Rachel Bloom covers the digital issue of Allure for November. She’s promoting the last season of Crazy Ex-Girlfriend. Who does she remind me of on this cover? Like, 70% Emily Blunt and a little bit of Tina Fey, I think. Rachel is pretty amazing woman, and we should probably cover more, just in general. Crazy Ex-Girlfriend is often heralded as one of the smartest shows on television, and Rachel is such a hustler and a “real” person. She’s not sitting here and talking about what fad diet she’s trying. She’s talking about money and mental health and body image. You can read the full piece here. Some highlights:

On being busy: “I talked to my therapist about this — I think I have slight touches of ADHD… I like thinking about a lot of things at once, but at a certain point, that actually gets to be too much and I overheat myself. And that’s when I kind of crumble.”

Working with therapists for ‘Crazy Ex-Girlfriend’: “In diagnosing a character, you really start to learn that these diagnoses aren’t labels. They’re tools to help you try [to] feel better, to find what is gonna make you happy. And it’s an ever-changing field, an ever-changing science. [Season four] is about renewal and getting more grounded, inner exploration, [and] remembering this person still tried to commit suicide like a year ago in the timeline of the show… It’s weird…talking about things in the show, like self-care and pursuing your own happiness and taking time for yourself, but I literally don’t have the time to do that because we’re a network show.”

She came from a privileged background: “I think that there’s this narrative [that] I was a ‘self-starter,’ and yes, I made my own Internet videos and I worked incredibly hard and persevered, but let’s zoom out for a second. I was raised in LA, [the only child of] two parents who encouraged me to pursue the arts, and encouraged me that women could do anything. I’m not saying my family’s perfect, but I’m just saying on that bare minimum, there is that.”

She hopes women will talk about money more often: “I did an interview with [Wealthsimple in 2017] where I just kind of said how much I made and then later regretted saying that, because I was like, ‘Oh, that feels gross.’ But looking back on it, we should just be open about money. I think being secretive about money is how inequalities perpetuate, and how women don’t learn to ask for what they want or what they deserve.”

On the fact that rich people get so many free clothes: “People who are earning the most money are supposed to not pay for their dresses — and that’s capitalism. People are rewarded for being already rewarded.”

[From Allure]

“In diagnosing a character, you really start to learn that these diagnoses aren’t labels. They’re tools to help you try [to] feel better, to find what is gonna make you happy.” That’s a profound statement in this day and age, when the argument being made by so many Millennials and Generation Zers is that to “label” someone is to put them in a box, and being put in a box is worse than death or whatever. Saying “Kanye is bipolar and he’s going through a manic phase” isn’t labeling him per se, it’s trying to diagnose him so that he has the tools to get help. And yes, I also think women should talk about money more often and in greater detail. That’s a very American thing too – other cultures are even worse when it comes to “don’t talk about money, it’s gauche and tacky.” No, talk about money for feminism.

Cover and photo courtesy of Daria Kobayashi Ritch for Allure.