Elizabeth Day

two young children.

I think it's so wonderful that people get to hear this, the kind of scrappiness of the obsession, the fact that you wrote in a very unprecious way.

You just had to grab the time, go to Starbucks, put some ideas down.

And I think it's so refreshing to hear that as well, because I

I feel that so many people have a dream to write or create in some way, but they fear that the conditions have to be perfect first.

And there's so much fetishization of routine now, that idea of sort of getting up and having your morning pages and your matcha.

And I think it's so great to hear that actually some of the best ever movie dialogue came out of you in that way.

And I find it interesting that your second failure is your failure to be a magazine writer after you graduated college.

Oh, my God.

Everything that you say, I am relating to extremely deeply for reasons that there's not enough time to go into, but I hope I can have another conversation with you another time, maybe over a martini about the similarities that I am experiencing hearing you talk.

But I think that

Outsidership is what gives you your great gift of being able to see people as they are from the position of observer, but also the other part of your gift is the ability to draw humor from that.

Searching to fit in, searching for the key to the code.

Before we get onto your final failure, I wanted to ask you about comedy specifically and being a female writer of so much great comedy.

Do you think it is taken seriously enough?

Because I found it shocking, Helene, that you were not nominated for an Oscar for Devil Wears Prada, but Borat was.

But do you think you should have won more awards?

Your final failure is co-writing nine TV pilots in the 90s and never getting any on the air.

I also really appreciate what you say about the process there being the thing, in a way.

I think that is something that failure does teach us, that the journey and not the over-focus on the destination is where you learn the most.