Life after Nanette: Hannah Gadsby opens up (from quarantine) about her crusading new special Douglas

Queeries is a weekly column by CBC Arts producer Peter Knegt that queries LGBTQ art, culture and/or identity through a personal lens. 

Nearly two years after her special Nanette unleashed a shattering vulnerability that very much changed the landscape for LGBTQ comedy, Hannah Gadsby is back.

The Australian comedian's follow-up show, Douglas (named after her dog), made its way to Netflix this week, having been filmed just before the world descended into quarantined chaos. Like its predecessor, Douglas is crusading comedy that mixes some exceptionally hilarious moments with thought-provoking discussions of everything from anti-vaxxers to the patriarchy to Gadsby's own autism. And as we continue to think about what world we want to exist as we try to move past the pandemic, it certainly makes for compelling quarantine viewing.

Gadsby herself is currently in quarantine in Australia, and we spoke over the phone last week about how she's holding up, what it's like to release a highly anticipated new special in the middle of a global pandemic and the essentiality of Schitt's Creek. 

What's the situation [in Australia] now? Are you still in lockdown?

We're seeing a bit of an ease of restrictions. But there's not much changing...it's a slow process. 

How does it feel doing press in the middle of all this?

I kinda like it? I've been able to do a lot more press than I usually am able to do because when you're going from one place to another it tends to overwhelm me quite a lot. So being able to be home and do all these means I'm able to get through a bit more.

So, your show Douglas. I watched it again tonight on Netflix but I actually saw it live in Toronto at Roy Thompson Hall back in late February. It was one of my last normal memories of sort of a big event with a crowd. And I'm just curious about coming off this big tour and then sort of immediately being thrown into this existence in the pandemic. What was that all like?

Well, it feels very lucky. I was exhausted and I was ready for a break. And in that sense, I feel very blessed to be able to have recorded the show in the nick of time. I don't think most people really understood what was about to happen, least of all me. So to have that luck of filming it and finishing the tour — I was ready for a rest and it just so happens that's the only thing I've been able to do!

You say in the show how approaching it felt akin to making that "difficult second album" because of the huge success of your previous special Nanette. Can you speak to that a little bit?

I mean, it wasn't my actual second show so I do know my way around constructing a show. Before Nanette, I was writing a new show every single year. The nature of Nanette meant that I technically had a year off of producing new material, so there were quite a lot of thoughts that had been accumulating that I could play with. So in that sense, it was okay. Of course, my circumstances and the way that people saw me it changed drastically. I had to deal with that and reckon with that. But I decided not to worry too much about it. You know, people are going to have their own ideas and if I tried too hard to anticipate in that, I'd obsess myself into knots. And then of course, doing Nanette, the risks I took with that meant that I was ready to have my career take a nosedive with that show. I didn't expect it to be quite so well received. So I just took that expectation into Douglas. It's like, there's nothing lost. I've already gone much further than I expected to, so if Douglas is when my career tanks, then I'm already ahead. 

That's a very admirable way to approach it. And you also talk a lot in Douglas about your approach to some of the less...kind feedback you got from Nanette. But obviously Nanette also did so much, particularly for LGBTQ comedians. You must have felt a lot of love come from Nanette too because it clearly changed a lot of people's lives in a positive way. 

Well, you know, that's the privilege of it. To be able to do a show that's sort of deeply personal and singular and have it connect with so many people did mean a lot. And there's a selfish part where it's like, "Oh, I'm not alone in this." And you know, that is the goal — to sort of be an inspiration to people to take their art further in different directions. So it's an incredible honour. But you don't write a show thinking that. Or if you do, you're an asshole. You know? So it's only in hindsight that you can go, "Oh, this is incredible, this is lovely." And I think in many ways I'm still wrangling with that because my life just sort of took off at a supersonic speed and I haven't really caught up. I'm still sort of coming to terms with everything that has happened and what Nanette did in the world.  

It was definitely a really sizeable cultural moment in a time that felt generally like a reckoning for how much our culture is dictated by straight white men. And from that reckoning did seem to come a new visibility, in this case for queer female comedians, if you look at things like Abby McEnany's series Work in Progress, for example. Things seemed to be changing a little, and I think Nanette was such a huge part of bringing forth that change. 

You know, I think the talent and the work was already there. I didn't invent this new pool of good stuff. I think what Nanette did was that it sort of made the decisions about what gets made a bit braver in terms of queer women and what not. It's part of that story. You couldn't imagine a world where Nanette was going to be the success it was if it meant the corporate gatekeepers were there every step of the way. Nanette wouldn't have happened if streaming wasn't a thing, if I was relying on the old structures. It wouldn't have happened. So I think it was part of that watershed.

I think as we try to work out what the world is in the pandemic, it's a good time to ask, 'Do we want to go back to the way things were?'...How about we don't rebuild with the same mistakes?- Hannah Gadsby

Douglas, like Nanette, is so hilarious but also so profound. It touches on everything from your autism to anti-vaxxers to the patriarchy. And for it to be coming out on Netflix and surely about to find a widespread audience in the middle of all of this, do you think about how people are going take this in while they are likely in this very emotionally vulnerable state? 

Imagine if Nanette had been released in the middle of this? It just wouldn't have landed. But I mean, with Douglas, that's out of my hands. When I was writing this show, I really did want to create something that was fun on the surface of it. You know, people could watch and laugh a lot. But what I understand of a large section of Nanette fans is that people watched it over and over again. That's the viewing habit of a lot of Nanette fans. People often told me that they watched it five times, and I'd say, "Why would you do that?"

So I wanted to create something with Douglas that would keep giving things with each repeat viewing. There's little Easter eggs and little repetitions that sort of opens it up. And I feel like that might be good for this moment. I hope it's good for this moment. I hope it strikes the right note. But if it doesn't? Oh well. You know what I mean? There's bigger things to worry about than if my comedy special bombs and nobody watches it. I'll live. The world's taken a turn and it's best to be focused on that. But there is a hope that it's the kind of show that strikes the right balance between entertainment and giving a nudge.

I do think people genuinely want to feel something like what Douglas will likely make most reasonably minded people feel. And I think it coming a couple months into this as opposed to, say, mid-March, feels like a better time for people to embrace the conversation it's having. 

Yeah. I think as we try to work out what the world is in the pandemic, it's a good time to ask "Do we want to go back to the way things were?" It's kind of unfair. If anything this pandemic is showing that vulnerable people are more vulnerable. It's showing the inequities of the society we've built. How about we don't rebuild with the same mistakes?

To pivot to a question I'm sure you've been asked many times already today to end things off: what are you watching in quarantine?

I haven't watched television for quite a long time because creating Nanette really sort of took up all my brain, so there's been this black hole in my cultural consumption. So I've been easing myself back in. I decided to choose a really wide spectrum of things to dip into. I really enjoyed Dead To Me. 

Christina Applegate is amazing on that show.

Her comic timing is incredible. And also I really love The Good Place and I love Schitt's Creek.

Which sadly just ended. 

Oh, there's re-watching! I enjoy re-watching, I love repetition. So I'm already through it three times. 

It's kind of an ideal show to watch during this time.

It is. Because it's almost as if the Rose family have been thrown into their own quarantine. 

Hannah Gadsby's Douglas is streaming now on Netflix. This interview has been condensed for length.

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