Across six episodes, icons in music and screen join Double J host Zan Rowe to delve deep into intimate moments in their lives as they share five songs they love.<\/p>\n
“I was 15 or 16 and hanging out with 30- and 40-year-olds all the time,” he says.\u00a0<\/p>\n
“We’d hang out in smokers’ rooms. I’d get kicked out of pubs and not be allowed to perform.\u00a0<\/p>\n
“But all of it felt exciting. To know it was a thing that was possible, it was an incredible time.”<\/p>\n
Aaron Chen was drawn to stand-up early. In primary school, he would watch the Melbourne International Comedy Festival Gala on TV and quote jokes to friends in the playground.<\/p>\n
Aaron Chen’s Take 5 songs:Arcade Fire \u2013 Neighbourhood #1 (Tunnels), 2004Matt Berry \u2013 Take My Hand, 2009Vampire Weekend \u2013 Jerusalem, New York, Berlin, 2019Faye Wong \u2013 Dreams (\u5922\u4e2d\u4eba), 1994Kacey Musgraves \u2013 Deeper Well, 2024<\/p>\n
From there he fell down a rabbit hole online, discovering the one-liner genius of Mitch Hedberg and chasing that same kind of offbeat brilliance.<\/p>\n
It was online where Aaron could play and build his particular style of irreverent “alternative” comedy for fans just like him.\u00a0<\/p>\n
Today, Chen’s YouTube channel has millions of streams, beaming into homes just like the Gala had.<\/p>\n
‘It was funny that I didn’t know what I was doing’<\/p>\n
It wasn’t long until Aaron became a mainstay at MICF himself, winning their Class Clowns competition when he was 15, and a year later being a finalist in Raw Comedy.\u00a0<\/p>\n
In 2017 he debuted his first full show, and won Best Newcomer.<\/p>\n
Around the same time Aaron started hosting an ad hoc tonight show on ABC2, Aaron Chen Tonight, an experience that threw him in the deep end.<\/p>\n
“I didn’t know what I was doing. But it was funny that I didn’t know what I was doing.”<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
Aaron Chen and fellow Australian comedian Sam Campbell joined forces early in their careers. (Supplied)<\/p>\n
By his side was comedian Sam Campbell, who has also gone from creating his own wild online comedy to international acclaim on stage and screen.<\/p>\n
“Me and Sam had just done a show together at Melbourne Comedy Festival and then we were doing this,” Chen says.\u00a0<\/p>\n
“Creatively, it was a really exciting time, they let us do a lot of crazy stuff on TV. That was a plus.”<\/p>\n
You gotta have faith<\/p>\n
This whirlwind of attention ran parallel to moving out of home, far away from Asquith and into Sydney’s Inner West where comedy and partying went hand in hand.<\/p>\n
Chen was raised a churchgoing Christian but struggled to reconcile these two very different parts of his life. Faith took a back seat.<\/p>\n
As his career was taking off, Aaron felt something was missing.<\/p>\n
“My personal life was out of control. I didn’t feel very grounded.\u00a0<\/p>\n
“So, I started becoming interested in it again, I wanted that anchor.<\/p>\n
“It can feel pretty dizzying doing comedy, getting to the top of that and doing massive theatres. But to step away from that and have a bigger purpose beyond just being more successful was a relief.”<\/p>\n
Take 5 with Zan Rowe is out now!<\/a><\/p>\n Hollywood stars, pop gamechangers and songwriting royalty are all on board for the next season of Take 5 with Zan Rowe<\/p>\n He was also realising that, when he walked on stage, people would just start laughing. It’s a response many comedians would be stoked about, but for Aaron there was no room for improvement.<\/p>\n “It would be hard to figure out if I was still doing the best I could.”<\/p>\n Coming to America<\/p>\n He began travelling to the US, where no-one knew who he was, to start again. It was while in Los Angeles that he got an email asking him to audition for a show called Fisk.<\/p>\n “I knew it was Kitty Flanagan making it, that’s already such a great start,” he says. “But I didn’t know that she had me in mind for the role.\u00a0<\/p>\n “The lines fit my voice nice, I just did it in a few takes. No-one would have known it would be the biggest show.”<\/p>\n Loading Instagram content<\/p>\n This year Aaron won the Logie for Best Lead Actor in a Comedy, as Fisk made a clean sweep, winning every award it was nominated for.<\/p>\n Despite being one of the ABC’s most successful comedies of all time, Aaron’s drive toward the unknown remains.<\/p>\n “I wanted to move to America to get better at comedy. All the comedy I’d consume on YouTube was tonight show spots.”<\/p>\n It was the land of opportunity. Aaron has already appeared on Late Night with Seth Meyers and is filming a Netflix special this week.\u00a0<\/p>\n Soon, he’ll star in The Dink, a movie about pickleball produced by Ben Stiller.<\/p>\n “It’s so surreal.”<\/p>\n Just as Aaron had his dad’s support on those long drives, his wife Esther made the leap with him to move to New York City where they now live.<\/p>\n “She’s much more outgoing than me. Esther helps me with my comedy as well, I’ll run ideas by her or she’ll tell me ‘What you said today, that wasn’t funny'”.<\/p>\n Despite his meteoric rise in Australia and a career at the tipping point in the US, Aaron feels a big theme emerging of settling down. Into his faith, his marriage, and what matters.\u00a0<\/p>\n “I like thinking about things over time. How they’ll get to the point they’ll get to. Like compound interest.”<\/p>\n Stream all episodes of Take 5 with Zan Rowe free on ABC iview<\/a>. Hear extended Take 5 podcast episodes on the ABC listen app<\/a>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"While his high school mates were doing homework, Aaron Chen spent weeknights driving from Sydney’s northern suburbs to…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":146694,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[8],"tags":[99260,99258,99257,99259,64,63,23322,134,99261],"class_list":["post-146693","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-entertainment","tag-aaron-chen","tag-aaron-chen-tonight","tag-aaron-chen-wife","tag-aaron-chen-youtube","tag-au","tag-australia","tag-djfrontpage","tag-entertainment","tag-esther-shim"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/146693","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=146693"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/146693\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/146694"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=146693"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=146693"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=146693"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}