TV / Video

What it’s like to work as a woman in late-night TV comedy in 2018

You don’t have to be Nell Scovell to know the gender ratio is and always has been rather bleak for hiring women to write for late-night TV talk shows.

Although Scovell, one of the rare women hired to write for David Letterman over multiple decades, certainly has crunched all of the numbers.

Still, in 2018, some late-night comedy programs are getting better at including women’s voice in the writers room. As part of Glamour’s comedy issue, the magazine rounded up six such women — Ariel Dumas (The Late Show with Stephen Colbert), Pia Glenn (The Opposition with Jordan Klepper), Jasmine Pierce (The Tonight Show Starring Jimmy Fallon), Melinda Taub (Full Frontal with Samantha Bee), Molly McNearney (Jimmy Kimmel Live) and Kat Radley (The Daily Show with Trevor Noah) — to talk about their jobs and their bosses.

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Sean L. McCarthy

Editor and publisher since 2007, when he was named New York's Funniest Reporter. Former newspaper reporter at the New York Daily News, Boston Herald and smaller dailies and community papers across America. Loves comedy so much he founded this site.

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