-I want to congratulate you on the show "Divorce."
You have a fantastic co-star, Thomas Haden Church,
who is a wonderful actor, very funny.
-Yes. I love him.
-And I'm assuming, when you signed on to the show,
you were like, "Oh, this is so great.
I get to work with Thomas Haden Church."
-He was my first choice.
-Which is great, but now, because the show's
about a divorce, you barely have any scenes together.
-Yes. I should have chosen someone I don't --
I should have wanted someone I don't care for.
-Right.
-Because if I had just thought
about the title for a moment,
it might have occurred to me that,
"You won't be spending a good amount of time with him."
-Yeah. 'Cause it's not like it was a crazy twist
when you had a divorce.
-It's a cliffhanger.
No, I really like him.
It is sort of upsetting that I'm now not with him as much.
Although, I am with Molly, who is --
-Yeah, in the clip, we saw Molly Shannon.
the best, the funniest person maybe on Earth.
-She's funny, but she's -- I mean, she's brilliantly funny.
As I've said before, she's a gift to America.
-Yes. -American entertainment, comedy.
She's an American gift.
That's a compre...
♪♪ Comprehensive ♪♪
I can't -- Wait. [ Cheers and applause ]
-This is good. -Hold on.
-That is very good.
-Because I'm smart.
Wrong. Not a puppet. -Those are all good.
-Compre-- I can't do it now. I do it so well at home.
-After a couple of these? -Yeah!
But Molly Shannon -- Back to Molly Shannon.
She's fantastic, but she's also, like -- Well, you know.
She's just such a good person. -She really is.
-She's, like, a very deep-feeling, curious --
You know when you talk to her and everything's important?
You know, how she describes everything with her hands,
and she's like, "I know, but when I drop the kids off
and another mother is, like, running towards me
and I don't want to see her 'cause I've just woken up
and I'm feeling like -- I got to --"
You know how she's, like, so invested in every word.
-She's doing charades and talking.
-It's the best.
And she's such good company
and she's such a good friend to women.
You know, she's, like, really -- The sisterhood.
I'm just incredibly fond of her.
But, I mean, Talia Balsam, Tracy Letts.
There's a whole host of upperclassmen that I'm diggin'.
-It is a fantastic cast. -It is. It's amazing.
-But this is really exciting to me, as well.
You have a -- Would you say it's a book imprint?
What would you say --
-I would say it's a book imprint.
-It's a book imprint.
Okay. I am not as literary -- Yeah.
So, you have a book imprint with a publisher,
where you're basically helping find new authors.
-Yeah. I mean, it's an imprint inside an old imprint
called Hogarth, which was an imprint started
by Virginia Woolf and her husband.
And it had a really sort of illustrious history,
and they published their friends
and they actually made the books,
and it was an amazing and very admirable endeavor.
And then it sort of went through a fallow period.
And then, a few years ago, Molly Stern,
who is a publisher I work with,
kind of in partner with someone in the U.K.,
they sort of revived it.
And I love Hogarth.
And through a very long series --
We don't have time,
but maybe I'll tell you the story tonight on Instagram.
Anyway, I'm a reader. -You are.
-I'm a reader, and they said to me,
"Would you like -- Would you consider?"
And I was, you know, "No, I can't possibly.
But then I sort of was brought through the process
and I knew that I would be surrounded by
smart, you know, line editors.
And, so, yes, I -- I pore over manuscripts.
-Yeah, so, that's the part.
You know, I would say I'm a reader, too,
but I'm obviously reading books, and as I'm reading them,
I'm not thinking, "Should this be a book?"
It's already a book as I'm reading it,
so I don't have to spend any of the time also thinking --
-It's a completely different way of reading,
and it's as pleasurable.
It's just a different --
All sorts of other considerations
come into the process, and it's enormously --
You know, it's a privilege and it's terrifying,
but it's thrilling to find a new voice.
And it's in this tiny space. It's literary fiction.
It's not tiny.
It's just literary fiction is a very sort of
special place in fiction.
And, so, our first book is being published in June
by a young woman who's 26.
Her name is Fatima Farheen Mirza,
and the book is called "A Place for Us."
And it's an amazing, important debut novel.
And it's a thrill, and for a reader, it's heaven on Earth.
-Well, that's fantastic.
Thank you so much for being here.