There are some male comedians who are a little challenged and afraid of female comedians,
because comedy was how, in their minds, they get laid.
So when the thing they're trying to lay is suddenly funny...
it f***s with their power dynamic.
I have friends / I definitely have friends
Friends, friends, friendly friends / time to meet my friends
I think people in romantic comedies generally are psychotic.
Okay, a woman moving across the country to be with a guy, a woman bursting into song.
And then we said, okay, if this took place in reality, what would this person be like?
And the first answer was, she would be dreadfully unhappy.
Women are sold this bill of goods.
Not only will finding a man solve everything, that “happily ever after” is getting married,
but that love is noble.
And we've been taught to deify obsession in ways that I think are really, really dangerous, especially for teenagers.
I got discovered by Aline Brosh McKenna, my co-creator of Crazy Ex-Girlfriend.
And she had an idea for deconstructing what it's like to be obsessed with someone,
from the obsessor’s point of view.
You've said before that your character is “broken.”
What do you mean by that?
She has lived her life almost in a haze, according to what other people have told her.
She's stunted.
I mean, she's basically a 13-year-old girl inside,
because she's never allowed herself to look within and think, “What do I want?”
Because if she allowed herself to look within, I think she’d be incredibly sad.
When you started doing the music videos online, how do you think of these ideas?
I had just been through a bad breakup,
and I was like, “Oh, Ray Bradbury is the type of guy that I want, because he's logical but also very, very, very emotional.”
And I thought, “That's a funny song.”
F*** me, Ray Bradbury / The greatest sci-fi writer in history
And then how do you literally write it?
It usually just starts with jotting down random lines and ideas, and then I'll put it into a structure.
So it’s like, f*** me, f*** me, Ray Bradbury.
And then sitting at a piano being like, F*** me, Ray Bradbury, the greatest sci-fi writer in history…
Oh, that’s really funny!
Oh, f*** me / Ray Bradbury.
I had been doing these music videos for a couple years.
They were all like musical sketches in a way.
But they all were grounded in some emotion, or something that felt true to my own life.
“I have so many friends”
‘Cause I steal pets from the popular people / And then dress the pets up like the popular people
This is really upbeat, fun music, and you're talking about anxiety, depression, borderline personality disorder, suicide.
Why is musical theater such a good art form to get at these issues?
Well, musical theater comes from the idea that when the emotion is too strong to speak, you sing.
The melodies feel great, and they make you feel a certain way, and the beats make you feel a certain way,
but they actually don't really go with what life is actually like.
So it’s that gap that I’m fascinated with:
Here's what the song says I should feel. Here's how I actually feel. Or felt.
And that's basically my thesis for 95 percent of the stuff I write.
Did you feel, are there any specific moments that stand out to you
when you were working in that writers' room and you were the only woman?
One of my first writing staffs that I was on, it was very, like,
a lot of people in that staff were very mean, and direct, and targeted,
and the jokes were kind of like a way to one up each other.
And one of the guys on the staff called me.
And he was one of the main guys who made fun of me.
And I said, “You know, you made me cry every day. I’ve actually been terrified of you for seven years.”
And he was like, "You know, I was insecure myself. I really didn't have a vendetta against you."
And we just really kind of talked it out.
Do you feel like you learned anything more about where his humor was coming from?
Yeah, that it comes from the same place, we're all insecure.
I’m not scared of him anymore, cause I understand where he’s coming from.
He’s humanized.
Wait, is this your writing?
This is like the neatest handwriting I’ve ever seen.
My handwriting looks like I'm a murderer.