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I regard romantic comedies as a subgenre of sci-fi, in which the world operates according to different rules than my regular human world.
I always knew I wanted kids, but when my mom passed away I was like, ‘I want a bunch of kids. I want three kids or four kids, and I want to have that relationship again.’ I can’t bring my mom back, but I can have children.
Not to be weird, but I still have an ongoing relationship with my mom, even though she passed away, and I’ve been surprised at how much I’ve been able to convey to her. Now I sound like a total weirdo, but that’s true.
My relationship with my mom is really the single most profound relationship that I’ve ever had in my life.
People talk about mumblecore but I prefer bumblecore, hyper-realistic bee movies about how bees really are.
I have a great job writing for ‘The Office,’ but, really, all television writers do is dream of one day writing movies. I’ll put it this way: At the Oscars the most famous person in the room is, like, Angelina Jolie. At the Emmys the huge exciting celebrity is Bethenny Frankel. You get what I mean.
Almost every college playwright or sketch or improv comedian was sort of aware of Christopher Durang – even kids in high school. His short plays were so accessible to younger people and I think that was inspirational to me.
I try not to put anything political on the forefront of what I’m trying to do creatively. At the same time, I do think it’s wonderful when I hear people say that it’s inspirational that I’m an Indian woman on camera. My life is very diverse, and my friends are a diverse group of people.
It used to be that you had to make female TV characters perfect so no one would be offended by your ‘portrayal’ of women. Even when I started out on ‘The Office’ eight years ago, we could write our male characters funny and flawed, but not the women. And now, thankfully, it’s completely different.
People don’t want to listen to a celebrity tweeting about their charities and shows. That’s why comedy writers do well – we put out little funny ideas.