In a world short on joy, humor can be a unifier and a survival tool. In that spirit, we bring you our Comedy Issue, a month-long celebration of funny (and fearless) women and the enduring power of a good laugh. Here Crazy Ex-Girlfriend star Rachel Bloom salutes the woman who made her see the value in being herself onstage.

As I sat back down at my seat in the Beverly Hilton after winning the Golden Globe for best performance by an actress in a television series in 2016, I did what any millennial with a touch of ADHD would do: I checked my email. And the first thing that popped up was a message from Carol Burnett congratulating me. Not to sound ungrateful to the Hollywood Foreign Press, but that moment was my real Golden Globe.

A month or two earlier our mutual friend (and my Crazy Ex-Girlfriend costar) Donna Lynne Champlin told me Carol had asked for my email address. My response to her was, “OF COURSE YOU CAN GIVE CAROL FUCKING BURNETT MY EMAIL ADDRESS. GIVE HER MY SOCIAL SECURITY NUMBER AND MY LIVER TOO.” It was laughable that Carol felt she needed permission to email me. But when I finally got to meet her, I realized that, in a wonderful way, her fame still hasn’t quite sunk in. Carol Burnett doesn’t know that she’s Carol Burnett.

She was the first comedic actor whose essence I couldn’t put into words—all I knew was that I couldn’t stop watching her. When I performed my own rendition of “Little Girls” from Annie for my eighth-grade talent show, the director told me not to copy her mannerisms. (Not because I couldn’t try—of course I did—but because she is a performer who is un-copy-able.)

I read Carol’s memoir One More Time during an eight-hour bus ride in 2009 and was struck by the fact that, like me, she had trouble booking acting gigs during her first year living in New York City. She put together her own musical showcase with women in her boarding house and got discovered singing the original song “I Made a Fool of Myself Over John Foster Dulles,” which reminded me of a song about an older gentleman that I had written called “F*ck Me, Ray Bradbury.” I had forgotten about it until I read Carol’s book. That song became a music video that got me my agent.