of humour.

I don't just want to be a cute girl in a comedy or the actress who just does the same thing over and over again. I want to play roles that are distinct. I want to have a more varied career like actresses Viola Davis or Angela Bassett - those are the people that I grew up watching and admiring.

All the jokes in my films, the comedy, they're not me, I just try to hold a big mirror up to us.

What I do is not regional comedy, and it is not based in the southern area.