A Quote by Michaela Coel
I wrote a play at drama school, which was a dark comedy - people laughed and cried. And then my script of one of the shows was picked up by a comedy sketch company... so then I had to write comedy.
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I think 'Paper Moon' is a comedy-drama. 'What's Up, Doc?' was the most severe comedy, but my favorite film of my own is 'They All Laughed,' which is a kind of bittersweet comedy.
My experience - and it might be just the kind of comedy that I do, which is usually sketch comedy - is that there's a lot more texture and subplot in drama than in comedy.
I don't play comedy as comedy. That would be the biggest trap. I think about the characters and their situations. Then you don't have to worry where the laugh is going to be. But comedy is harder than drama.
In comedy, you have to do all of the same stuff you do in drama and then put the comedy on top of it. You, the actor, are aware of the comedy but the character is oblivious. And you have to have a sense of humor.
I acted in high school and studied at the British American Drama Academy in Oxford for one summer. I minored in theater, and I was always acting growing up and stuff, but really, I was just more interested in the comedy of it all. So for me, it's always comedy, and then acting is just one medium of comedy.
There's comedy in tragedy, and tragedy in comedy. There's always light and dark in most jobs. Whether it's framed as a comedy, drama or tragedy, you try to mix it up within that. You can work on a comedy and it's not laugh-a-minute off set. You can work on a tragedy that's absolutely hilarious.
I think I'm one of those guys who was sort of always in comedy. I thought of myself - and other people seemed to think of me - as funny from a very young age. I was a very young comedy nerd and I even did sketch comedy in high school and college. I wrote and shot sketches on video and acted in them.
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.
Because I was familiar with Taika's Watiti work and there's a very subversive, funny streak amongst all of them. I don't think he turned [Hunt for the Wilderpeople] into a sort of drama, there's too much dark material underneath it for it to be a comedy; it wasn't designed to be a comedy. I think it's a comedy... I think it's a drama that's funny; which is different.
Having written both comedy and drama, comedy's harder because the fear of failure's so much stronger. When you write a scene and you see it cut together, and it doesn't make you laugh, it hurts in a way that failed drama doesn't. Failed drama, it's all, 'That's not that compelling,' but failed comedy just lays there.
People seem to want to give 'Flowers' a comedy or a comedy-drama label. I suppose it's closer to comedy-drama, but it feels like it requires a whole new definition all of its own.
Writing a comedy script is a difficult thing. I think if someone is attempting a comedy and then they fail then it's understood.
It's fun to do a comedy and hook people in and then hoodwink them into watching a serious movie. I like to lead in with the comedy and then hit them over the head with a drama.
Comedy doesn't come easy for me. I've only done 2 movies that are really comedy-style films and I have to work at them. And they're just as scary in a way. I hate labeling all these things; comedy, love stories, dark drama, whatever.
That's what I love about sketch comedy: a sketch is five minutes, then it goes dark, and there's the potential for something else.
When I graduated, I was director of my school's sketch comedy group, and I knew that I wanted to be writing and performing my own sketch comedy. It kind of made me want to do my own one-person sketch group.
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