You recently released a free standup special, Woof!, where you are a sock puppet. I guess the question would be – why?
I just got sick of being seen. Well, OK. There’s lots of different reasons. A little bit sick of seeing myself reflected. Also, there’s a lot of standup now and it all looks the same. People don’t watch standup comedy any more, it’s usually the second or third screen. It’s going on in the background. So that’s why I did an album – if you’re not gonna watch it, why bother filming the whole thing?
And the sock puppet … I wanted something homemade, because we’re entering the era of AI slop and I feel queasy when I watch that. What the internet has taught me is we’ll watch anything and it doesn’t have to be high quality. So I thought, how about if I make something that anyone can make – sort of like Play School, I got into the useful box, so to speak – and cobbled together a fairly average sock puppet. That’s my hand. That’s my sock.
I mean, it is odd.
It was vaguely nightmarish.
Yeah, thank you! The theme of it is anxiety and I thought we could reflect that in the aesthetic. I think we nailed it.
I understand that you look up spoilers when you’re watching a film or a TV show because you find plot twists panic-inducing. Has there ever been a plot twist where you’ve thought, I regret that I didn’t get to experience the surprise of that?
No, no, no! When people get angry at spoiler alerts, I don’t understand them. I think I get more out of the story the second time anyway. The first time I’m just tense. When everything’s going nicely, you know there’s a group of writers going, “How can we ruin this?” Because we have to watch people’s worlds crumbling all the time.
I just feel really sad when people’s worlds crumble, so I get that out of the way. I know how it’s going to happen and I get less tense. One of my favourite films is Get Out. Have you seen Get Out? I haven’t, but I think it’s a great film. I’ve read all about it. I’ve read other people’s think-pieces about it and I’ve seen a few clips and I’m like, this is an amazing film. I have no desire to watch it. Can’t do it.
What are you secretly really good at?
Sex. No, I mean interior design. Interior design. Very good at placing trinkets.
Does good interior design sometimes lead to sex?
That’s my experience.
What is your most controversial pop culture opinion? You say in Woof! that you don’t get Taylor Swift …
Yeah, I’m unable to get swept away. I look at fandom in general and it seems I’m unable to really participate in it. I don’t think I’m able to form parasocial relationships. If I haven’t met someone, I fail to form an attachment. Although, sometimes I look at a rock and I feel sad. But sometimes they just look sad. You’ve seen a rock and it’s just … ?
Anyway, I have lots of controversial pop culture opinions. I can’t watch reality TV. And it’s been going on a while. It feels like it’s here to stay. And I just can’t.
Your upcoming show at the Melbourne international comedy festival is The Evening Muse, in which you will act as a late-night host. You’ve been on all of the late-night shows in America. Who was the best?
Stephen Colbert. Although I did Conan’s podcast and he’s also extraordinary. The premise of my tonight show is that I’m profoundly ill-equipped to host a tonight show. I’ve got a suit and an ego, but I can’t talk and listen at the same time very well, which is a really key skill set for interviewing. It’s essentially like one of my standup shows, but I’m going to have guests on from the festival and ask them questions from the 1981 Genus edition of Trivial Pursuit.
I understand you have a particular attachment to Trivial Pursuit.
I do. Archaic trivia really soothes me. Now we have access to the internet, we feel like we have all the information in the world, and I grew up in a time when we didn’t have any information. My brain was trained on a scarcity of information. You could choose any country to write a project on in high school and I chose East and West Germany in 1994. That’s how up-to-date our library was. When the internet first came in, I loved it. I’m so curious. But now I feel like I’m being waterboarded by information, so I’ve regressed.
Who was the most surprising fan of Nanette?
There have been a lot of surprising fans. The Obamas spring to mind. I never met them but I did find out that they sat down as a family and watched it. And if I ever do meet them, I would apologise for ruining their evening. But they enjoyed it. Well, I don’t think enjoying is the word, but they saw it. What a family movie night.
Hannah Gadsby, pictured performing Nanette at the Edinburgh Fringe in 2017. Photograph: Murdo Macleod/The Guardian
What is the most chaotic thing that has happened to you while on stage?
One time, someone threw a potato on stage. I ignored it – I’m very professional. But at the end of the show, we picked it up and it had been hollowed out. In the potato hole was a piece of paper rolled up into a little scroll. It was a vessel for a message, and the message was pretty much asking me to participate in a throuple.
But the person had a partner and in the note they acknowledged [Gadsby’s wife Jenny] Jenno’s existence – and asked for a throuple. And I don’t know who misses out. We never called. I don’t know whether they couldn’t count or they didn’t know if there’s a word for a fourple. Or they just thought, leave Jenno! Maybe I was the one who was supposed to not participate. We’ll never know.
You appeared in the show Sex Education. What has stayed with you from your own sex education?
Not much. It’s probably why I’m a lesbian. Stick with what you know. It was the dark ages when I went to school. It was the 1980s in Tasmania, there was a small population. But a lot of Tasmanians leave, so we punch above our weight in terms of producing children. So there was some sex education going on when I was growing up. Someone was doing it right – or a lot of good guesswork.
The thing that’s stuck in my mind is we were separated – the girls weren’t to know about the boys and the boys weren’t to know about the girls. In my mind, that seemed counterintuitive.
What is your least favourite bird and why?
It’s a really great question. I don’t trust birds generally. Hollow-boned little freaks. But I’ve never thought to rank them.
I am afraid of the cassowary. When I was a kid, I was afraid of crows because they sounded like my mum. Crows are great, just for the record.
What has been your most embarrassing run-in with a famous person?
I was at the US Open with my publicist, who was an incredible powerhouse of a woman. I was new to that world – we’d been watching the tennis in Billie Jean King’s box, which is a great thing to say, watching Serena Williams. And they do this thing at the Open where they put the famous people in the crowd on the screen and everyone goes, “Oh, there’s a famous person.” So there’s Anna Wintour and I think Neil Sedaka was there. Then they put Anna Kendrick and Brittany Snow on, and I don’t know who they are. I missed the Pitch Perfect movies. Sorry, Rebel. I’ve since caught up. But I just wasn’t sure who Anna Kendrick was.
So I did a bit of a Google and I’m like, “Oh, OK, got a grip, they’ve been in these films.” And it was Trolls that stuck in my mind – which is not what she’d put at the top of her list, but it’s what jumped out as I was quickly looking.
When we went out, we saw her leaving at the same time. And I said to Jenny, “Oh, there’s Anna Kendrick.” Because I now know who that is. But my publicist heard that and thought I’d always loved Anna Kendrick and I’d want to meet her. So she said, would you like to meet her? And I said, “Oh, God no.” But she’s a publicist, so she’s like, of course you do!
And she went over and said, “Anna Kendrick, Hannah Gadsby wants to meet you.” And Anna Kendrick turned around and said, “Shut the front door! I really want to meet Hannah Gadsby.” And I’m like, I don’t know how to process that because you shouldn’t know who I am and I should know who you are. The mistake’s mine.
I don’t remember my exact wording, but when you meet someone, you’re supposed to compliment them on the work that you enjoyed. And I’d only just looked her up. And so I said, “You were great in Ogres.”
Just imagine that. It’s Trolls, for a start. She’s very good in Pitch Perfect. She was also wonderful in that moment. There’s a great photo of me with these two very, very incredibly talented, but tiny women. I felt like the ogre in that.