'Awards Chatter' Podcast — Hannah Gadsby ('Douglas')

Hannah Gadsby

Hannah Gadsby is an Australian comedian who got famous with her 2018 Netflix special ‘Nanette’ where she explains her difficult path to comedy, self-discovery and how her autism affects her life and work.

During ‘Nanette’, Gadsby couldn’t handle the pressure, and she would always be very tired and exhausted afterwards. She felt that her life changed so much in the sense that she felt very unsafe and unstable. She thought that the best thing she could do in a time like this was something she knew how to do, which was comedy.

Less than two years after Nanette, Gadsby had another comedy special on Netflix called ‘Douglas’. "Even if people don't like Douglas, and that remains to be seen, and even if Douglas is a failure, nobody can deny that I'm good at what I do,” says Gadsby to The Hollywood Reporter.

Gadsby is the youngest of 5 siblings. Her parents were a math teacher and a hairdresser in a small town on the Australian island state of Tasmania. She had an exceedingly difficult and traumatic childhood. "One of the tricks of trauma is it puts a stop on your ability to imagine your future," says Gadsby to The Hollywood Reporter. When she graduated high school, she started working on a farm and a supermarket but eventually, ended up going to college on the mainland just to get out of Tasmania. After she graduated college in 2003, she became homeless for several years. 

Comedy became a part of Gadsby’s life in 2005 when she performed standup as part of an Australian comedy competition. Gadsby returned after a year and ended up winning the competition which made her appear on TV for the first time, and gave her an opportunity to perform at the famed Edinburgh Festival Fringe in Scotland, where she won second place. After a couple of years, Gadsby had a living performance of 9 different comedy shows and 4 comedic art lectures. 

"It took a few years to become solvent. I eventually did, but performing on Australian TV was extremely stressful. My career was good, but it wasn't going anywhere. I was at the top of my game, I was creating really, really good, interesting stuff, and I wasn't getting anywhere. And I was like, I don't know what to do. On top of which, I had been diagnosed with autism, and that sort of threw my world into a little bit of chaos, just in terms of, Oh, gosh, how do I understand myself?,” says Gadsby to The Hollywood Reporter.

In 2015, the frustration of her career and her diagnosis encouraged her to start writing Nanette. Gatsby performed more than 250 times between her first appearance at the 2017 Melbourne International Comedy Festival and the show that was captured for Netflix. She is a very humorous person but she’s also extremely honest about her past and everything she’s gone through. On June 19, 2018, the special appeared all over the world on Netflix, and because of it her whole life changed. She became a celebrity and her audience convinced her to start making lectures, TED Talks or one-woman shows. She ended up focusing her attention on Douglas and on accepting the amazing things that came after she became a celebrity.

"You can't underestimate the healing power of financial security. Like, I've been homeless, and I now own a home, and it's just brilliant. And that helps strength. I think with Nanette I was strong, but I was spoiling for a fight — like, I was still scrappy. And now I can take a breath. And if you want to keep strong, it's important to be able to take a breath. For the first time in my adult life, I've been able to inhale",” says Gadsby to The Hollywood Reporter.