Melissa McCarthy just opened this new movie, “Identity Thief,” and Rex Reed, who’s a known critic, wrote a scathing commentary on her weight. I think that weight designation is one of the last frontiers of bullying. I don’t know what the right “ism” for it is, but I think that there’s a level of that that’s happening that’s certainly not okay.

I was a product of a divorced family and I used humor as a weapon to combat sadness. I used comedy to make my mother laugh in light of the darkness that she faced, and to me it became a very powerful tool at a very young age, at six. I saw how therapeutic it could be.

I was like a Borscht Belt comedian trapped in the body of a 6-year-old. I was channeling Jackie Mason at 7.

I think that once we get to that point where our generation is running things, I truly believe we'll look back at this time and question why we were ever so complacent withholding something as universal as the freedom of equality and marrying someone that you love.

We use improv in all kinds of fun ways. Sometimes it's to invent or discover new things, sometimes it's to weird out the other actors, and sometimes it's to create a sense of fun, to find new things inside the scripted lines.

I was trained as a straight dramatist.

When you get into the series, the progression is much different. You actually have breathing room and the chance to sit down with each actor, which was a part of our process, to talk to them about their pasts.