{"id":540052,"date":"2026-04-19T22:08:09","date_gmt":"2026-04-19T22:08:09","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/540052\/"},"modified":"2026-04-19T22:08:09","modified_gmt":"2026-04-19T22:08:09","slug":"fisk-really-changed-my-life-aaron-chen-on-leaving-australia-for-the-us-and-his-meteoric-rise-comedy","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/540052\/","title":{"rendered":"\u2018Fisk really changed my life\u2019: Aaron Chen on leaving Australia for the US and his meteoric rise | Comedy"},"content":{"rendered":"

Near the end of his Netflix<\/a> special Funny Garden, Aaron Chen checks in with his New York audience. \u201cDid any of you come to the show because you know me from Fisk?\u201d he asks. A chorus of enthusiastic whoops answers. \u201cIt changed my life,\u201d he says. It\u2019s a good setup for a joke about how his audience shifted overnight from 90% men aged 25 to 34 (\u201cThis is not a good demographic. A lot of incels\u201d) to women aged 45 to 54 (\u201cThese beautiful, white angels!\u201d). But, like much of his comedy, there\u2019s a twist of sincerity.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt did really change my life,\u201d Chen tells me. Fisk, the ABC\u2019s hit sitcom about a beleaguered suburban probate law firm, put Chen \u2013 who plays probate clerk come self-styled \u201cwebmaster\u201d George \u2013 on the map not only in Australia (where he won a Logie in 2025) but also the US, where the series landed on Netflix in August 2023. When Chen moved to the US that very month, he found he already had a small but enthusiastic fanbase. \u201cI was shocked that people in crazy places like Burlington, Vermont, would be coming to shows.\u201d<\/p>\n

Kitty Flanagan as Helen and Aaron Chen as George in Fisk season three. Photograph: ABC<\/p>\n

The 30-year-old has had a bumper few years. It started with Fisk, which premiered in Australia in 2021 and was an immediate hit, going on to two more seasons. Two more surprise hits followed: the ABC gameshow Guy Montgomery\u2019s Guy Mont Spelling Bee<\/a>, in which Chen played the host\u2019s delightfully deadpan assistant; and season three of 10\u2019s gameshow Taskmaster Australia, which Chen won.<\/p>\n

At the end of 2024, he filmed his first feature film: the Ben Stiller-produced comedy The Dink, starring Jake Johnson as a washed-up tennis pro turned pickleball champ and Chen as his best friend (it\u2019s slated to premiere on Apple TV in July). Then 2025 brought a Logie for best comedy actor<\/a>, for his role in the third season of Fisk; and a spot on Late Night with Seth Meyers. When we speak he\u2019s just wrapped a US tour supporting Ali Wong; next month he will play an intimacy coordinator alongside fellow Australian comedian Sam Campbell in the new HBO comedy series Make That Movie.<\/a><\/p>\n

But when I ask Chen what the standout moments of his last few years have been, he goes straight to the grind of touring. \u201cThe highlights are always doing standup comedy,\u201d he explains. He\u2019s hoping the Netflix special will boost audiences for his live shows. (Though it\u2019s too early to judge its impact in the US, Funny Garden debuted in Netflix\u2019s top 10 in Australia.)<\/p>\n

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Filmed in New York, where Chen is based, Funny Garden collects his best material from three years spent touring and doing club spots in the US, and draws heavily from his outsider perspective on his new home country, while riffing on his Chinese-Australian identity. \u201cI love America, you\u2019ve got diversity here,\u201d he tells the crowd. \u201cWell, not in this room.\u201d<\/p>\n

Chen is a master of the one-liner, delivering observational comedy in bite-size chunks. Generally, his material is gently offbeat. The spikier barbs \u2013 a quip about vaccines and autism, say \u2013 are often followed by a sweetly dimpled smile and a little chuckle. It\u2019s disarming, and thoroughly charming.<\/p>\n

Chen has been honing his craft for half his life, starting off doing open-mic nights in Sydney after winning the Class Clowns<\/a> national competition for high schoolers in 2012, aged 16.<\/p>\n

His breakthrough came in 2017: he won best newcomer at Melbourne international comedy festival for his first solo show, and he started getting booked on TV shows like Get Krack!n. Then his weekly live comedy show John Conway Tonight \u2013 an absurdist spoof of US nightly shows, in which Chen played the sardonic sidekick to the titular host \u2013 was picked up by ABC for its new digital channel. It was a short-lived experiment \u2013 less than six months all up \u2013 but when Conway departed the show<\/a> due to illness, Chen was subbed into the host role, at the tender age of 22.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt was a big time of growing up,\u201d Chen reflects. \u201cI made a lot of lifelong friends through that process, but also it was a very tough time. I learned a lot about the industry.\u201d<\/p>\n

When he went back to live comedy he found, for the first time, he could make a living. \u201cIt felt like I was following in the footsteps of people like Ronnie Chang and Matt Okine, who had insane growth at the festivals,\u201d he says. It was a heady couple of years of selling out shows and racking up TV credits.<\/p>\n

It\u2019s telling that no sooner had he hit his stride, Chen started to feel uneasy. \u201cWhen I went on stage, people were already laughing \u2013 so you\u2019re like, I don\u2019t know if I\u2019m actually good, or these people just know who I am,\u201d he says. \u201cIt became existential: where do I go from here? I became scared of the idea of staying in Australia and being at that level.\u201d<\/p>\n

Aaron Chen with his wife, Esther Shim, at the Aacta awards in 2025. Photograph: Dan Peled\/Getty Images for AFI<\/p>\n

Landing the role of George in Fisk in 2019, followed by the pandemic in 2020, kept him in place \u2013 for a time. \u201cI became community-minded and I was into gardening, and I liked that lifestyle,\u201d he says. He got married. But when his wife, Esther, asked if he\u2019d live overseas, he realised he wanted to try his hand at New York\u2019s comedy scene.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt felt like starting from the middle, when I first got here,\u201d he says. \u201cPeople still had to get to know me, but it was kind of a sped-up process, because I had been doing comedy for so long. And then I started touring in America, which was really fun and interesting.\u201d<\/p>\n

He regularly performs at New York\u2019s hallowed Comedy<\/a> Cellar, doing three or four shows a night to a mix of locals and tourists. \u201cMost of the time it will go well, sometimes it doesn\u2019t. It feels like a very honest audience,\u201d he says.<\/p>\n

Currently he is embracing a \u201csettled period\u201d, writing new material and starting to develop his next live show. Hollywood movies and Netflix specials aside, he is remarkably grounded.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe rewards of these things \u2013 it\u2019s obviously amazing,\u201d he says. \u201cBut I\u2019m easily overwhelmed. I\u2019m a low-capacity type of guy.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Near the end of his Netflix special Funny Garden, Aaron Chen checks in with his New York audience.…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":540053,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[32],"tags":[6491,96,56,54,55],"class_list":{"0":"post-540052","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-celebrities","8":"tag-celebrities","9":"tag-entertainment","10":"tag-uk","11":"tag-united-kingdom","12":"tag-unitedkingdom"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/540052","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=540052"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/540052\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/540053"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=540052"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=540052"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=540052"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}