“I think it's much more natural as a writer to want to tell one story rather than lots of small stories that are half an hour long.”
“If you're funny as a woman, people think it might be because someone else helped you.”
“In film, you're painting a canvas. I got really excited about that.”
“One thing about television in Britain is that they're so scared about complaints. It curbs a lot of drama.”
“Women often have a fraught relationship with their mothers, even though that's the most important relationship in their lives.”
“I don't understand why people don't use improvisation, especially in comedy films, but also, for me, you get more naturalism, and that's why I like the naturalistic performances and strange rhythms and the way that people genuinely interact captured rather than sort of very mannered performances.”
“I have to be careful, as I don't want to offend Midlanders, but growing up, it wasn't like growing up in London. Anything you were interested in, you'd be able to find someone also interested in it. In the Midlands, nobody came out as gay at my school at all.”
“I love doing comedy, and that's the thing I will always go back to, really, but I'd love to have the freedom to do sort of 'meaty' roles but also have the freedom to do the sort of films I want to make, like what Woody Allen does. You forget he's funny because you're so gripped by the story, but they still make you laugh.”
“I was in something called 'Garth Marenghi's Darkplace' which was a real cult comedy; it's sort of a spoof horror sort of thing, and it only ever had one series, but I liked the fact that it only had one series because it's kind of got this little gemlike quality to it that there were only ever six episodes.”
“The characters are not allowed to change if you write a sitcom; they're not allowed to learn anything. There's all these sorts of rules, and you go, 'I just want to be able to write one character and then leave that behind.' Also, as a performer, and I may regret saying this, but it would be my own personal hell to be trapped in the sitcom.”