Throughout July, Bustle’s Comedy IRL package is featuring photo shoots, profiles, and stories of the women in comedy who are using their craft to elevate female voices and speak out on important issues. Comedy is powerful as hell, and we’re toasting the women who prove it. Check out the whole package here.

How can you laugh at a time like this? How can you focus on a TV show when the world is falling apart? Are you seriously cracking jokes when our leaders are making decisions that hurt people? For anyone who deals with dark, twisty, devastating realities by escaping into the warm embrace of the comedy world, these questions should be pretty familiar. And while it may seem like a frivolous endeavor to focus on laughs when the world outside feels like it’s going to hell, it’s OK to need that escape. And no one knows that better than actor Kristen Bell.

“Earth is very angry right now, and there’s no better time to chase comedy, I think,” she says when we speak on the phone in May. She’s squeezing our interview in on a lunch break on the set of her NBC comedy, The Good Place, but her tone isn’t that of someone worried about rushing back to work. Sure, she’s choosing her words diligently, but the conversation feels almost carefree. “People need comedy in their lives to just ease the current stress,” she adds. [More at Source]