MAKING THE BEST OF A BAD SITUATION

is They stranger say truth than fiction – and Michelle Law puts forward a strong case for it being much funnier, too

Michelle Law honed her comedic voice in difficult circumstances. “Having alopecia in high school really helped people look past my appearance and want to be friends with me, because I cracked jokes and made them feel at ease.”

Law’s astute outlook on life informs all her work, and has been a driving force behind two of her biggest personal projects – her play, Single Asian Female, which just closed its second hit season, and her semi-autobiographical series Homecoming Queens, streaming now on SBS On Demand. “My friend Chloë was diagnosed with breast cancer in her early twenties,” she says. “We’d go to parties with other people our age and feel as if we no longer belonged in that world... We’d sit in Chloë’s car and commiserate with each other, wishing there was a show that depicted experiences like ours.”

Law is a master at embedding real heart into larger-than-life characters and challenging her audience’s ability to empathise. “I think there’s a way to make anything funny, but there needs to be a reason behind it; [it’s] about having a sense of empathy and the perceptiveness to know when a serious thing should be undercut with humour or when a serious thing is just a serious thing.”

Liv Hewson, who stars as Chloë in the seven-part series, says that’s what makes Australian comedy so great. “When I think of what I love about Australian comedy, I think of a healthy mix of the grounded and the absurd. I think the best writing plays with language, status and either ridiculous characters in a grounded situation or grounded characters in a ridiculous situation.”