My natural hair is who I am. I have lots of braids, and I have lots of twists, but it's all very low maintenance. I feel like I can get up and go and get out of the house. I just don't have it in me to get my hair done all the time.
— Jessica Williams
I'm always thinking about what a black lady would think about what I'm doing, just because I feel like they have such great taste, mostly because as black women, we've spent a lot of time downloading what a white male narrative is, so in my head, I'm like, 'If a black woman likes it, if she responds to it, then it's probably pretty damn great.'
My parents have always been very supportive.
With '2 Dope Queens,' we get the opportunity to love and enjoy each other and have fun being best friends and being women of color and talking about our personal experience. Also, we give an opportunity to elevate voices for many different people that otherwise would not get such a large platform.
I always feel like I'm warring with my womanhood and wanting the world to be better, and with my blackness - which is the opposite of whiteness.
Really, laughing is such a strange reaction to something. The idea of it is so bizarre, so instinctual, and kind of magical.
I focused on my career. I grew up super Christian, both my parents are ministers, so I did a purity ceremony when I was a teenager.
The color and the diversity dies out, and it gets whiter and whiter, and that's in any field. There is also this idea that there can only be one gay person or there can only be one Asian-American woman in the office, and so it also perpetuates itself where we are isolated, especially the more successful we get.
I had to get used to seeing Samantha Bee around. I had to get used to seeing Jon, like, getting a bagel, and to John Oliver, and all these people whom I had seen on TV. Colbert would sometimes drop by. I had to get used to being a part of this multiple-Emmy-winning machine and being this 22-year-old black girl who was really green.
There's milk-and-cookies Grandma, and there's Colt 45 and Atlantic City Grandma. She was the latter.
Some days I'll be like, 'I didn't do anything great today,' and I'll be bummed. And some days I'll wake up, and I'm like, 'I am the dopest woman to exist on Earth'.
I'm always battling how to be in a relationship while simultaneously maintaining my independence and my career.
As an executive producer, I feel really lucky.
Allison Jones, a big casting director out there, was like, 'They're casting 'The Daily Show' right now - you should submit a tape.' I remember leaving school to go shoot an audition.
I was always told that I acted too white. I was always told that I was going to date a white guy - which, in fairness, was true: I do have a white boyfriend. So they weren't entirely wrong, but all of those things were really damaging.
My favorite place in the world is the Harry Potter tour near London.
I first fell in love with comedy when I'd visit my granny as a kid. Trips to her house meant staying up late drinking Coca-Cola and watching 'Saturday Night Live'.
I ended up living in braids. It was the '90s - thin braids were very popular - and my mom took me to a lady's kitchen. I got it done, and I've never stopped.
I feel like acting is sort of like that: You're getting so many 'no's all the time. It's just a bunch of no's and a couple of cool yes's. And especially with comedy, too, when you're up on stage, doing live shows, you get immediate yes's or no's.
I think that's what's so great about 'Jessica James' is you get to sit back and take a moment and realize that this person is black. And some days, this character wakes up and feels black, and some days, she doesn't. That is, for me, a fully black experience.
I think people have a lot of layers. I know I do in particular.
When I talk about feminism, sometimes I feel like being a black woman is cast aside.
People have their guard down when they're laughing, so they're open to tougher conversations they wouldn't necessarily have. If somebody is guarded while laughing, they're a weirdo.
Don't try to fix anyone, especially not a dude. They're not going to change.
I was doing a college show for the first time, and there was this 20-year-old gay male who's been diabetic his entire life. He said, 'I really wanna get into stand-up.' I was like, 'Oh, my God, do you realize how interesting and inherently funny you are? Go do all the comedy that you wanna do.' I care about that.
Sometimes, you feel like, 'Am I going to be upset about this as a black person or as a woman first? Or am I gonna be both?' Because some things inherently affect black women; some things affect you as a woman and not a black person; and some things just affect you as a black person.
It's cool to see a woman be like, 'This is what I want - this is what I don't want.' It's good to see someone making choices for themselves.
I enjoy romantic comedies in general. I like them when they're bad, I like when they're good.
I don't really like conflict at all, and I really find conflict pretty devastating. I try to avoid it at all costs.
I loved doing 'Frisky Business.' I didn't come up with it. I think John Oliver and the writers did.
I grew up hearing, 'You're pretty for a black girl,' 'You speak well for a black girl...' I was really bookish. I was reading all of the time. I had big glasses.
I think it's really progressive to talk about race in relationships. I think there is so much room for that, and there needs to be more of it.
Basketball would have been the natural sport to play, but it's a little too aggressive for me, so instead I dabbled in volleyball and some good old-fashioned Roller Derby.
Ultimately, when I deliver something, a lot of times it will be from a black woman's perspective, but other times it will be just from a satirical, goofy perspective.
I have never been a 'hair person.' Growing up, my mom and my sister, who loved to get their hair done, would always give me a hard time about not getting mine done.
I live in Brooklyn; I live in Clinton Hill. I love it there.
The black experience for me has been very interesting. Some days, I wake up, and I feel really black. Some days, I'm like, 'This is me. I'm black. Black Lives Matter. Black pride. Look at my cocoa skin.' I just feel it's my being.
I think we need to not speak over black women, not assign them labels.
That's how me and my friends are. We love our personal relationships, but we have things we want to accomplish.
I think great comedy comes from the oppressed. It comes from feeling like you've gotten punched up in a way.
Oh, I'm obsessed with the Kardashians. Not the way that I think a 13- or 14-year-old girl would be, but I find them fascinating. They are so rich. They are also, at the end of the day, women of color.
I'm a young person; sometimes I'm political, sometimes I'm not.
Oftentimes, as women and women of color, we are put as supporting characters in other people's narratives. With 'Jessica James', she is the star of her own narrative.
For me, so far, confidence has been a journey, not a destination.
When I was a young lady, I never fantasized about getting married.
Me and Cate Blanchett have the same job, technically.
Some days, I do feel that pressure of, 'What do I mean as a black woman? What am I representing?' It honestly just gives me anxiety.
I read so much Harry Potter, that's, like, all I wanted to talk about. I watched stuff like 'Lizzie McGuire.' I watched things that were very mainstream but white, and I went to a predominately white school.
The last thing I do before bed is think I should take my contacts out. Then I fall asleep.
I'm six feet tall. No one realizes that because on 'The Daily Show' I'm usually sitting.
