Interview Chris Lilley 

An audio version of this interview originally appeared on Bullseye, a weekly radio show and podcast hosted by Jesse Thorn. You can listen to it on select public radio stations, at the Maximum Fun website, and via iTunes.

Chris Lilley is a superstar in his native Australia, but he’s only just begun to crack the consciousness of comedy fans here in the States. He started his career as a stand-up, but he made his name on Australian television, first with the series We Can Be Heroes (which ran on Sundance Channel in the United States), then on Summer Heights High (which had a higher-profile run on HBO in 2008). His shows are sprawling ensemble faux-documentaries, with Lilley playing all the leads—male, female, young, and old. Even in drag or when crossing racial boundaries, his performances are disarmingly specific and shockingly funny. His new series, Angry Boys, takes on the pain of male adolescence through a broad swath of characters, ranging from a middle-aged female juvenile C.O. to a teenaged suburban kiddie rapper. The co-production of HBO, the Australian Broadcasting Company, and the BBC recently began its U.S. run on HBO. 

The A.V. Club: Angry Boys and Summer Heights High both have these really sensitive portrayals of adolescents. This one’s mostly about boys, but there was plenty of girl stuff the last time around. Were you self-aware enough when you were an adolescent to look around you and see the grandiosity and absurdity of adolescents?

Chris Lilley: Yeah, you’re probably right. I don’t know, it was so long ago. I was a pretty unusual adolescent. I guess I was caught up in fantasyland most of the time, and writing characters and then playing characters, and I guess I must have been observing things.

AVC: Were you a good student?

CL: No, I was terrible. I was capable, but I never like being told what to do, so I was always in the bottom class at school. In Australia, a lot of students study to the end of year 10, but don’t go on to the final year, and I was asked to leave the school because they just thought I wasn’t performing well enough. I used to sneak off to play piano, and defy the rules of the school.

AVC: That isn’t exactly the boldest of teenage rebellions, to sneak out of class and go play piano.

CL: I know, what a dork. Didn’t even leave the school grounds, just was in the music department all by myself on the piano. But it was more about any time I was told to do something, I was not happy. I liked doing my own stuff. 

AVC: I’m sort of interested and surprised to hear that you were already interested in making and portraying characters as a teenager. Most of the character comics that I know here in the States, it’s something that you pick up doing improv, or studying at a more comedy-driven center like the Groundlings. What were the first characters that you made for yourself?

CL: Well, even earlier than high school, as far back as I can remember, I used to dress up. There was a couple of wigs around the house, and I was interested in soap operas at the time, so things were based on Australian soaps. Kind of over-the-top female characters, and it was constantly changing. I have a series of photos that my brother took of me, and I’m playing about five different characters. I’m about 11 years old and I’m sitting by the pool as a surf character, leaning against a beach ball, sun-bronzed. And then there’s a dwarf character with my shoes pulled into my knees, so it looked like I had short legs. So many characters, it’s kind of all a blur now. 

I do remember there being an American family that moved in across the road, and I was so excited because America was this far-away land, and so I met these two young boys. I was about 8 and they were probably 5, and I told them I had this American cousin who was staying with us, and I went back into the house and dressed up as an American girl with one of my mom’s wigs and her clothes. Walked across the road, put on my best American accent, which sounded Southern, sort of like Tootsie. And pretended to be this American cousin to these two kids who completely fell for it, or according to my 8-year-old self they believed that I was this strange woman from across the road. [Pauses] I got in trouble for that one, my mom got really mad at me. 

AVC: This sounds like the greatest triumph ever for an 8-year-old. It’s like having your own detective agency and solving a crime or something. 

CL: Yeah, I thought I did pretty well. It was one of my best early performances…

And once I got into high school, any time I had to do a talk or a speech, I just loved being up in front of an audience, it was always a character. And then I discovered that an impersonation of the teacher was a really, really good way to get a laugh, and it would also get you good marks, because the teachers were always bored and loved to be the “teacher-parody.” So that became my little trick at school, and I became known for doing that. 

AVC: Were you comfortable being funny as a teenager performing as yourself?

CL: Yeah, I loved doing all that. I guess my performance at school was doing school musicals, so I was a knight as well at the back of the stage in Camelot. It was all those kind of things. It wasn’t the stuff that I wanted to do. The real funny character stuff came out when I was in control of it myself and writing it myself. 

AVC: You were a stand-up in your 20s. Was your stand-up character-driven?

CL: Well, not at the start. I started doing it just as myself, because I thought, “This is what’s expected, you’re meant to tell stories and do observations.” And then I started to realize that I wanted to mix it up a bit, so I started to doing songs, and I had a little keyboard onstage and would bring in little props. Then I thought about the idea of talking about a character and becoming the character onstage. So, it sort of morphed into being stand-up that was more character based, and I found that’s the stuff I got the better reaction from and was more exciting for me.

AVC: I’m really interested in the distinction between someone who uses an interest in being funny and a talent for mimicry and acting to, say, become an impressionist or do voices onstage, or someone who is interested in building a whole alternate life onstage. Your characters are so full; they’re not just a voice that sounds like the president. What do you think gave you the depth of commitment to do something that’s more than just some jokes related to a funny voice?

CL: I think it just really excites me, the idea of delving so far into a character that people actually believe it’s real, and I start to believe it’s real. It’s a strange thing to say, but it’s the thrill of getting all the details right and being so absorbed in the character that people go along with the illusion. I think sometimes people become quite emotional about the characters as well, and that’s pretty cool that you can get that emotion out of people. And I think that’s more my motivation than like, “Hey I want to be the funny guy, I want to be that famous funny guy.” That doesn’t sit as well with me as the idea of taking people on this ride and taking them into the illusion of the characters. That’s much more exciting for me. I don’t like to analyze it too much, but I think maybe that’s where it comes from. 

AVC: There’s a scene in Angry Boys where Nathan, one of the rural Australian teens, describes all the different ways of doing “Mainies,” which is essentially just walking and driving up and down the one-block main street of their town. He’s so passionate, it’s almost moving. How do you get to know a world like Nathan and his brother’s intimately enough to do this kind of portrayal?

CL: It’s funny because so much of it is from my imagination, and then I think sometimes I’ll go out and research and meet those types of people. Sometimes I’ll just read things or watch documentaries. It comes from all different places. The boys who live on the farm, Daniel and Nathan, I’ve got two older brothers, we used to spend a lot of time on farms, so maybe there’s a little bit of that in there. But then once I started writing the characters, I actually went to country towns in Australia and spent time with teenagers and picked up little things there. But the bulk of it is just imagination and just thinking of a character. I like things to be real. If stuff is funny, real and compelling, then that’s what I’m trying to do. 

AVC: It’s interesting, because when you’re trying to create something that’s real, you have surrounded yourself on this show with a faux-documentary-style milieu. You’re working with a lot of non-professional actors, as well as some very naturalistic professional actors. But on the other hand, you are also dressed up like an old lady. 

CL: It looks ridiculous, but it’s a weird thing, because I play a Japanese woman as well and I don’t think I look remotely like a Japanese woman, but we do a few things to suggest that. We got the shape of the hair right and the sort of body shape and tailoring of the clothes, and I work with really cool people who can pull all of that stuff together. And then you get into the illusion of it, and it’s not even an accurate accent, it’s just this thing. I spend a lot of time making sure the worlds of the characters are real and accurate, and then surround myself with these other actors who are the real thing. That all helps form the illusion of it. 

AVC: There’s a character in Angry Boys called Gran, a counselor at a juvenile detention facility, whose hallmark is her wild inappropriateness. I read a bunch of Australian interviews with you when the show came out a few months ago, and a lot of them focused on the awful things that character says, and she does say wildly inappropriate stuff often, but I found her to be a very sympathetic character.

CL: The idea with her was to think something in the beginning of the first episode and then have your mind completely changed by the end of it. To have this really nasty, harsh woman say racist things and act seemingly uncaring to these boys, and then it’s slowly revealed as the episode progresses that she really cares about these boys and that language that she’s using is to get through to them, like she’s picked up that that’s how they talk to each other. Also, it’s a little bit of a reference to the fact that she’s a 65-year-old woman and she’s sort of from a different generation, and the way she refers to indigenous people is a little inappropriate. I thought it was a really intriguing place to set a comedy show, in a juvenile boys’ prison, and then to find this character who you think is one thing and half an hour later you feel quite differently about her, and you understand where she’s coming from by the end of it.

AVC: Are you attracted to the challenge of taking someone being awful and conveying the humanity within that person? 

CL: With that character that was the goal, but I also play very nasty characters where you don’t feel much compassion at all. Like in Summer Heights High, I play a teenage schoolgirl, Ja’mie, who is just this nasty bitch, and Mr. G, the drama teacher, you just really don’t feel much for him, and he’s funny because he’s just so awful. In this series, the Japanese mom Jen, you don’t really feel that much sympathy for her. She sort of fools you in one episode, then you’re like, “No she’s just pure evil.” That was the idea, and certainly there were a few people crying over some later episodes with Gran where things get a bit dramatic. That’s pretty cool to see with a comedy series, so I’m pretty proud of that.