ASKED & ANSWERED

SERIES PRODUCER KIRK DOCKER FACES ALL OUR BURNING QUESTIONS ABOUT ‘YOU CAN’T ASK THAT’

Over four seasons, You Can’t Ask That has done just that – posed sometimes confronting questions to “marginalised” groups. With Season 5 (starts Wed., Mar. 18 at 9pm; ABC) promising more frank discussion from the likes of nudists, HIV-positive people and public housing residents, WHO grills series producer Kirk Docker about the show.

How do you come up with the questions? They all come from the public. This season we had about 12,000 submitted. When I go through them, I’m looking for themes that people continually ask about and then the most interesting way someone’s asked the question. You do get gems people send in and you hadn’t even thought about going with that angle. Have any questions been too offensive? In the public housing one, there were a lot of quite offensive questions. We had “are you a dole bludger?” but also “are you a f--king leech on society?”, so I might prefer to go with the dole bludger one rather than the straight-up insult. When we did people who have killed someone, we had to be sensitive about the way we asked the questions and what they were, so we steered away from gory details and things that were a bit callous. But it’s called You Can’t Ask That so we don’t censor too much. That goes with the answers as well. Have participants ever refused to answer? Everyone who comes on pretty much owns their story. A couple of the gold medallists weren’t too excited about answering whether they’ve had sex with their medal on. For the people who killed someone, stuff about what happened on the day, it was, “Do you really need to know?” And people feel uncomfortable answering things when you’re trying in some way to misrepresent their world.

How do you find participants?

The producer for each episode will find the people however they can.

In the case of nudists, our producer got nude and went to a nudist beach. With the autism episode, a lot of people

nominated to come on, but talking to them over the phone, it was almost impossible to get a sense of what they were like, so time was spent meeting them. For the firefighters, it was trawling news stories. A lot of it is: what does the mix look like and who’s missing?

Do many people turn you down?

Heaps. We spoke to almost 700 people for 68 spots this year. And we have people who agree to do the show and don’t turn up on the day. It’s a scary prospect for a lot of people. How long are the interviews?

Between two and three hours. It’s a long process because their initial answer might not be the one I’m looking for so it requires some follow-up. The best answer might be to the third or fourth question I ask. And people come on really willing to tell their story and want to answer the questions in detail and be heard. Why are some solo and others in pairs?

The pairs has been a really beautiful part of the show, to have them listening to each other’s stories but have quite different opinions. We try and match people as best we can off a hunch. The individuals, sometimes it’s a bigger story and it’s easier for me to interview them on their own; sometimes it’s location. Have you filmed someone but not used them? On two occasions. One withdrew consent after the interview – they decided they didn’t want to be on the show – and another we had some legal issues that meant we couldn’t put it to air. What support do you give participants? We have an independent psychologist and don’t brief them too much. They report back if they’re right to be on the show, and they are available before the interview and afterwards. It’s not uncommon for a participant to have their own psychologist and say, “I’m off to see my psychologist now to debrief.”We also offer it after the show has aired. For some of the very sensitive ones, we’ll do a screening with the participants so they can be prepared. That part of the show we take very seriously.

Was it hard to know where to look during the nudist interviews?

The weirdest part for me was when I told them to take their clothes off. It’s been arranged for them to do it nude but they’re waiting for the instruction. One question was: “Is it OK to look at each other’s junk?” and they say it is, so you have a quick look. After that, I was trying to keep eye contact and not cause discomfort. Have you tried to make a point with any topics? [We] have an opinion about what we want to achieve every episode. We often go in trying to understand a certain point of view. There are topics we want to hit, so we find participants who can talk about that stuff, but we’re not necessarily trying to put across a certain angle, we’re just trying to show a range of ideas and put them out to the world to consider.

Gavin Scott