* Is everyone here? Everyone here? Clap myself? Everybody happy? 44. Oh. (SPEAKS INDISTINCTLY) Which one? Oh, we get to do the board? Oh. Oh, I hate improv. Fuck, can't you employ someone to do it? (ALL LAUGH) Hey, sweeties. Uh, yeah, gidday. My name's Lynn, and I come from Tawa. (BILLY T LAUGHS) www.able.co.nz Copyright Able 2019 I've got a lot of memories of my aunties being funny. My grandmother was really funny. My sister made me laugh a lot. Mum and I watched all the British comedy. Yeah, I think we get our comedy from our mums. Your mother's on the phone talking about specials that you can get at different supermarkets. It's the funniest... Yes, it is. Even now when we call each other, and sometimes we have to hang up because we both give each other asthma. The secret history of comedy is women and groups talking about stuff that will blow your mind, that is so funny, and no one knows about it. Kiwi comedian Rose Matafeo has become the first New Zealander to win best comedy show at the Edinburgh Fringe Festival. Thank you very much. Thank you. Hello. Thank you for having me tonight. Huge. Huge, huge, huge moment. The biggest award you could win in comedy right now. The 28-year-old stand-up show Horn Dog took out the top prize overnight. Thank you. I dressed up for the occasion. Everyone, apparently, I dressed up as your stepmother. She is something else, that woman. She's smashing it. It doesn't matter where she goes. They love her. I do stand-up comedy as a job, right, which requires a certain level of self-confidence, yeah? Yet I don't have the confidence to wear a hat. Um... I remember getting Jerry Seinfeld's sign language out of the library when I was 11. But then I wouldn't have thought I was into comedy. That's` I wouldn't have said to you, 'Oh, I wanna be a comedian.' (CROWD CHEERS) (SPEAKS INDISTINCTLY) I only recently accepted that that's what I do. I find it very difficult to take people with corn braids seriously. I mean, I don't even know how to converse with them. I don't know what to say. - You have a lovely scalp. - (LAUGHTER) Thank you for showing it to me. She arrived into the Raw comedy nights from the Class Comedians programme. I auditioned for it when I was 13, but you can't do it if you're not 15. And, obviously, like a psycho, I went away and was like, 'All right, OK.' And then came back guns a blazing when I was 15 years old with, like, a pre-prepared joke. I'm assuming that all of you know how the story of Snow White ends. The prince kisses Snow White in a coffin. I think there's a word for it. Uh, necrophilia. (LAUGHTER) There's no appeal to it, really, when you think about it, getting up on stage, trying to make people laugh desperately. I don't know why I do it. (LAUGHS) Looks off into the distance. Maybe I should quit. When I'm 15, I'll retire. To me, stand-up comedy is the easiest art form that you can do on stage. If anything goes wrong, you're in charge. There's no one else. You can change the direction of that ship. We all know why I'm here. A little bit of eye candy. (LAUGHTER) Yeah, and a little bit of sex on the ol' stick there for you. Stand-up comedy was never even a thing. I can honestly say I don't think I thought about it for a day. OK, it's more like a log. It's like sex on a log. She was working in advertising, and she just jumped up and did her thing. My colleague goes, 'You have to go do stand-up, man,' cos we would just crack up the whole day, and I'd go, 'Uh-uh,' and he booked me in here at the Classic, and he booked seats for about 70 people. Brendhan Lovegrove was here. She struck me, I would say, in the first two minutes. I went, 'This person is the most natural performer I've seen 'in a very long time.' And he goes, 'How long have you been doing stand-up? Where are you from?' 'You have to continue doing this. You've got something very, very special.' I went, 'No, thank you.' And then Scotty phoned to say that I'm through to the next round. I said, 'Look, I knew more than half the audience last night, and that's why they were laughing.' And he goes, 'Well, I was in there. I laughed. I don't know you.' And I went, 'Hmm.' I just realised that at a real early age that anorexia is probably not gonna be the disease to take me one day. I don't want to go into too much detail. Let's just say as a child, I had to be cut out of a hula hoop. (LAUGHTER) Very quickly the following year, she went to pro level. There hasn't been a lot like that. She knew how to write a gag. (CROWD CHEERS) Hello. All I could think of now is where did we put our double-ended dildo? Being a woman in stand-up, I... I've never been a dude in stand-up, but at the moment, I go, 'I don't want pay equality, cos I don't wanna take a pay cut.' It's better being a woman in comedy at the moment, you know. It has been for the last few years. Yeah, there's some instances where I go, 'I'm being screwed over cos I'm a woman.' You know what, then I just don't ever do that gig again. More and more women are having that mindset and go, 'I won't tolerate shit.' Like, when younger women come through and they talk about how difficult it is, and it still is difficult, but it's also going, 'You don't know what it was like before.' In the late '90s, when everything was just pushing upwards and people were starting to realise that comedy was a thing, it was rock and roll. It felt like that to us. They didn't know what the fuck they were looking at in general with stand-up, let alone a woman walking to the microphone stand, and you could literally hear people go, 'Ugh, fuck, it's a chick.' My boyfriend goes, 'What do you want for your birthday, honey?' And I went, 'Surprise me.' So he walked in on me in the toilet. It was basically Michele A'Court. You're that girl, aren't you? You're that girl that used to be on What Now. Justine Smith. And the guy's going, 'Wa-hey.' The fish of the day is flounder there, you gotta tell you. Makes a nice change from grouper, anyway. Emma Lang. What am I? What am I? What am I? And Jack Tweedy. Jack Tweedie was amazing ` just so dark and dangerous. New Zealand is the one country in the world that you can walk into a whorehouse and get them to give you a blowjob and $50 cash. The stuff she would say that blew my little Christchurch mind. It was great, and it was ground-breaking, and we knew that. We knew we were the only women doing it, cos we could look around. A huge round of applause for Mr Rhys Darby. Simon McKinney. Jeremy Corbett! I very early on recognised the fact that I was probably always gonna be the only woman on the bill. And so I quickly taught myself that that was a real advantage, because 50 to 60% of the audience are women, and I felt that everyone else had forgotten that. Could you please welcome to the stage one of the funniest women I know. And so, when I walk out, fifth or sixth on after all these dudes, literally, sometimes physically, the women would be like... My particular tampon of choice is Libra Invisible. 'Thanks for sharing,' I hear you say. But other star signs just simply wouldn't work, would they, because I mean, imagine Taurus Tampons. And let's not go near Pisces. (SNIFFS) Oh, what did you expect ` me to come out here and give you a muffin recipe? Come on. She would look at him to see if he was laughing, and if he wasn't laughing, she wouldn't laugh. And if he was laughing, she would go, '(LAUGHS)'. Asking permission to laugh. And I dunno about you guys, but if I don't get laid tonight, there is something really wrong, cos there's about five hours of work and a lot of trowel on, ladies. Women were grateful. They'd come up to me at the door or in the bar and always it was like, 'Oh my God, you're so much like me and my daughter,' or like, 'Oh my God, I'm here with my sister, and literally she had to go to the toilet. 'She pissed her pants.' They just wanted to hear their experience spoken about ` being a parent. I talked about losing my virginity. Getting divorced. Uh, twice. I was single for eight years, so I talked about that a lot. It's like, 'Oh, you're just doing that women stuff.' 'Women doing comedy that's for women,' but men doing comedy is for everyone. Anyone else on birth control here tonight? - No one? - (LAUGHTER) Wow, rock on. I'm a control freak, so that's why I love stand-up, because the one thing that I'm allowed to go, 'This is exactly how it's gonna be,' you know. That's something that would keep me doing stand-up forever, because I think having that control is something that's so, like, exciting. (LAUGHS) Yeah, you write it; you direct it; you probably produce it and do the publicity for it; and you perform it. It's that really close relationship between performer and audience with no one getting in the way of that. * Step right up, folks! Put your money in the... (SPEAKS INDISTINCTLY) for something silly down the street! Friday night Queen Street, buskers are a usual sight, but not many can boast of drawing a crowd of 150. The act's the Topp Twins, a pair of identical twins from the tiny town of Ruawaro near Huntly, who write all their own material, most of it with a strong social message. You know, the Topp Twins... I don't know if we will ever see... I'm gonna get quite emotional. Dame, Dame. # Let's break out of my head # and set me free. Their activism, their passion starting as buskers on the street and just doing it and then travelling the world. And just the boundaries they push. So much of women's comedy comes from a place of protest because of the boxes it's been put in for so much of history. So I think it has to be different. # Liza Minnelli says cabaret is a gift, # and young Ben Miller has given the show a new lift, # but the Topp Twins will give it a brand new twist. It was about what was happening right now, in our time. You know, we were outraged by it. There was apartheid with the Spring Boks. There was the nuclear free movement. There was Maori land issues. There was the homosexual law reform bill. Everything was pretty heavy. And we didn't really make light of it. It was still terribly serious for us, but the bits in-between were funny. What's your name? Jenny. Jenny. Yeah. And what do you do here in Queen Street? I'm a secretary. She's a secretary! Give her a big hand! Let's have a big hand for all the secretaries. Very good. That was the biggest hand I've heard. We'd never really thought about characters or comedy. And we had to do a show at the Little Theatre, Palmerston North. And theatre's very different from working the street. We were halfway through our, sort of, you know, serious country music, and I was thinking, 'This audience is bored out of their nut.' I can see them. I said, 'Look, we went through this as children, and so you have to come with us. 'You've got to go through it as well.' And all of a sudden, it changed. And she gave them permission to just think it was not so serious. # You show them how... It wasn't a huge comedic moment, but for me it was like a moment. We said, 'Let's have add some characters that do country music.' We found this one skirt in a second-hand shop. It was a long... Long gingham skirt, right, and I got the top bit, and Lynda got the bottom bit. Put a bit of elastic in it. And then Lynda started playing with the elastic band, and that was just a ridiculous moment. The only reason why I played with the elastic band was because it was too tight. (LAUGHS) You're beautiful! It was the funniest thing we'd ever done. By absolute accident. We've got a little bit of a problem here. I'll just try and sort it out. If you could just talk amongst yourselves for a little minute. Yep, they're going now. They must have been jammed up or something like that. Ready? I like to hear a bit of politics with music, and laughter rather than a lot of serious, you know, dogmatism. They're able to bring up issues that we're all interested in and somehow make them humorous, and they're do didactic at all. It's great to see dykes, you know, doing it well on stage. (CROWD CHEERS) In the long-run, we're feminist, but the word feminist to us hasn't really been defined. As we'd like to have it defined, but I think we're more... We kinda rely more on women energy. I went through a feminist realisation around them, where I realised that I had slightly dismissed their... impact. # It's a great New Zealand show, # and the country comes to town. They really clocked on to how groundbreaking the incredible, sort of, work with live audiences, inclusivity, family friendly, out at the A&P shows. Careful where you're watching. Whoa! (LAUGHS) They made people laugh. You know, and people knew they were lesbian, but it was all right. It's Jools and Lynda. Yeah, they're all right. # A big day in the country. People became more tolerant. The farming communities had become more tolerant. You know, I mean, that's our job. They normalised, you know, lesbian comedy. People go, 'You're just like the Topps. You're just alone.' I think in the '70s and '80s, you have women coming together who are creating work together and forming these collaborative groups. A funny thing happening in Auckland. It's humour, and it's happening on a Sunday, when New Zealand is supposed to be closed, but, then, a girl's gotta eat. Which is the name of a new women's comedy collective performing at the famous Blue Pot, and they're hotter than Sunday bread. # Live in a beautiful country # with a beautiful backyard view. We'd been at the comedy gigs in Auckland that had been packed out and got regular attendances, but this was the first big girl show. Are you taller than I am? It was wonderful. You know, going to the bar manager and saying, you know, 'What will you give me if I can fill this place wall to wall with people?' And him saying, 'Well, are you gonna bring in a strip show, are you?' Lynda Topp coming over and going, 'Something like that.' We were vastly different, but we had an enormous respect for each other. It wasn't just one person's view of what comedy was. People queued up down the street. They were as excited as we were excited. Everyone felt safe laughing their heads off. There was no boorish heckling. # Duck and cover. My auntie from up north came down, and I think for people like her and my mum and a lot of people, it was the comedy that they felt familiar with at the minute they saw it. I don't think it was a revelation. What do you think about ozone? I said, 'Ozone fresh, always use it.' I'd been at the Blue Pot. I'd been the token female in the comedy store, you know ` getting changed in a green room with, sort of, 10 other guys, and got heckled unmercifully on stage when I'd come out. I had to be better than everybody else, because otherwise an audience would be going away going, 'Well, she's not very good. 'She won't go anywhere. Told you women aren't funny.' And that's where I first met Ginette McDonald. She said, 'Look, it's quite a rare thing to have a female writing a female character.' Hi, everybody. No, it's not Bridget Bardot. My character of Felicity, apparently, was the first female character to be on TV for an extended period of time that was written by a female. I've decided to get married. And make that my job,... Most scripts were vetted, and I can remember the two Daves saying to me, 'Do not change a line, Vicky. Do not change a word.' And I would be thinking as the cameras were rolling, 'How can I change that?' And I said to Ginette, 'Well, what about Lynn of Tawa?' And she said, 'Well, my brother wrote that.' My name's Lynn, and I come from Tawa. That's up the line a bit, eh. The psychiatric hospital is up there. Oh, that's at one end, eh. The borstal's at the other. It's really neat! For women in the '70s, who did not have control of their own careers, like Lynn of Tawa, their roads were so much harder. We were doing late-night shows at Downstage under the edifying title of Knickers. One young woman who was a waitress there said, you know, she had something she could contribute. Ginette McDonald. They were doing late-night review ` sort of witty for people who wore black sweaters and medallions. These people, they had pottery and read Russian poetry and thought of themselves as liberal, so I come on, 'Hello. I come from Tawa. It's down the line, you know. It used to be known as Tawa Flat.' There was no science to it. Ew. Gary, what is the big idea with having a paua fritter inside your footy sock? I had never been to Tawa, but people would ring the talkback radio from Tawa and say, 'Hello.' They'd never say they were from anywhere. They would say they were 'of' and ask things like, 'How do you get snot stains out of a Kaiapoi twinset. Literally.' So, um, I just... Well, years later, they rang me up and said, 'Tomorrow we're doing a spoof celebrity roast 'of one of our presenters, Judith Fyfe, will you be her old school friend?' And I went, 'Yes, all right.' And it was live to air, and I thought, 'I don't know what to do,' and I rang my brother and said, 'What do I do?' And he said, 'Be Lynn of Tawa.' 'I can't be Lynn of Tawa. I'm too old.' He said, 'No, I'll write you something.' And there was not even a fax machine. It was before that sort of technology, so he rang me back, and I wrote on a scrap of paper, and I actually went on live TV with the scrap of paper and, sort of, wittered away. Hello. I first remember meeting... Judith in standard five at Warkworth normal school. She was crying a lot cos it was her first day, so I gave her all my pocket money and a picture of Fabien. Malcolm Kemp, who was a producer in the entertainment department, (DEEP VOICE) he liked what he saw. He liked` Well, he talked like that, Malcolm. I don't know what that was, but that was very, very, very good. I liked that. Ladies and gentlemen, we present from the Avalon Television Centre Lynn of Tawa. Hello, Tawa, and good evening, New Zealand. Hi, Mum. It's my turn to have a show tonight, eh. It's part of their cost-cutting exercises. I loved Lynn of Tawa. I think Lynn of Tawa is awesome. In this vanilla envelope, I have half a dozen of mum's stuffed 'one tonnes'. They're absolutely lovely, eh. People were hearing their neighbours, their mother-in-law. One night, I was out with Dennis, eh, and he drunk this whole bottle of kiwifruit liquor, you know. And there wasn't a thing she ever said that was not part of the New Zealand vernacular. I brought you some, you know, New Zealand seafood. Uh. That's 'fush', and that's oysters, and that's some shrimps. I enjoyed that people didn't like Lynn of Tawa cos she was embarrassing. You would say in the old days 'lower middle class with pretensions'. They are the ones that took the most umbrage. 'We don't really talk like that. It's not true.' 'Nobody speaks like Lynn of Tawa.' There was this controversy with the... mayor of Tawa. Real estate agents and people like that used to make more than passing comments about the fact that it was affecting their trading possibilities. What, it was lowering real estate prices? Well, not only lowering but also in some cases people saying, 'Well, show me a place, but don't show me anything in Tawa, cos I've heard all about Tawa from Lynn.' First time I went to Tawa was when Lynn of Tawa got famous. They had a sign made out of a herbaceous border on the way in, and it said 'welcome to Tawa', so I had to go there and pose in a zany outfit for a Listener cover. Oh, I thought I'd arrived then. * And a very good evening, everyone, from the St James theatre in Queen Street in Auckland, the venue for the Royal Variety Performance. And what a feast of entertainment we have for you tonight featuring the country's top talent. The Royal Command performance was a... an extraordinary evening. (APPLAUSE) It seemed to be based on the fact that any performer still alive and capable of movement should be included in the concert. The highlight of the evening was Ginette. Malcolm King was directing the Royal Variety thing, and he said, 'I'm sorry. I really, really wanted you in that show, but Tom Parkinson thinks you're common.' And I got an urgent call but a few days before due to a female impersonator act dropping out at the last minute due to flu. I was grudgingly allowed to be there. She walked out with no props, nothing. Working? I was almost deaf and blind with terror. Good evening, your majesty. Hello, Mum! And she made a wonderful decision to` which everyone else had veered away from, she spoke directly at the royal box. (CLEARS THROAT) Your majesty, my name is Lynn, and I come from a little place called Tawa. Oh, we were the ones that sent you the paua shell tiara for a wedding present. (LAUGHTER) You know, the one with the two rampant kiwis holding the word progress between their beaks? - (LAUGHTER) - And the matching cruet set? Do you remember that? - Thought you might, eh. - (LAUGHTER) They were all laughing, and I started in a, grotesque sort of way, to enjoy it. Anyway, it'd be really neat if you, you know, could come and visit us in Tawa some time. As a matter of fact, you were supposed to come this Sunday and open the memorial paddling pool. - (LAUGHTER) - And you could always stay at the Rand Motel in Moa Crescent. Actually, it used to be called the Grand, eh, but the G blew off on Wahine Day. I surfed that audience. We still see it, though, eh? No, you can. It's the sort of tourist distraction. You get such a pitch of anxiety that if you get on top of it, it's like flying above the heathers. It's hanging around the neck of the Unknown Soldier at the war memorial opposite the post office. It doesn't happen often, but, wow, that's a feeling. Anyway, God bless you, your majesty, cos,... you know, we all love you, eh. Ta-ra. Part of me detached off and noticed that the queen was wildly unimpressed in her box. Phillip, on the other hand,... well, he had the reputation. I mean, I` What was I thinking? I mean, I know I was slimmer, but I wasn't even wearing a bra. I was wearing a filmy sort of singlet-y thing with my dugs flying free for a royal performance. What was I thinking? Anyway, who cares. We got through it, seemed to go well, and it's certainly been a talking point. Gosh, how many years ago was that? 37. (GASPS, CHUCKLES) Holy cow. # You know that all things are equal. # Can't you see. # You can't be equal pay and get equal say. Dis...gusting! Out! But I only just came in. Shackles of male domination. But it hurts when you run. I was friendly with Rosemary McLeod. She was writing comedy. And she was feminist, and amusingly so. I was sticking determinedly to the idea that women could be funny and maybe get the last word in sometimes. 'Was this my fantasy life,' you're wondering. The vague premise was that it was a woman who lived with her husband, but he wasn't feminist enough for her. Sleeping with four pairs of pantyhose and six pairs of knickers isn't like the real thing. So, the sexual tension was that she was denying him sex and he lived in the washhouse. You wouldn't know the real thing if it jumped up and said, 'How about it?' You said it. All Things Being Equal was a nightmare. Yes. Yes. There was a producer in the drama department... Tony Isaac, and he called me into his office and said, 'Oh, we got a big problem here.' 'We've been scouring the country for a young woman who's attractive and physically fit 'and funny. 'And it looks like we're gonna have to end up with you.' She did the best audition by miles. There was a difficulty. 'You are too fat.' It was felt not by me that she needed to lose weight. No, I was a size 12. Again, not by me. 'I'm prepared to let you be in this if you sign this contract vowing to lose 2� stone 'by this date.' And like a fool, because I'm actually quite biddable, I just found myself signing this frigging thing. Where did you go last night, anyway? Well, first we went down to the dairy to get a paper. Yeah, and then what? I remember my mother saying, 'Gee, you're looking very, very slim.' And I said, 'Oh, I've discovered I'm sick of all the dieting. I've discovered this new thing. 'I go out to dinner, I eat everything I like, and then I stick my fingers down my throat.' And what do you remember about last night? Warwick? Nothing! No requests for a better hairstyle from Bruno Lawrence. He wasn't asked to wear a toupee. I ended up driving Bruno out to Avalon on that first day, and he said, 'Shit, I'm nervous. I think I'll drop a tab of acid.' And I said, 'Bruno, I implore you. 'I implore you not to drop acid. I beg of you, please.' Years later, I said to him, 'Bruno, you nearly gave me a heart attack threatening to drop acid on that live show,' and he said, 'What do you mean? I tripped through the first three episodes.' Is Mike moving back in here? Certainly not. Who's the man, then? Me. There was a feminist point of view. I got hell from feminists because it wasn't feminist enough, and I was the wrong feminist anyway. And it went to two series, and I died a thousand deaths. And at the end of it I thought, 'I think I'll go back to journalism.' All the way through high school, the most exciting parts of the week for me was when the Listener came home to our house and I would read Rosemary McLeod's column and her cartoon. I wanted to do cartoons cos I was constantly drawing in black ink, and I was told that I couldn't because girls can't do cartoons. Many years later, that person apologised to me, but it was much too late. They are never forgiven. That was a really funny, cutting, you know, sort of vicious. I loved them. I loved them. She had such a distinctive style. It would be hard not to be influenced by her. They had female attitude. And they took the piss out of all kinds of things that I thought were stupid too. What sort of response did you get from the readership of the Listener? I got the response I expected, which was, um... 'Who does she think she is?' She always seemed like someone you wouldn't mess with. You don't mock people like the people who read the Listener. Humour is a safety valve. Whatever attitudes we have are well capable of being presented to us in a humorous way. And I was mocking a lot of cherished things that women were doing at that time from a feminist perspective. I was doing it because everything is up for grabs. Do you think you've been misunderstood over the years? No, I think I've been probably quite well understood. (LAUGHS) I was always offending and annoying. It became my... my shtick. (CHUCKLES) And in the end, it became tedious to go out to social gatherings. I would get bailed up in the most awful ways sometimes. I remember someone saying something really offensive to me, meeting me when I was pregnant. 'Ew, a bitch like you, you will have a horrible childbirth,' I remember from this man at a party. I was shocked. It was... It was very isolating work. (CHUCKLES) And what made you keep going? Bloody mindedness. Bloody mindedness. That same bloody mindedness that said, 'I will not wear a hat and gloves because I'm a schoolgirl. 'I flatly refuse.' Yeah, and so that was an exciting time. There were some quite stroppy women working at Avalon. Just a really conscious sense that, yeah, women's voices needed to be heard. Gidday, team! Hey! Oh, it's good to be back. Dump the dishes, leave the kids and have a good stomp. (ALL LAUGH) March! One of the things that I wanted to do with the Marching Girls, and I wasn't thinking this consciously. I didn't have a manifesto, but I thought, 'I just want to write what my life feels like.' And what my life feels like is (CHUCKLES) women talking to other women. We always had such a hard time from the jokers on the sidelines. But you love it. Yeah, don't tell us you're marching for the playschool crowd, Michelle. It was an entirely female writing team, and we never considered having any men write on it, cos we thought, 'Well, why would we?' Unless they've been hanging out in changing rooms with bunches of women, they won't know. The men were husbands and boyfriends, and they didn't have their own stories. This wasn't an accident that women were creating work. It was a conscious thing. Good morning, everyone. Good morning. Morning. She's in a good mood. Probably just had someone executed. Janice Finn approached me, on the basis really of my Listener columns. She was on to the materialism of Auckland at that time. Everyone talked money, and these ghastly buildings were going up, and these ghastly electric blue outfits people were wearing. I'm sick to death of mind-numbing spring brides. But, of course, I had worked in a women's magazine, and I had a vague idea about how things work. And we had so much fun. Move over, darling. Double doors! I shall want double doors. I got great reviews, and I'm proud of that work. Yeah, because it was more like grown-up television. You weren't wearing a straitjacket invented in the '40s by a couple of portly gentlemen in a London club. (CHUCKLES) * Jaquie Brown's the name. I guess you could say I'm a bit of a celebrity around these parts. Of course... Jaquie Brown Dairies was a fantastic sit-com. It was just amazing to see someone who went from a presenting background to be able to act and be funny. I know your wife left you, so did she leave fat Rodney or slim Rodney? Oh, no, that's` Look... I hate to be called a comedian. I don't feel like I am. And cut there. Hi. I'm Jaquie Brown. Here's your bus fare, Rodney. Cheers. What you just saw there was me acting, and you'll see a whole lot more of that when you fund my new show the Jaquie Brown Dairies. Gerard and I worked together on C4, and I would always tell him all the ridiculous things that happened to me in my life ` you know, an interview going wrong. This is your first visit to me. Going to see the gynaecologist and him between my legs going, 'Don't I know you from somewhere?' And I'm like, 'Um...' Wait, wait, wait. I remember now. I remember. Waiheke Island, New Year's Eve. You're a friend of Maggie and Tim's. No. And he was like, 'Wouldn't it be great if we could make a show where you are you, 'but your bigger version of you.' OK, well, the good news is that we finally got you into Women's Day. You see? You see? Fantastic. The bad news is that it's in the Plump It Hottie section. She had qualities that we previously were told that you should never assign to a character, because you're making them unlikeable. You're making them want terrible things, like fame and money and to be successful at any cost. You really think it would be fair for us to pull this interview away from Serita when we've told her she's doing it? She'll get over it. Hey, Jackie Clark. A lot of the time with female characters is they're very demure or they're like complete, like, slut. What they did with the writing of that and the way that Jaquie performed that, she should be unlikeable, but we love her because we recognise those flaws in ourselves, and that desperate ambition sometimes that we might have ` that we don't act on as ridiculously as she does. I really enjoyed being that awful. (LAUGHS) I really did. It was like therapy in a way, where, you know, I'd never be that mean to anybody in real life, but (WHISPERS) I would think those things. Do you know what I love most about, like, going out? The not remembering. Hmm. Like, I can't remember if I had a threesome or foursome. One of the guys was an Asian, so probably just a threesome. Creating those characters for Super City was having characters that you thought you would know on the surface, but they would reveal themselves to not be what you thought they were. A homeless girl living in Myer's Park might be capable of raising a baby. Teeny, you're supposed to be asleep by now. And she might be a more healthy person than the wealthy well-meaning white lady who wants to find herself a little art project. Excuse me, is this contemporary Polynesian performing arts? I'm cleaning. And then also point out awful things in a funny way. (CHUCKLES) Who is Pasha Patel? Well, she's a party girl... Pasha is, you know, she's a very ambitious driven woman, but she also points to the fact that women at a certain age aren't allowed to be sexy any more. It's an iron. Just in the way she is, she's got a lot of ingrained racism, but I wanted to have fun with that. I wanted skin bleach cream. I remember driving around in her car going from meeting to meeting. She would start talking as a character, and I would ask the right questions and just kinda eke out what this world of this character was, so it was always kind of based within her. Her name was Prudence Brown, and I was like, 'You mean Poo Brown?' As in poo brown? Yeah, exactly. That's why you get it. Directing came pretty naturally. After that. It was just a matter of not feeling that imposter syndrome thing that happens as, A, an actress, B, a woman. (CHUCKLES) Or maybe, B,... B` A, a woman, B, an actress. I dunno. But it was just, sort of, gradually accepting that I... And having the confidence to, kind of, take these things on ` write and direct and make my own stuff. Hello. Breaker Upperers. Hello. Breaker Upperers. You wanna be single by March? Consider it done. Breaker Upperers was a giant leap for Maddie and Jackie to be able to have that amount of power and be able to use all of it. (SOBS LOUDLY) The Breaker Upperers was just an idea that I had. She thought, 'What if you could outsource the job of breaking up with your partner?' She swears this was not because she was thinking of it for her own situation at all. She's a very happily married woman. Are you guys interviewing Jesse? Yeah, ask him. It's a comedy, you know, I wanted to co-write, and I thought, 'Madeline Sami.' # Sheri don't wanna be with you any more. # We really wanted to tell a story about, like, women that could be a bit fucked up, and then maybe get a bit better by the end of it, still be a bit fucked up, and it's OK. (HEAVY METAL MUSIC) You better run for your life! She punched me. We always chose the best practitioner for the job, but a lot of them happened to be female. Our two on-set producers said, 'Choose who'd you'd like for your heads of department, 'and if they're female and if they have kids, we can sort it out.' People would do a Monday to Wednesday, and then someone would come in and do the Thursday to Saturday. It didn't have to be, 'Do I want to work in the feature film industry or do I wanna be a mother?' And I really noticed a difference on set. There was a lot less stress because they didn't feel guilty about having left the kids for eight weeks. (APPLAUSE) Obviously, very excited. It's our world premier. Yeah! South By Southwest, we didn't even think about it, and it wasn't until we got to Austin that we were like, 'Holy shit, this is gonna be an audience of Americans ` are gonna be the first people to watch our film.' And I remember sitting there as the lights were going down and thinking, 'Well, if they don't like it, they just don't get it. They're Americans, you know.' But they really liked it. People were identifying New Zealand comedy. They were like, 'That's New Zealand comedy,' and we were like, 'Is it?' And they were like, 'That's it.' Hi. I'm Leonard Maltin, and I just watched the Breaker Upperers. A friend and I were holding hands through the whole end of the movie, and my other hand was just going, 'Yes.' It just doesn't happen that women get that much power. Graham, I want to make love! Ew, Mum. We'll be in the garage watching porn. They just don't. And they created it all for themselves, and they got it, and they went nuts with it. Like, 'Oh my God!' We could do this. We could do that. That felt really good, and it felt like there'd be no more excuses in the future to not do it that way. And there's something so freeing about watching those characters become more popular. Someone like Jaquie Brown started that, and to see so many more of them now, and that's just really,... really heartening. The thing with online, there's a lot more room for experimentation and mistakes. You can't really make mistakes on network television. The comedians that work in the digital space, they might not necessarily resemble the comedians of the old days, but they're pulling from stuff they don't even realise they're pulling from, because it is. It's a lineage, whether people like it or not. With web series, we can do... what we think hasn't been made. It's a great opportunity for new talent across the board ` new actors, new directors, new writers. You have more creative control, and you have less people breathing down your neck. Yeah, and there's no gatekeepers. What up, bitches. Check out my new ink. You've just put a tattoo next to your fanny that reads 'fishy smell'. Flat Three was the first web series to have a core cast of Kiwi Asian women in it. JJ, Perlina and Ally called me up, and I think JJ was the one who first said to me, 'I've never seen Asian women in comedy in New Zealand before, so let's do that.' We had a jar. We each put in 200 cash. (LAUGHS) Oh yeah, we had a jar. And that was our budget for season one. So it says here you've got a degree. Uh, yep, in theatre studies. Yeah. They were frustrated about the lack of control over their own careers. They'd meet each other in the audition rooms and they'd be auditioning for... ...the usual fresh off the boat roles. I'm not going to do this for ever, Mr Aaron. Angrier! Or a doctor. Good girl Asian girl roles. I don't wanna be an accountant. Really? You know. Or the opposite ` dragon lady. Yeah, dragon lady. Or hookers. How much? Huh? Yeah, prostitutes. Prostitutes. Prostitute roles. (LAUGHS) Do you shave your... in the shower? We'd do a story lining session where I'd literally just ask them about their love lives and their dating lives and their work lives, and they'd tell me horror stories. IMITATES BORAT: Very nice. And I'd be like, 'Oh, yep, yeah, yeah, I'll write that down.' Let's have a little talk about this penis between us thing, shall we? Baby Mama's Club is a drama/comedy about four Maori, Polynesian women, who come together to hunt down their elusive baby daddy Johnny. Fuck my life! I did this focus group that really validated a lot of experiences as a young brown mother, going, 'Actually, there's a very negative perception about what young brown mums look like.' Kowhai, hi. Hi, Karen. Wow, Bella, look at you. Did you come as Tomb Raider today? This isn't a costume. My mum forgot. Oh. Some of the biggest producers in this country told me that my idea was unoriginal and I wouldn't find an audience for it. What? For me, it didn't matter whether the idea was good or not. It just mattered that one person saw some brown girls up there killing it, being funny, looking hot, and went, 'Oh, fuck, that's me.' I have never... shown my tits in public. We didn't have any strategy. We just... put it out. We were like, 'Maybe people will watch it.' Just put it on Facebook. Holy! Suddenly, we had a really strong, passionate but small, contained group of fans saying, 'We've never seen comedy like this before in New Zealand. Thank you for making this. So much relate.' And then we got a whole bunch of American fans coming in and saying, 'So much relate.' Roseanne originally came to us with the idea of the rap battle. # We got some Poly girls. We got some Asian girls. # Cos tonight we're having a girl fight! And I'm like, 'Why don't we use it as an opportunity to talk about racism?' Cos those epic rap battles are usually like the worst thing you could say to that person. It's a roast. # I like it when the guys call me yummy honey bunny. # I'm prettier than you, and I actually earn my money. # You probably stole all your clothes from a Ware Whare. We just threw the most racist epithets at each other. They made jokes about flat chests and driving shitty, and we made jokes about Uncle Billy and going on the benefit. But we absolutely could not have done that if we weren't holding hands. # Body up and down, got no ass and no tits. # No wonder you can't drive looking through those small slits. # What's cooking in your kitchen ` your neighbourhood pets? That rap battle was something I knew our audience was gonna love. And they did. We had some prominent Asians private message us and say, 'What did you hope to achieve by saying these awful things to each other? 'Do you think you're legitimising these epithets so that, you know, 'a white boy will watch this and be like, '"Oh, well, if they called each other chinks, then we can call them chinks."' I'm still to this day unapologetic about it. The winner is... Team... - Asian! - Poly! (ALL SCREAM) That video had a couple million views on it. Not once did I ever see an inflammation of racism in those comments between Maori, Pacifica and Asian. If anything, they were laughing with one another. The people that were the most triggered about it was white New Zealand. * (EXHALES) I think the #MeToo has impacted on the industry. I think it's freaked quite a few of the boys out. It's changed green room etiquettes, I think. It's changing line-ups. It's just changing the expectations from low to non-existent to moderate to hopefully high. All the female comics in New Zealand have always been talking about sexism and... misogyny. Male culture around it. Look at Michele A'Court. She's been talking about it from way back. Yeah. She's been talking about it. I think there was a view that what you said on stage lived in a, kind of, context bubble and it didn't really matter because it was just a joke. Even six months ago, you could go on a line-up show and a guy could talk about, you know, meeting this girl, and she was real drunk, and then I took her back to my place, and... people would chuckle. They would laugh about it, you know, whatever the joke is that comes after it or even rape jokes, which has, you know, always been a thing, but now if it comes up, the audience goes real quiet and real uncomfortable, and it's great to see that comics squirm on stage and you're like, 'Yeah, they don't like that shit any more. We're talking about it now, and it's not OK.' You know, so change your shit. Read the room, you know. Read the environment that we live in now. (CHUCKLES) The great thing is it's given all comedians identifying as women a lot of material. I said before that there should be a ban on any men doing Me Too routines. For at least a year. It's like, 'Fucking, let us get our shit in.' # Walking home in the middle of the night. # All alone, and there's no street lights. # I don't care cos the moon is bright and the stars are shining. # Walking home through... Women's comedy faces the same sort of problems as women in society, which is erasure and marginalisation. We're not moaning or whining. We're just telling you what is our pathway, and we want you to listen. You can't tell us our own experience. # Walking home. I've got a smile on my face. # I've also got a can of mace. Comedy, because people don't think it's doing anything; it's just light; it's just fun, people relax, rather than when they go into a Me Too seminar, and there is this magic space of listening, where if we just challenged not too much but just enough, we can take it on board. # But I've got hope # I hope I don't get mugged, # murdered or raped while I'm walking home. # When I'm walking home. # I hope... My dream is that people who don't talk about feminism in their day-to-day lives will watch a sketch and they won't necessarily be like, 'This is a feminist critique of something,' but they'll laugh, and then they'll be like, 'Oh, what was that about?' I think the show is gonna be amazing. Um, I just... I'm kind of... Just worried about the name Funny Girls. It just seems like it... maybe was... thought up by a... a man. Funny Girls was a show, which is basically about putting a lot of funny women on screen. It was a group of us that were made up primarily Jono and Ben writers. We just made up a show. Having those voices in there, I think, was hugely beneficial. Especially because the tone of comedy and what was acceptable changed immensely over the seven years we were on air. Yeah, totally. I mean, we look back at some of the stuff we did in season one, you were like, '(GASPS)'. Oh God. It wouldn't have been made 10 years ago, because I don't think the industry was ready to back women, and I don't think audiences were ready to back women. If we were dudes, they would have totally splashed out on seedless grapes. OK, on a scale of injustices, I'm pretty happy to let that one slide. No... The highlight I'd say is getting a comment from a man, 'Oh, can't stand this. Can't stand these two. 'My wife was laughing the whole time.' It's like, 'Yeah.' (LAUGHS) Look, I don't need you to help me open the jam, OK, because I'm strong, confident,... independent woman who can make her own decisions. Are we still talking about the jam or is the jam now a metaphor? It's a jam! There'll be women out there that hate Funny Girls, and that's fine, cos comedy is so subjective. But there's a big demographic that we are hitting. The younger generation of women are fabulous, and I think they will carry on amazingly. I'm loving doing comedy more now than I ever did. Like, you can put a show on here with a range of women, plus non-binary and transgender comedians, and I don't know that you can say that in a lot of places. The fact that there is Funny Girls on TV now doesn't mean that there hasn't been discussions about why isn't there a Funny Boys sketch show, or, like, you know, 'Is this appealing enough to men?' If at any point we go, 'Oh, great, we've had a breakthrough,' I'm like, 'Well, then we've taken our eye off the ball,' cos it's like something you have to be pushing for all the time. Intros on stage. Getting your name wrong was always a really good one. Jacque Clarke. 'Give her a shot. Why not? Don't leave.' 'Please welcome on stage Justine Smith. I fucked her. She wasn't that good.' 'This next woman bathes in cum. Please welcome Penny Ashton.' All right. It was by another woman. 'This bitch is stealing all my work, 'and I hope she dies soon.' 'Living proof that Kiwis fuck sheep ` Brenda Kendall.' I've always remembered that. Unsurprisingly. www.able.co.nz Copyright Able 2019