Welcome to the era of TV comedy auteurs. Just as the rise of cable led to an Emmy-gobbling barrage of quality dramas—the chronicled downfalls of brilliant and charismatic skulkers like Tony Soprano and Don Draper and Walter White—a recent proliferation of outlets has blessed us with a bounty of truly great comedies. What makes them even better than their dark forefathers (besides the fact that they’re, you know, funny) is that the people portraying the damaged leads are the same ones creating the shows.

It started with Louie, the surreally specific FX series based on its creator and star’s life as a comic and single father. Of course, he wasn’t television’s first semi-autobiographical auteur-actor—Lucille Ball and Jerry Seinfeld and Larry David and even Tina Fey had done it before—but his show was the beginning of the deluge of comedians with the freedom to plumb the depths of the rotten, hilarious self. Anna Peele sat down with 11 writer-stars making the most personal (and explicit, self-aware, funny, and straight-up watchable) TV for a roundtable discussion on how the hell they’re getting away with this.

GQ: To write for and play someone who’s modeled on yourself, you have to know which of your semi-despicable qualities are also charming. How hard is it to make the worst things about yourself appealing?

Rachel Bloom (co-creator of Crazy Ex-Girlfriend, the bawdy Golden Globe- and Emmy-winning CW musical): Inherent in the premise of Crazy Ex-Girlfriend is someone who is depressed and anxious and un-enlightened, and the character is a mash-up of me and her. We realized that we could get away with her doing despicable things because I fundamentally am an optimistic person and played it pretty sunny. But the character is me at my most depressed—it’s almost a weird dark revenge fantasy that I’ve held back from acting out.

Pete Holmes (Judd Apatow produces the HBO series, loosely based on Holmes’s divorce and entrée into stand-up): My Crashing character is me when I was 28. It’s very easy as an actor to deny certain impulses to be mature or thoughtful, but it’s also just a nice little vacation.

James Davis (the upcoming Comedy Central series by the former writer for The Late Late Show with James Corden alternates field pieces with stand-up): For Hood Adjacent, it’s a lot about me accepting the duality of being someone who grew up in the hood but went to private school. I wanted to be cool, so I didn’t tap into my feelings on what kind of black guy I was. But my show is the one place where me not worrying about being cool makes me cool.

Andrea Savage (the forthcoming autobiographical series from the longtime Groundlings performer will air on truTV): I’m Sorry is very, very autobiographical, so I worked really hard to have it be as nuanced as real life. So if there’s a weirdo friend, they’re not just always, like, eating potato chips and playing video games while fingering a girl—they also want kids. I have no ego, but there’s a lot of things where I’m just going, “Wow, why did I write this for myself?”

Holmes: It’s good therapy.

Bloom: We like to all think that we’re unique, but Jewish girls who look like me come up and are like, “Oh, my God, I also listened to [the musical] Assassins on repeat when I was 17.” You’re like, “Well, I guess I am a type,” but you can only realize that through a certain specificity.

Rob Delaney (Delaney and Sharon Horgan’s Emmy-nominated Amazon show follows a couple who get married after a one-night-stand-induced pregnancy): I came at Catastrophe with a manifesto point of view—like, [with mocking sincerity] “I want to sicken the world with these ideas”—and then built characters around them. We had an axe to grind, but then we were like, “Oh, probably we should have people say it rather than have it just be like a Star Wars opening scene with all the scrolls of dialogue.”

James Davis, Hood Adjacent with James Davis Rachel Bloom, Crazy Ex-Girlfriend Sam Richardson, Detroiters

THEIR SHOWS ARE... MORE PERSONAL. These shows range from the autobiographical (Hood Adjacent) to the “inspired by” (Insecure). And the creators don’t just think their own lives are ideal TV fodder—they believe they’re the only people who can play themselves properly. But what could be jerk-offingly narcissistic is just appealingly honest. Like T. J. Miller getting super real with Pete Holmes about Holmes’s divorce—partially based on his real-life divorce—on Crashing: “Jesus, that is so sad...the picture of you loading the belongings that your cheating wife didn’t sell into your car. That’s so Tennessee Williams.”

Pete and Lesley and Paul, you’re produced by Judd Apatow, and Tim and Sam, you work on Detroiters with Jason Sudeikis. Issa, you created Insecure with Larry Wilmore. What is it like to have a person who can get your work out there but has a specific vision and sensibility that may require you to compromise yours?

Issa Rae (her Golden Globe-nominated HBO show follows her web series The Misadventures of Awkward Black Girl): Before we wrote the script, there were three months of conversations where we just got to know each other. One of the first things that struck me was how down-to-earth and how great of a listener Larry was—he was really dedicated to getting to know me as best as he could while sharing and opening himself up to me. And I didn’t realize at the time that that was his version of getting to know the way that I thought and the people in my life, which made me stronger and firmer in my own vision moving forward. I had another experience, where I did try to fit under somebody else’s umbrella, and that just wasn’t the right show.

When was that?

Rae: It was the show I did for Shondaland [Shonda Rhimes’s production company]. It was my first TV experience. Working with them was great, but it didn’t work out. They’d never done comedy before, and I was just too eager to please. I just got lost in it. That was just a huge mistake on my part.

THEIR SHOWS ARE... MORE SELF-AWARE. Depicting bizarro versions of themselves means these guys need to be reflective enough to know which of their many flaws are relatable, not alienating, and which of their many terrible qualities are terribly entertaining, not just terrible. *Catastrophe’*s Rob (Rob Delaney) and Sharon (Sharon Horgan) bicker in a loving way identifiable to anybody in a long-term relationship: In one scene, he sweetly tells her, “Even if I wanted to kill you, I wouldn’t kill you, or have you killed.”

This seems like a good time to talk about control.

Sharon Horgan (in addition to writing and starring in Catastrophe, she executive-produces HBO’s Divorce ): With Divorce, I wanted to be on set and in the edit room and watching casting tapes, to the point where I asked them to keep the edit open at night and on the weekends. I lost my marbles. I had to realize that there are other people to trust because they are good at their jobs and give as much of a shit as you do. It was massive for me, looking around at all the writers going, “Why would you care as much as me?” And everyone did.

Davis: Because Hood Adjacent is a new show, I’m in every office—I don’t feel comfortable if I see two people talking and I’m not in the conversation. “Hey, what are y’all talking about? I don’t care if it’s cups . . . . I have an opinion.”

Savage: But you have to relinquish control. You do.

Rae: I do love being collaborative, because I didn’t come in to take on so many different hats—you are a producer, you’re a writer, you’re an entertainer. I did look forward to relinquishing some control, especially when I was like, “Oh, wow, someone else is going to take care of it tomorrow because I have something.”

Paul Rust ( Love is a Judd Apatow-produced series about a couple whose relationship is somewhat based on Rust and co-creator Lesley Arfin’s): Because Love is on Netflix and there’s no advertising—not to sound like a real hippie Commie—it’s really nice to have the freedom to make a joke about McDonald’s, or Walmart, and not have somebody tapping you on the shoulder and being like, “You can’t make that joke—they’re a sponsor for the show.”