Wendi McLendon-Covey is at a place in her career she never would've dreamed of. She not only starred in one of the decade's biggest and most celebrated films — 2011's Oscar-nominated Bridesmaids — and followed it up with a lead role on ABC's The Goldbergs, which landed her a Critics' Choice Television Award nomination for Best Actress in a Comedy, but playing "smother" Beverly Goldberg is also "the most fun I've ever had doing anything ever," she told BuzzFeed News.

The well-received role has vaulted McLendon-Covey into an elite group of female comedians — alongside other hyphenates like Julia Louis-Dreyfus and multihyphenates like Amy Schumer — celebrated for their contributions on television.

That such a group exists suggests things are changing for women in comedy, but being funny while female can still be a challenge in Hollywood. "Yes, women are treated a certain way and it's not always great," she said. "But I am grateful that a light is being shined on it and I will concentrate on the good that is coming out of that. But I can't say that it isn't annoying. The only way to combat that is just to hit back harder, be funnier, and keep on doing what you're doing — it's survival of the fittest."

That unwavering tenacity was developed at an early age as her desire to act was met with a starkly unenthusiastic response from her parents. "It was not encouraged at all," she said of early acting aspirations. "And yet, my parents, without knowing it, fostered all of this nonsense by giving us a lot of free time. So my sister and I had no choice but to put on our bedspreads and stage plays or throw parades or write our own scripts or whatever, because they did not schedule every minute of our day for us. It was like, 'Go entertain yourselves, we're barely hanging on to our sanity!' That's how we did things, and it really fostered our creativity."