Parker’s struggle in growing up gay
After conquering Celebrity Treasure Island in 2021, winning the hearts of thousands with his lockdown socialmedia antics, and picking up one of the country’s top comedy awards, Chris Parker has become one of the country’s most beloved entertainers.
But the road to stardom was not easy. Ever since his time at Christchurch Boys’ High School, Parker has had to push to carve out a space for himself as an entertainer. Talking to the Herald’s Straight Up podcast, hosted by Niva Retimanu and Beatrice Faumuina, Parker said his decision to perform on a broken foot reflected the pressure for selffunded artists in New Zealand trying to make things work.
Parker broke his foot in 2015 during rehearsals for his solo show No More Dancing in the Good Room at Q Theatre.
Rather than accept the injury, the comedian convinced himself it was a sprain, and told a doctor he would change his performance in order to get signed off to do it.
“I was about to perform nine nights of this show and I’d selffunded it, I’d put all my money into it,” Parker recalls. “So I was doing pirouettes on a broken foot for a week just on a couple of Panadol.”
It’s the story Parker uses to open his new book, Here for a
Good Time:
Organised Thoughts from a Disorganised
Mind, the latest venture for the superstar comedian that details his experiences in the spotlight and growing up in Christchurch.
“I did have great producers and stuff, but two would be like, ‘You need to look at this properly’, and I just wouldn’t do it. I definitely put my health first, but at the time, you know, you just think you’re invincible and it’s gonna be a great story and you seem to be coping fine.”
Parker got his first taste of the struggle of being an artist in New Zealand when attending Christchurch Boys’ High School — which is better known for producing rugby and cricketing greats than it is for camp comedians with a flair for dance.
To cope, he formed a strong bond with a tribe of fellow artistically minded boys within the school as “we were trying to survive inside of this force that was not really wanting us to flourish”.
However, the difficulties he faced have shaped much of his comedy.
“I do feel like those challenges in your life teach you something or you learn or they shape you. And so I feel, in a way, this rugby-obsessed, allboys school was a microcosm for what it is like to be an entertainer in this country sometimes. You are pushing against the mainstream.”
Parker also felt different due to being gay, something he didn’t fully come to terms with until he had left Christchurch and gone to drama school in Wellington.
He describes the feeling as sensing something in the distance that you can’t quite put a name to, and only get closer to as you get older, until you finally find yourself face-to-face with it and have to name it and accept it.
“That whole process of the figure in the distance, I felt like everyone had that, and I didn’t think it was just me. And I think that is true of adolescents — we’ve all, as teenagers, got something we’re trying to figure out, and mine was the big G-A-Y question. But I just sort of thought everyone was questioning that.”
His experience was “isolating” — “it’s just you and your internet search history” — and the lack of LGBT representation at the time made things harder.
“The pendulum has swung now the other way, and we are getting all this beautiful representation, but it’s happened so fast to the point where people kind of roll their eyes when they talk about representation.
“But
I needed someone to be honest with me because just to be all ‘Be yourself ’ was not enough.
Chris Parker
what it was like when there was no representation, we didn’t see ourselves and we knew what that felt like to try and form an identity when you couldn’t have this public discourse about it. And so growing up, who was gay out there? Who was gay and talking about it? I just didn’t know.”
Parker felt it superficial to write a chapter in his book about haircuts, but realised it was the first time he had met anyone gay and it had been a way his mum had tried to introduce him to the idea of sexuality.
Parker left school over a decade ago and has since helped create the representation he didn’t have.
His Celebrity Treasure Island victory, which won $100,000 for Rainbow Youth, helped cement his status as a local gay icon, but he said it was difficult to physically be that representation. “What I’ve kind of learned is the art of just existing and putting yourself out there allows other people to comment on it. But I just have to keep following my intuition and just keep ticking true to my voice and putting myself out there.
And then it’ll have this ripple-out effect, hopefully.”
He said there was a need to constantly challenge what was accepted as representation — something he faced in writing a book about gay dating, being aware his audience was largely made up of older women.
“I think that it’s important to share not only ‘love is love’ and pride and be yourself, but actually what is it to work through shame, what is it to be dating when you don’t accept or love yourself and you are doing horrible hook-ups in places that you know you will regret.
“It’s hard to write about that, but actually that’s what it means to represent myself now. When I was coming out, I needed someone to be honest with me because just to be all ‘Be yourself ’ was not enough. I needed to learn, ‘oh my god, these public figures also have shame and weakness and vulnerability’.”