I realized I was capable of doing this on my own and not just cowriting something as part of a team effort. It got big laughs, and relief washed over me. So I wrote a sketch with John on a fake horse saying, 'I take care of my health,' before confessing what he really does, like getting $200 of barbecue delivered to his door while hiding his food boner in his Bermuda shorts. It was about Wilford Brimley, an actor who did commercials for a medical-supply company and pronounced diabetes as 'diabeetus.' He would talk about how he took care of his health, but he didn't look healthy when he said it. The first time I came up with a sketch entirely on my own was when John Goodman hosted in 2001. So when a writing job at Saturday Night Live came along in my early 30s, I decided that would be my path. I loved acting and had a lot of comedy confidence when I was young, but that confidence goes down the toilet once you start doing it for a living.

But I didn't want to play the madam of a brothel forever. I was repeatedly cast as a mother or grandmother and had gray spray in my hair all throughout high school and college. I've always said I was born at 50 because even as a kid, I looked like an older woman. At age 13, I played Mother Superior in a school production of The Sound of Music. We had this 'wink-wink' relationship where we gave each other shit, and he was fine with it as long as I didn't disrupt the flow of class. I would do bits in school, like running my fingers along the blackboard and then patting one of my favorite teachers on the back to tell him he was doing a great job. It became my superpower to get out of trouble whenever I did something wrong. As a child, I quickly realized how fun it was to make people laugh.

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