Nasim Pedrad has been asked that question before: So what's it like to be a woman in comedy? "Today, I'd imagine it's a lot like being a male comedian, except you get that question a lot," she says.
Not that she actually has time to answer: Before she starts working on her deal with Fox to develop and write a show (which she'll star in, too) Pedrad will appear in Ryan Murphy's latest, Scream Queens (a horror-comedy series set on a college campus premiering this fall on Fox), surrounded by good female vibes—Emma Roberts, Lea Michele, Abigail Breslin, Ariana Grande, to name just a few. Oh, and did we mention original scream queen herself Jamie Lee Curtis?
If you've ever laughed during a scary slasher flick, you know that the two genres perfectly overlap: "I feel like comedy and horror are cousins to each other," Pedrad says, "They both rely so much on timing."
On set, Pedrad's working on her detective skills: "We still don't know who the killer is, we're finding things out as we get the scripts." Which means there's a chance that Pedrad will be the last girl standing, or better even, the killer.
It's a good thing she's had practice playing egomaniacs on Saturday Night Live: "Someone recently asked me [how] I would do Kim Kardashian differently now. I laughed—like, 'Has that much really changed?' I wouldn't suddenly give her a Norwegian accent! Maybe she'd wear more of Kanye's Adidas line."
A version of this article appears in the August 2015 issue of Marie Claire on newsstands July 21.
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