\u201cI\u2019m a professional talker. There\u2019s actually not much I haven\u2019t spoken about yet,\u201d she says.<\/p>\n
Dating dilemmas, her struggles with Polycystic Ovary Syndrome, and even blunt advice to her childhood self (\u201cStop trying to lose weight. My god, seriously, was I put on earth to try to be smaller? It\u2019s so boring!\u201d) are peppered throughout her stand-up routines, radio segments and everyday conversations.<\/p>\n
Her latest New Zealand International Comedy Festival show, Sproull On The Prowl, is about getting back on the dating scene after 15 years.<\/p>\n
What\u2019s it like to return to the dating world – and dating apps – for the first time in more than a decade?<\/p>\n
The 36-year-old says the word \u201cinteresting\u201d comes to mind.<\/p>\n
\u201cI think a lot of my girlfriends are looking for their husbands, whereas I\u2019m not, so I feel quite easy about it.\u201d<\/p>\n
Hayley Sproull is unleashing her dating dilemmas in Sproull On The Prowl. Photo \/ Michelle Hyslop<\/p>\n
This ease often turns into the perfect opportunity to bank some comedy gold.<\/p>\n
\u201cI\u2019ve literally had a guy leave a date, and the first thing I did was open my notes app and quickly write down everything I found hilarious about that interaction. Then months later, I\u2019m like, right, I need to write a new comedy show about being single – that guy\u2019s really given me a good 10 minutes of content.\u201d <\/p>\n
It\u2019s not all courtship comedy though. Sproull says many of her interactions have been perfectly … fine.<\/p>\n
\u201cI\u2019ve gone on a lot of like respectful dates. You\u2019re like, isn\u2019t that nice? Not right for me, but I\u2019ll recommend you to a friend.\u201d <\/p>\n
The Toi Whakaari-trained actor was a self-confessed Shakespeare superfan growing up, but the comedy buzz was always bubbling under the surface during her drama school days. Her foray into TV first started like many other young Kiwi comics: writing for Jono Pryor and Ben Boyce\u2019s Jono and Ben.<\/p>\n
Since then, she\u2019s hosted and been a part of TV shows here and abroad.<\/p>\n
There has been a lag in screen jobs of late (Sproull describes the industry as \u201cfickle\u201d), but that\u2019s about to change, as she\u2019s set to host the reboot of classic Kiwi series My House My Castle.<\/p>\n
\u201cWhen The Great Kiwi Bake Off was cancelled, and Have You Been Paying Attention? didn\u2019t get renewed, I was like, \u2018Oh, I guess it\u2019s all over.\u2019 Now I\u2019m like, \u2018She\u2019s back!\u2019,” she says.<\/p>\n
The balance between working on screen and on stage is a careful one. <\/p>\n
\u201cI actually felt for a while that I\u2019m a TV gal now, like this is what I do. And I actually paused making comedy shows for about four years because I was too busy and thought this is my life now. <\/p>\n
\u201cThen I got the bug again. I just needed to be in front of a live audience and got back into making comedy shows every year.\u201d<\/p>\n
Promotional material for My House, My Castle, which originally ran for 10 years from 2001, says it follows \u201ceveryday New Zealanders as they search for smarter, braver and more creative ways to put a roof over their heads\u201d. <\/p>\n
And Sproull\u2019s own parents know a thing or two about that: they took up her offer of moving from Featherston to live with her in her renovated cottage in Auckland at the end of last year.<\/p>\n
\u201cI feel like for some people that\u2019s a nightmare. But for me, I\u2019ve always been really close with my parents. They just weren\u2019t sure where they wanted to go, and then I was like, \u2018Well, I\u2019ve got space\u2019,\u201d she says.<\/p>\n
\u201cMum cooks and cleans, and my dad vacuums and does the lawns. We have lots of dance parties in the lounge, and lots of laughs. Yesterday, mum was on her way to put something in the garage, and she stopped by my bedroom, and we just talked for an hour and a half on the bed, which was nice.\u201d<\/p>\n
Hayley Sproull says she’s a “professional talker”. Photo \/ Alyse Wright<\/p>\n
Unsurprisingly, Sproull says her family is close, and while her brother, Sam, lives in Melbourne, they still catch up plenty.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe\u2019ve always felt like a little special unit of four, you know? When partners come in, we\u2019re like, \u2018Who\u2019s this? Who\u2019s infiltrating the Sproulls? How dare you!\u2019\u201d she laughs.<\/p>\n
Her other family is one she joined almost four years ago. <\/p>\n
Sproull admits it was never her dream to be on radio. But being live on air five mornings a week is a gift for someone who loves to tell a story and she says her ZM co-hosts, Carl Fletcher and Vaughan Smith, are two of the best mentors she could ask for. <\/p>\n
\u201cFletch, in particular, he\u2019s just got it down. He\u2019s like the conductor of the whole show. Any time you\u2019re lost, I just look at Fletch on my left and be like, \u2018What do I do? What\u2019s happening now?\u2019\u201d<\/p>\n
Hayley Sproull joined Carl Fletcher and Vaughan Smith on ZM in 2022. Photo \/ NZME<\/p>\n
Even before they worked together, Fletcher says he was blown away by Sproull\u2019s comedy songs on the keyboard. Now, he gets the impromptu karaoke on the daily.<\/p>\n
\u201cShe\u2019s very funny and professional – a hard worker that just doesn\u2019t stop. She\u2019ll work four different jobs in a day, and I personally cannot relate due to being incredibly lazy.\u201d<\/p>\n
He says in the early days of the show, he loved when Sproull would say something way too personal or outrageous for radio, not knowing that\u2019s not something they would usually say. <\/p>\n
And as she – in her words – sets out on the prowl once again, both on stage and off, Fletcher has given his mate one dating tip.<\/p>\n
\u201cMy advice was to stop cooking these guys from Tinder a five-course dinner, because a guy coming over at 10pm doesn\u2019t want a lamb roast.\u201d<\/p>\n
My House My Castle starts on Three and ThreeNow on April 8. <\/p>\n
Hayley Sproull performs at the New Zealand International Comedy Festival in May. Tickets can be purchased at www.comedyfestival.co.nz.<\/p>\n
Mitchell Hageman joined the Herald\u2019s entertainment and lifestyle team in 2024. He previously worked as a multimedia journalist for Hawke\u2019s Bay Today.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"\u201cI\u2019m a professional talker. There\u2019s actually not much I haven\u2019t spoken about yet,\u201d she says. Dating dilemmas, her…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":363856,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[9],"tags":[95,665,2046,12941,4915,40367,3682,1862,185794,4241,5431,1360,29133,1364,12022,187,10053,191329,296,302,194,13840,5430,4977,117,111,139,69,1523,3766,50541,6180,1305,213,191328,6642,20110,61,208,19054,6923,80,177966],"class_list":{"0":"post-363855","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-sports","8":"tag-and","9":"tag-around","10":"tag-career","11":"tag-castle","12":"tag-classic","13":"tag-comedian","14":"tag-comedy","15":"tag-dating","16":"tag-dilemmas","17":"tag-gold","18":"tag-hageman","19":"tag-having","20":"tag-hayley","21":"tag-her","22":"tag-host","23":"tag-hosting","24":"tag-house","25":"tag-housemates","26":"tag-into","27":"tag-its","28":"tag-kiwi","29":"tag-like","30":"tag-mitchell","31":"tag-my","32":"tag-new","33":"tag-new-zealand","34":"tag-newzealand","35":"tag-nz","36":"tag-over","37":"tag-parents","38":"tag-reboot","39":"tag-shes","40":"tag-show","41":"tag-sports","42":"tag-sproull","43":"tag-tells","44":"tag-thought","45":"tag-to","46":"tag-tour","47":"tag-turned","48":"tag-what","49":"tag-zealand","50":"tag-zms"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/363855","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=363855"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/363855\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/363856"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=363855"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=363855"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=363855"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}