Vanity Fair: The book highlights how progressive and inclusive your material was, especially for the late 80s and early 90s—it had an edge to it without punching down, and your portrayals of women were nuanced. Was that a conscious choice at the time, or just your sensibilities?

Bruce McCulloch: We weren’t conscious of what we were doing. There’s a great time in young artists’ lives when they’re just writing stuff and they’re not analyzing it. I think later when journalists would talk about our material, it fucked us up a bit because it made us understand our methodology and what our themes were. . . . I think we just had to do what we had to do. And we’re all fairly feminine guys. I think that’s actually one of the keys to our success. . . . We’ve never been guys’ guys. That’s why we play women well; that’s why we understand women. So I think because of that, perhaps it’s aged O.K.

Do you consider yourselves feminists?

McCulloch: Without question. It’s like, how could anyone say they’re not a feminist? That seems like such a non-conversation to me.

Kevin McDonald: It’s like saying I’m not a water drinker.

There are guys who would say they aren’t. And certainly some male comedians say “P.C. culture” is ruining comedy.

McCulloch: Well, feminism and P.C. culture are two different things.

McDonald: An old friend of ours who teaches comedy said in front of his class, “Do you think nowadays, you’d have five guys playing women? Would you be allowed to do that?” And I don’t know. In my workshops, I see a lot of comedy troupes that are men and women, and women play men all the time and men play women all the time. On the other hand, are there going to be any five white-guy comedy troupes anymore?

McCulloch: Well, of course there are.

McDonald: But are they going to get a TV show?

McCulloch: Yes.

McDonald: Maybe. Whitest Kids U’Know might be the last one. [The American sketch troupe had a series on Fuse and IFC from 2007 to 2011.]

Was there any material you did in your early days that you wouldn’t do now?

McCulloch: We’ve done things obviously that didn’t work or were too far. But certainly now . . . it’s our people who come and want to see our thing.

Back then, you had the freedom to experiment without it ending up online.

McCulloch: It drives my son crazy that we did a thing we’d written called “Naked for Jesus,” and we went on at the Bottom Line in New York, and we were naked. We did that as our encore. And you can’t do that now, unless you want your pencil on the YouTube.

McDonald: It was such a good idea, though. . . . Would they be protected by how good the idea was? I like to think we live in a world where they’re naked for a reason.

McCulloch: But still, people see your dingly-dangly in a way that’s out of context from the 500 people who see it as a cool thing.

Now it’s almost became a requirement for sketch troupes to have content on YouTube.

McCulloch: We went through a phase where everyone was making little short films. And I think people are more trying to kick ass in a live way now.

McDonald: I totally agree.

McCulloch: That’s why improv is fairly huge right now. . . . I think there’s a lot of energy in the 9,000 comedy troupes that exist in North America.