The ‘Nanette’ comedian and the writer discuss trauma, body image and fan encounters
In June, the Australian comedian Hannah Gadsby’s standup show Nanette was released on Netflix. This supposed swansong of a set had previously stunned audiences from Melbourne to Edinburgh, with its devastating twists on who and what jokes are for, and how suffering and trauma are turned into material. What begins as an apparently mainstream routine segues into a story about something troubling that happened to Gadsby as a young woman, told first one way – and then, brutally, another; it’s at once a deconstruction of the art form (her work has been billed as “anti-comedy”), and a critique of her audience – angry, smart, radical.
Nanette’s second life turned Gadsby from a working comic into a global star, lauded for her candour and insight by everyone from Ellen Page to Monica Lewinsky. Her father, she says, has always collected anything written about her, but his task is becoming more and more demanding. “With this whole Nanette business, he started going, ‘God, the articles are getting a bit long now. There was one in the New York Times – three pages. I’m not made of toner.’”
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