Bret? Present. Jemaine? Present.
Yes, in a logistical feat worthy of Murray, the amiably shambolic band manager played by Rhys Darby who wrangles them in Flight Of The Conchords, Empire has brought together Bret Mckenzie and Jemaine Clement for a celebration of their now 15-year-old HBO show. In fact, we’ve done it twice. In Wellington in late June, the Kiwi comics worked it for a photoshoot. Then, a couple of weeks later, we bring them together on a Zoom call, Mckenzie still in Wellington but about to embark on a world tour for his debut solo album, Clement now on holiday in a small village in Greece.
These days they only hang out once every few months, and they’ve not done a paired interview for a while, but they’re happy to get the band back together to reminisce about the TV show that changed their lives. Following the lives of struggling musicians called Bret and Jemaine in New York, with but a single fan, Flight Of The Conchords was a breath of small-screen fresh air. Its deadpan heroes endure all manner of hilarious indignities in their pursuit of love and success (complaining about a gig in a public library, Bret bemoans, “It’s so hard to play there, because everyone wants us to be quiet”). And in a plethora of joyously creative fantasy sequences, the duo perform earwormy comedy songs, from self-deprecating sex jam ‘Business Time’ to the exceedingly French ‘Foux Du Fafa’ (“Gérard Depardieu/ Baguette/hon hon hon”) via rap battles, R&B ballads and cosmic tributes to David Bowie.
On screen, they failed relentlessly. In real life, they were a triumph. Wrapping up the show after just two seasons, Mckenzie and Clement hurtled on to a host of Hollywood adventures: the former winning a Best Original Song Oscar for The Muppets and playing elf Lindir in the first Hobbit film; the latter taking on villain duties in Men In Black 3, voicing a crab in Moana and bagging a role in the upcoming Avatar sequels. They’re busy guys. But not too busy to tell us about the time they were the opening act for Gollum.
Is it true that in your early days you wound up performing your Lord Of The Rings-spoofing song, ‘Frodo (Don’t Wear The Ring)’, to the actual cast of The Lord Of The Rings?
Bret Mckenzie: Oh, yeah. We did it for their wrap party.
Jemaine Clement: It was for either The Two Towers or The Return Of The King. We hadn’t done the show then, so they didn’t know who we were. And we hadn’t seen the movie — all the things in the song were from the trailer. We’d just played it at a club, and someone on the crew had seen it.
Mckenzie: It was Friday-night drinks in the studio where they were filming, and we stood on the side of a papier-mâché mountain and sang. It was a pretty weird gig, actually.
Clement: But it was good. They all came up to us and Ian Mckellen said, “Very good. Very good.”
Mckenzie: He was a big supporter.
Clement: So was Elijah Wood. The other great thing about that gig is that Andy Serkis got on after us and did a rap battle as Gollum and Sméagol. Which was pretty special.
Let’s rewind. You met in Wellington and started a band together, once described as “New Zealand’s fourth-most-popular guitar-based, digi-bongo, a cappella-rapfunk-comedy folk duo”. When did it occur to you to mix music and comedy? Mckenzie: Well, we weren’t very good at playing other people’s songs. And we didn’t know many chords. So we just started making songs that were one, two and three chords.
Clement: Our first song had one chord. It’s called ‘Rock Beat’.
Mckenzie: It was just E.
Clement: Yeah, E7. We actually play it briefly in the TV show: “I pulled a muscle last night/ Dancing to a rock beat.” And ‘Foux Du Fafa’ is two chords.
Mckenzie: One of the first gigs I remember, we played ‘Foux Du Fafa’ with a double-bass player and a trumpet player.
Clement: People kind of went crazy. They were like, “More! More!” But we didn’t have any more. We only had that one.
Mckenzie: We left them wanting more. [Laughs] It was a good technique.
In the show, your characters wind up performing in some soul-crushing scenarios. How much of that came from your own experiences? Clement: The show is kind of us in our early thirties, re-enacting our lives in our early twenties. There’s an episode we did where we