Love Quote by Tracey Ullman

Ullman’s line reads simple, even polite, but it’s doing a lot of professional positioning in a single breath. By naming Gilda Radner in the past tense and Burnett and Tomlin in the present, she sketches a lineage: reverence for a lost trailblazer, continued devotion to living giants, and an implicit claim that her own work sits in that same comic tradition. It’s not bragging; it’s the kind of self-description comedians prefer because it sounds like fandom rather than résumé.

The specific intent is partly testimonial and partly mapmaking. Radner represents the breakneck, character-driven intensity of early SNL, a patron saint of women who could be weird, volatile, and beloved without sanding off the edges. Burnett signals craft and range: variety-show elasticity, big physicality, and the generosity of playing to the room. Tomlin adds intelligence and bite, the ability to smuggle social critique into character work without turning the stage into a lecture.

The subtext is also about credibility and taste. Ullman isn’t invoking “comedy” in the abstract; she’s choosing three women who built careers by transforming themselves, not by standing still and delivering jokes as “themselves.” That matters for Ullman, whose own signature is impersonation and character immersion. In a field that often treats female comedians as exceptions or categories, this list quietly refuses the premise: there is a canon, it’s deep, and Ullman knows exactly where she’s coming from.