Feature Story The great Gadsby
Two years after she threw out the comedy rulebook with her hit stand-up show Nanette, Hannah Gadsby is ready to fire again in new Netflix special Douglas, writes Emily Colston.
H annah Gadsby never expected to be here.
During her 2018 Netflix special Nanette, having opened up on the toll that the tensionand-release cycle of comedy had taken on her, the Tasmanian announced her retirement from stand-up, saying she was done with playing her personal trauma for laughs.
“I thought after Nanette I’d have to see myself out,” she said in a recent interview.
“That show was so traumatic to perform … If I was to walk out on stage and not make 2000 people laugh every night, I’d still be fine with it.”
There was just one problem. Despite being unconventional, Nanette became a hit, and people wanted more Gadsby.
“I just don’t think that if Australia had gotten together and thought, ‘OK, you can choose one of your comedians to make it big in the US’, Australia would have had a team meeting and chosen me,” she said.
But once she found herself with this huge international fan base, she had no doubts about what to do with it.
“When you have a platform … you have a responsibility to use your freedom of speech. The more power, the more reach, the more seriously you have to take it,” she said.
“I thought, ‘The world’s watching me now, so probably best I do something I know how to do’, which is comedy, and show that Nanette was not a one-hit wonder.”
And so to Douglas, a show recorded in LA and named after one of her dogs (Nannette was the name of a random countrytown barista).
True to form, Gadsby again discards the rulebook, telling the audience at the outset exactly what she’ll be doing in her show, which ought to ruin the tensionand-release thing comedy relies on, but paradoxically manages to heighten it.
She promises to skewer the patriarchy and takes on the dog park, anti-vaxxers and disgraced comedian Louis C.K.
But despite claiming to be fresh out of trauma, Gadsby still gets personal, examining her relatively recent autism diagnosis.
“There’s a really interesting intersection between sexism and myths about autism, because there’s a certain expectation of what women are,” she says. “And women with autism are just never that thing.”
The army of (mostly male) haters she acquired after Nanette ruffled feathers are unlikely to be won over by Douglas.
“People who wanted me to know that Nanette wasn’t funny; I hate to do statistics, but they were all men.
“They were also men who said I was fat and ugly. ‘You’re a fat, ugly woman, you’re
Raw comedy: not funny’ – it’s a silencing technique.”
Gadsby says when writing the new show, she knew she needed to “play the same card” that she did with Nanette – taking risks and not trying to second guess what people wanted from a comedy show.
“I no longer believe that I am falling short of expectations,” she said.
“I believe it is those expectations that are falling short of my humanity.”
And if people don’t like what they see and hear this time around?
“It’s gonna be good. Unless you don’t like it. Then it’s still going to be good and you’ll be wrong,” she vowed.
Douglas, streaming on Netflix from Tuesday
Gadsby: I thought after have to see myself out.
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