Comedienne Whitney Cummings knew she wasn't cut out for a career as a reporter after making an inappropriate joke about a kidnapping story during an internship at a top news network.

The model-turned-actress landed a job at an NBC TV station in Washington, D.C. during her youth, but the work experience only convinced her to pursue her love of comedy, instead.

She tells Vice.com, "They let me read the news one day to make a reel. And it was like some news story about a kid that got abducted. It was some horrible story, and I could not stop laughing and I could not stop making jokes about it.

"So like a (picture of a) kid came up. They were like, 'Oh this kid got abducted,' and it was some fat ugly kid, and I was like, 'Oh, who would want to abduct him?' And I was like, 'I can't do this.'

"I can't be serious. I find terrible things funny... It's how we cope. It's like an emotional dyslexia."