Do you have a nemesis?<\/p>\n
I know Adam Hills did one of these<\/a> and he chose me as his nemesis because we often get confused. He said it in a nice way \u2013 but I wouldn\u2019t say Adam, because I honestly believe being mistaken for Adam Hills is one of the great gifts of my life. Even at the peaks of my career going well, it was always quite a good reminder that people never care as much about anything that you care about. Sometimes you\u2019d have moments where you think: \u201cEveryone thinks this or that about me\u201d \u2013 and then someone would say, \u201cHey, I love you Adam!\u201d Adam\u2019s a very well-known comedian, I\u2019m a very well-known comedian and yet, half the time when somebody comes up to say g\u2019day to us, they don\u2019t even know who it is. There\u2019s something really nice and humbling in that.<\/p>\n For about 20 years of my career, I was the most famous Wil or Will Anderson on the planet. I think I\u2019m only third now. There\u2019s an American footballer called Will Anderson Jr who plays for Texas in the NFL now. He\u2019s the most famous. The second-most famous Wil Anderson<\/a> was on Love Island UK. He has a much better six-pack than I have ever managed. Occasionally his influencer girlfriend mistakenly tags me on photos of them and I\u2019ll be like, I\u2019m pretty sure I\u2019m not in Dubai right now?<\/p>\n My actual nemesis was from Facebook many years ago \u2013 I got a message and all it said was, \u201cYou ruined my life.\u201d Which is a pretty rough thing to get from someone. His name was Will Anderson and he was like a 15-year-old kid who felt I\u2019d ruined his life by having his name. I was like, technically, I didn\u2019t ruin your life \u2013 your parents ruined your life!<\/p>\n For almost 30 years you have named your standup shows after a pun on Wil. Are you worried about running out of options?<\/p>\n No! I actually have a file of them, which I add to whenever one occurs to me. Once a year I\u2019ll do a cull because I\u2019ve got more on that list than I have shows left in me. I think I have done 28 or 29 different Wil pun shows so far and I think I\u2019ve got another 50 on the list that I think are good, and another 20 or 30 that would be very tortured. But I certainly don\u2019t have 80 shows left in me. Some of them are going to be saved for the end of my life \u2013 titles like Terminally Wil and Last Wil and Testament.<\/p>\n What is the most chaotic thing that has ever happened to you on stage?<\/p>\n It wasn\u2019t a comedy gig! Many years ago there was an Australian electronic music band called Sonic Animation who were quite a big band at the time and they had two characters in big suits who would dance on stage with them, called Robert Rowley and Theophilus Thistler. And at the Perth Big Day Out, Adam Spencer and I were in those suits. No one knew! But we were on stage dancing in front of 5,000 people, in 40-degree heat, wearing furry suits. I reckon I lost about 12 kilos. There was a chance they were going to find me dead inside Theophilus. Not many people know about that!<\/p>\n Are you and Adam still friends?<\/p>\n Yes! I\u2019m pretty lucky but I think I have really good relationships with all the people I\u2019ve worked with professionally, which is not always the case in entertainment. It can be quite an intense working environment and people get burnt out.<\/p>\n Adam and I were lucky that we weren\u2019t a duo. There was no sense of a breakup or any expectation that we would work together after we finished. We both had our own lives and careers, which meant we got to keep that time we worked together as its own thing. But we did go on tour in 2024 to celebrate 20 years and it was really nice. It was amazing how quickly we found a modern version of the rhythm that we used to have. He\u2019s a good friend, Adam.<\/p>\n What has been your most cringeworthy run-in with a celebrity?<\/p>\n This is way back and I admired this person very much as an actor, but we interviewed Heath Ledger on the radio when he was making Ned Kelly and he was giving us quite a boring, serious interview. I wanted to know why Kelly was so angry, what was inside his anger. So I said, \u201cDo you think it was because he had really bad hat hair?\u201d Heath did not enjoy that. Then I loved The Dark Knight, I thought he was really good in it. So if I had my time over, that one.<\/p>\n Also once, I was a little too, let\u2019s say, in the spirit of the Falls festival when I ran into Paul Kelly backstage. I proceeded to monologue at him for about 20 minutes about a performance of How to Make Gravy I\u2019d seen him do on Rockwiz and why it had been so great. At the start he was being really nice about me paying him a compliment but there was definitely a point where it turned into a hostage situation. But I have a policy of avoiding celebrities outside work, because it\u2019s really hard to make fun of people you like.<\/p>\n \u2018Improv is the ultimate mindfulness\u2019 \u2026 Wil Anderson. Photograph: Black and White publicity<\/p>\n Your latest show is entirely improvised each night. What\u2019s the key for good improv?<\/p>\n It\u2019s actually much like being an old-school security guard, who has a big key chain that has a hundred different keys on it. Each of the keys unlocks something and you\u2019ve got to realise what keys you have on you and what they unlock. So there\u2019s not one key \u2013 there\u2019s a big jangly security guard amount of keys. But I think a big one for me is: react first, examine later. What I mean by that is, whatever my immediate reaction is, it doesn\u2019t have to be my reaction forever \u2013 but it\u2019s better to have one.<\/p>\n The thing I love most about improv is that it\u2019s the ultimate mindfulness \u2013 you cannot be thinking about anything else apart from what you are doing.<\/p>\n What book, album or film do you always return to and why?<\/p>\n