It’s just good to know that I am an alien.” She laughs. Why I felt like an alien dropped in from outer space. “I was working things out for myself on a false premise. In Douglas, she describes getting her autism diagnosis as a “relief”.
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I wanted to show that there’s life after trauma, and more than one way to skin a cat.” “It felt like a time to be more playful, show a breadth of form. Other themes range from chauvinism and male ownership of culture (the show is named after one of Gadsby’s dogs, but also refers to the “pouch of Douglas”, a part of the female anatomy, named by a male scientist), America (“Making fun of Americans is still technically punching up, but that window is closing”), anti-vaxxers, her now-signature art history musings (Gadsby has a degree in art history and curatorship), all the way through to golf, dog parks, Taylor Swift and Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles.ĭouglas is markedly more playful than Nanette: “I did all the heavy lifting with Nanette, so I thought it would defeat the purpose – you know, dwelling,” says Gadsby.
The main focus of Douglas is Gadsby’s high-functioning autism. Watch a trailer for Gadby’s new show, Douglas. I made a choice – that not everything I do will make that kind of impact – and that’s good.” Unless I try to stay shocking and that’s not what I want to do. I managed to do that once but I don’t expect that every time. “And the only way you get that level of attention is you do something that has an impact. I want to be able to negotiate that as gracefully as possible.” One thing that struck Gadsby was that the level of attention she got for Nanette could be “addictive”. What I figure is that – what goes up must come down.
I just set up camp in the shadow of Nanette.” Later, she says dryly: “I’m focusing on the inevitable fall. Was it a pressure to come back with Douglas after Nanette’s huge success? “I didn’t feel desperate to overcome that because that’s an impossible fight. In conversation, she’s still recognisable from her quick-witted stage persona, just with the voltage turned down. Gadsby is good-humoured about this, and friendly and engaged. Our phone call suffers from occasional time lags, which sometimes means I ask Gadsby a new question while she’s still answering the previous one. And that was the surprise of Nanette – what I thought would push me into a corner did the opposite… I thought, I don’t have to jump, I can do what I want.” “I was expecting Nanette to put me in a position where I would have to scale back what I did with my comedy. It was a point of exasperation,” she says. Gadsby “quit comedy” onstage as part of the Nanette set, but clearly this wasn’t meant literally? “Yeah, Nanette was not the end it claimed to be. It was the one thing my trolls and I have in common,” says Gadsby wryly, when she speaks to me over the phone from her Australian home. “I honestly didn’t think that Nanette would be successful. Nanette was hailed as a #MeToo-era comedy game-changer, garnering awards including the (shared) best comedy prize at the 2017 Edinburgh fringe, introducing Gadsby to America and a wider international audience, and winning fans such as Roxane Gay, Monica Lewinsky and Emma Thompson. By the time Nanette aired on Netflix in 2018, Gadsby, now 42, had been performing standup for more than a decade, as well as acting and writing, but her blistering honesty, and refusal to let audiences off the hook, hit a universal nerve. Nanette was a scream of visceral soul-baring, with Gadsby venting her rage and pain about being a woman, being gay, about homophobia (recounting how she’d been beaten up in the street), institutionalised misogyny, and more, all the while deconstructing comedy itself. S oon after she opens her new standup comedy show, Douglas, the Australian comedian Hannah Gadsby challenges the audience by asking: “If you’re here because of Nanette, why? What the fuck are you expecting of this show? I’m sorry, but, if it’s more trauma, I’m fresh out.”ĭouglas, now available on Netflix, is Gadsby’s follow up to her global standup phenomenon, Nanette.