Mae Martin

I'm so unqualified to be a family therapist.

What audiences see is a curated version of myself.

A Canadian comedian once told me that when you first go out there to imagine that you're actually just going back out for the encore, that all the clapping is because they've already seen you do your thing and they want to see more. You can train your mind to do anything.

It's very weird trying to imagine yourself as a 'comedy character.'

I love the comedy world and really grew up in green rooms, so I wanted to show the positives and negatives.

If you never, or rarely, see your experience depicted in art or pop culture then you can begin to feel isolated or separate; Othered. So, representation is super important.

I have the armour of self-worth that comes from having open-minded parents who felt there was nothing wrong with me.

I'd love to write more observational comedy but the stuff people seem to respond to is the most personal so it's snowballed from there.

In my pantheon of comedy idols there's maybe six people: Lisa Kudrow, Conan O'Brian, Julia Louis-Dreyfuss, Martin Short. Lisa is at the top.

It's exhausting trying to impress someone and be a version of yourself that might be attractive to them.

I love 'Titanic', I love 'Romeo & Juliet', those are my favourite films, and so it's crazy to think that people wouldn't connect with 'Feel Good', it's just a love story.

I can't tell you how much money I waste on plaid shirts, whisky that I hate the taste of, and Moleskine notebooks that I never write in.

We're all severely addicted to our phones... it's not glamorous or always harrowing even, it's just damaging.

I like to do shows that open a dialogue.

I dropped out of school when I was 14 and I was hanging out with comedians in their thirties. I moved out of home and had some real lows.

Being on stage at the Soho Theatre is hard to beat.

How can I tell if I was born hating coconut or developed a hatred of coconut because my father distrusted it as an ingredient?

If you bite and chew the peel of a banana, then eat the fruit of the banana itself, you will find that it tastes like a tomato. I swear.

Bette Midler was my first love, and the intensity of those feelings remain.

As a child I wanted to be a kind of hybrid of Ferris Beuller, Ace Ventura, Bette Midler, and Lucille Ball.

Don't edit yourself too much. Don't be afraid of looking stupid, 'cool' is so rarely funny I think. And just do it! Do as many gigs as you possibly can, and watch as many gigs as you possibly can. You'll get the rhythm of it in your head and make lovely friends.

If I had met Bette Midler, I wouldn't be answering these questions right now because I'd have spontaneously combusted and gone to heaven.

Talking about darker stuff from my life was definitely very cathartic and at times confronting.

It's a universal experience to be compulsively doing something that's damaging your life.

You're basically getting on stage and asking people, 'Do you guys like me? Do you like who I am?' But you grow pretty thick skinned. And the less scared you seem, the more people like you anyway.