'Somebody Somewhere' Star Bridget Everett Thanks Pal Amy Schumer: 'She Took a Chance on Me'

The comedians met at a comedy festival in 2009 and toured together in 2015

Somebody somewhere gave comedian Bridget Everett a vote of confidence when her career started taking off. That somebody? Amy Schumer.

Everett, 51, met Schumer, 41, in 2009 at the Just For Laughs Comedy Festival in Montreal, which the Somebody Somewhere star and writer calls "a real big deal" in this week's issue of PEOPLE.

"That's where all the comics go, and I'm not a comic. I was more of a cabaret singer, so I felt a little on the outside," Everett admits.

But Schumer took Everett under her wing.

"She was familiar with my work and she's like, 'Get out of your room. Let's go have some Chardonnay, let's go down to the bar, because everybody's there,'" the Kansas native recalls. "We went down and we started talking to people. I'm like, 'Well, this isn't so bad.'"

"I'm more introverted, and Amy's more of an extrovert. So, she's done [a lot] of getting me out of my comfort zone over the years," she adds. "She took a chance on me and I just listened."

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After studying opera in college at Arizona State University, Everett moved to New York City in 1997. She waitressed while discovering her loves for karaoke and cabaret. "I was like, 'If only you can make karaoke your living,'" she says.

Meeting other performers in the New York City made Everett feel she found her community. "Everybody was just a little wild and a little left of center, and I loved it," Everett says. "It was a bunch of misfits having the time of their life, and I was like, 'That's what I want to do.'"

Everett worked with Sex and the City creator Michael Patrick King on an off-Broadway show, which led to her first Hollywood role, playing a drunk girl who interviews to be Carrie Bradshaw's assistant in the 2008's Sex & the City movie. But Everett didn't quit her waitressing job until 2015, the same year she toured with Schumer and appeared in the mom of 4-year-old Gene's movie, Trainwreck.

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"I stuck with it because I had my health insurance. I had some TV and film credits, but nothing was really enough to get me over the finish line," Everett says. "I was putting in another schedule request and my manager said to me, 'Are you sure you want to come back to work?' And, I was like, 'I'm not coming back.' I took a chance on myself."

That night, the crowd at her Joe's Pub show (which Patti LuPone and Bette Midler have previously attended!) in N.Y.C. cheered on Everett's decision. "I got a 10-minute standing ovation," she remembers. "That really helped solidify that taking a chance on myself was the exact right thing to do."

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She'll never forget the celebrity who caused the biggest uproar when she worked at Ruby Foo's on Manhattan's Upper West Side, the neighborhood she also calls home.

"When it first opened, it was a real hotspot. We would have all kinds of celebrities from J.Lo, P. Diddy, Sarah Jessica Parker, Woody Allen, you name it," Everett says. "But when Richard Simmons walked in, he stopped traffic. He was in the shorts, he walked up the stairs, he took his time, he was waving to people, and I was the only one old enough to really appreciate who he was. I was like, 'Oh my God, Richard Simmons is here.' To be in the same building with him was a real treat."

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Since leaving the restaurant business, Everett has starred in Patti Cake$, Fun Mom Dinner and HBO series Camping opposite Jennifer Garner. Now, Everett has an HBO series of her own, Somebody Somewhere, inspired by her own life.

"I'm more comfortable relating to something that can reverberate through me from experience," Everett says.

In the show, now in its second season, Everett plays Sam, a woman navigating life in her Kansas hometown following the death of her sister. Offscreen, Everett's oldest sister Brinton died in 2008 of cancer, the year after her dad died.

"Sam is willing to get under the hood a little bit more than I am," Everett says. "I usually just repress everything and make jokes just like a lot of Midwesterners do, at least the ones in my family. Sam is more willing to — maybe reluctantly — try to understand why she's feeling things and dealing with her grief and learning how to love people."

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Everett's real-life family see her having her own HBO show as a sign of success. "They're proud of me," the Lady Dynamite star says. "It's really cool for them that it has so many touches of my hometown, but there's something undeniable about being on HBO that does sort of indicate that things are going okay for me."

Next up, Everett plans to release a new album with her group, The Tender Moments. She admits she's pulled back from performing live "because I don't want to say the wrong thing while I have a TV show on."

"My goal is never to hurt anybody's feelings," Everett continues. "Maybe when I don't have a TV show on, I'll take more chances. I just want people, when they come to theater, to not sweat it. I want them to have a good time."

For more on Bridget Everett, pick up the latest issue of PEOPLE, on newsstands now, or subscribe here.

Somebody Somewhere airs Sundays at 10:30 p.m. ET on HBO.

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Read the original article on People.