Hannah Gadsby
Her explosive Netflix special created a new paradigm for comedy.
‘ Iam built like a brick shithouse,” Hannah Gadsby tells me over tea in a Hollywood cafe. “Solid, solid human.” She’s explaining how she survived being struck by five cars in the span of seven years. It would be a miracle for anyone else, but Gadsby, who’s been plagued by catastrophe her entire life, takes it more or less in stride. When she was nine, she crashed her bike and needed 56 stitches. When she was 15, she developed gallstones. After high school, she got a job at a supermarket, slipped on some chicken fat and tore ligaments in her knee. She developed pancreatitis. She was the victim of a hate crime. “I’ve had a lot of surgery, and I’m in a lot of pain,” she says, “but you get on with it.” Trauma has been Gadsby’s constant companion. It has forged her experience, her self-concept and, more recently, her third comedy special, Nanette, which catapulted her to global fame after its release on Netflix last June. Nanette is a scorching deconstruction of the ways in which comedy — and art in general — serves power and perpetuates privilege, its stages functioning as an arbiter of who gets to speak, who gets to determine what’s true and legitimate. (Hint: It’s not usually working-class queer girls from remote rural areas.)
Performing her trauma — she revisits her assault twice in Nanette — has proved traumatic as well. As someone on the autism spectrum, Gadsby doesn’t just recall memories, she relives them. “When I think about things, I see them,” Gadsby tells me. “Nanette was excruciating. It nearly killed me.” It also felt like a risk every time she stood in front of an audience. “I was breaking the contract,” she says. “They were there for comedy, and then I didn’t give it to them. That tension in the room, there’s no guarantee that I can hold it. There’s a fear every time I go onstage. Every show was alive and dangerous.” Having gone from “extreme invisibility to extreme visibility” in a very short time, Gadsby now gets recognized in places like New York, where people attempt to traumabond with her on contact. “It’s not a lighthearted ‘Can I have a selfie?’ ” she says. “It’s like, ‘Hey, hi, I’ve been abused. Can I have a selfie?’ ”
Nanette is the critical and comedic version of an anti-ballistic missile designed to explode the dominant narrative, and it has sparked a big evolution in the form. In this way, ironically, Gadsby resembles Pablo Picasso, the archnemesis she dissects in the show, whom Western culture enshrines despite his unrepentant misogyny. But whereas Picasso was considered a genius for blowing things up, Gadsby is being challenged for it — something she expected even as she wrote. “I was keeping in mind that bullshit criticism that always comes with those who step outside of the script. Like, ‘Aw, it’s not comedy, is it? It’s just a one-woman show.’ No one says that to a man pushing [the limits].”
Comedian Ted Alexandro, for one, welcomes Gadsby’s voice. “It’s rare when you see somebody who knows exactly who they are,” he says. “It was just someone who was really comfortable in her skin and in her power, with something to say.”
Gadsby grew up in a small town in Tasmania, where homosexuality was illegal until 1997. Her father was a math teacher, her mom a cleaner at a golf club where Gadsby played whenever women were allowed to. Her culture’s hostility toward gay people contributed to her deep self-loathing as a child. The assault she describes in Nanette took place during her first year at university. After the attack, she transferred to study art history on the Australian mainland but struggled due to her autism and “ended up drifting and homeless.” She worked on farms as an itinerant laborer. Then she injured her wrist and was recovering from surgery when a friend signed her up for a comedy contest. “I’d always been funny, and I’d always failed,” she says. “So for me to fail at comedy didn’t seem like a big deal. I was living in a tent.” She won. That was in 2006. Now she’s pushing comedy into its next phase.
“My issue with Picasso is not that he should be erased from our collective consciousness,” Gadsby tells me. “Quite the opposite. I think he should stay there, but we shouldn’t be weaving a positive angle onto his misogyny and violence. That is part of the story.” A man on the other side of the cafe suddenly bursts into laughter. It’s loud and grating, and Gadsby loses her train of thought. “I’m sorry,” she says with a grin. “That is an awful laugh. Someone should tell him.” Nobody does.
I was breaking the contract. They were there for comedy, and then I didn’t give it to them. Every show was alive and dangerous.