I think it's an uphill battle in every field. You hear late-night comedy is hard on women. And then you hear investment banking is hard on women. And tech is hard on women. And then you start digging, and you learn philosophy departments are hard on women!
— Nell Scovell
Writing is not what you start. It's not even what you finish. It's what you start, finish, and put out there for the world to see.
To be happy about the fall of one powerful man is to know there are another 10 that need to follow.
Hollywood is hard on everyone, but it really is harder on women and people of color.
If I were to write a sequel to 'Lean In' for men, I would call it 'Make Room.'
I've worked on over twenty TV staffs, and nine out of ten male colleagues are wonderful, inclusive, and professional. Still, there's usually one guy - the Tenth Man - who turns a fun job into a dental appointment.
I'd like to see David Letterman adopt the inclusion rider on his Netflix show.
Trump Tower is no ordinary property: It is the jewel in Donald Trump's brass crown.
The desire to keep doing what we love supersedes the desire to penalize bad behavior.
I fantasize about the networks making a rule that each show's writing staff needs to reflect the gender and racial makeup of its audience.
Like leggings, comedies created by women came into vogue in the late 1980s, exploded in the early '90s, went mainstream in the mid-'90s, and were shoved into the back of the closet around 1997.
I have a husband who didn't just resign himself to staying home but was happy to be the primary parent.
For thirty years, I've been hearing that it's getting better for women. And until I see statistical proof over enough years that that's true, I won't believe it.
Studies do show that in hierarchical structures, you do get more harassment. There's more power concentrated at the top, which means there's more abuse of power concentrated at the top. And every TV show is very much a hierarchy.
I've been speaking out about harassment and gender disparity for years.
Unfortunately, my system for tracking down funny female writers isn't methodical. It's mainly based on word-of-mouth, which can cast a limited net.
The vocabulary of my cynical world doesn't allow me to explain the success of 'Lean In.'
I'm such an admirer of Wendy Davis.
One of the greatest benefits to come out of 'Lean In' was convincing women to help and support other women - not out of this sense of duty and that you'd be condemned to hell forever if you didn't, but because it will make all your lives better.
Even when powerful men stumble, they inspire fear.
At 26, I was single, living in Manhattan, and working as a journalist at 'Vanity Fair.' I was Carrie Bradshaw... in sensible shoes.
In over thirty years working in TV and movies, I've never had an exit interview or contributed to a 360 assessment.
Sensitivity training is a fine idea but isn't taken seriously by those who need it most.
I'm on the board of the Annenberg Inclusion Initiative, which is run by Dr. Stacy Smith - she conceived of the inclusion rider. What I love about the inclusion rider is it uses the fact that Hollywood is based on hierarchies, and it knows that these key players have persuasive power.
When blue-eyed Donald Trump married hazel-eyed Ivana Zelnickova, he probably figured his broad-shouldered DNA would dominate her girly alleles. But genetics played a cruel trick on Trump: Of the couple's three children, only the youngest, Eric, wound up with his father's fishy blue eyes.
Hollywood is built on relationships, and the way you keep relationships is by playing nice.
If necessity is the mother of invention, urgency is the uncle of change. Without it, progress slows and then stops and then reverses.
You don't have to let a bad experience stop you from doing what you want to do.
Writing for TV made way more sense than writing for magazines. And by sense, I mean money.
There's this perception that there's a pipeline problem for women and people of color. I don't buy into that. I think we have a broken doorbell problem, and there are plenty of women and people of color standing at the doorstep trying to get in the door, and nobody's opening it.
I'm both an insider and an outsider.
Everyone - male and female - is biased. But no one wants to admit it, so our brains search for examples that disprove the accusation.
If women who don't help women get a special circle in hell, I think women who do help women should get a special cloud in heaven.
In Hollywood, you kind of trick yourself into feeling like you have impact.
I learned not to get too happy about good news or too distraught about bad.
I turned 40, and things started to go south.
Making someone laugh is the simplest, most basic positive human connection.
Give me a rock, and I will roll it.
Misogyny - and racism - are 'hidden in plain sight,' and the burden of eliminating them should fall on the institutions, not the victims.
When threatened, the nervous system sometimes goes into a 'freeze response.' You assess the risk and determine that fight or flight doesn't help you. Staying put does.
In the writers' room, I know the difference when someone brushes up against me and makes a sexist crack and when they've stepped over the line and made me feel uncomfortable and unsafe.
Blondness is a core Trump-family value: Both Donald Jr. and Eric got the memo and married blondes.
When I write, I feel like an optometrist, constantly flipping between lenses and asking, 'Is this better? Is this?' Slowly, the work comes into focus.
There have always been women who were successful against the odds. Now we need to change the odds so more women can be successful.
I think, in all fields, there's this motherhood pay penalty where, the second you become a mother - and this is true whether you give birth or adopt - you're perceived to not be as committed to your job. Whereas men are perceived as breadwinners who now need more money and promotions because they're fathers.
I was ahead of the gender curve, but I wasn't ahead of the intersectionality curve, and I get it now. It's important to me.
I loved working on 'Murphy Brown,' and I loved working on 'Monk.'
One of the great things about being in entertainment is you have access to the media. People pay attention to you.
Moral licensing comes into play when people rely on past behavior to dismiss current prejudiced behavior. This is better known as the 'Some of my best friends are...' defense.
I think I'm funnier in my writing than in person.
