I’m not funny. What I am is brave.

The line draws a distinction between being “funny” as an innate personal quality and creating comedy through deliberate risk-taking. Ball suggests that what audiences read as effortless humor is often the product of courage: willingness to look foolish, to push physical and emotional extremes, and to endure failure or ridicule in public. In this framing, comedy is less a gift than a discipline requiring nerve—especially for a performer who built a career on broad physical comedy and self-satire. The quote also subtly reclaims agency: rather than being passively labeled “the funny one,” she credits her success to an active virtue (bravery) that she chose and practiced.