When I was a student I was very, very ambitious, completely immersed in my comedy career. I never had that period of reckless hedonism that you should get out of your system in your youth.

I try to not make safe choices, but I also like to do stuff which is interesting and is sort of exciting in some way and accessible.

I think you need to have the guts to not use comedy. Often, the people that work in comedy use a joke to avoid contemplation.

But with comedy it's a simple premise. If it's funny, people laugh. If it's not, they don't.

I like comedy, but I like comedy as a device in drama. It's more interesting for me to use comedy to seduce people into thinking about something serious. If you want to hit a beat in a drama, you can distract people with a little comedy, and you can punch them in the gut with some emotion.

I'm really encouraged by Pope Francis, because I think his attitude is totally laudable.

The trick is always to write in pairs because if at least two people find it funny, you've immediately halved the odds of it not being funny.