Australian comedian Hannah Gadsby has a brain that doesn't lend itself to online pronouncements.
"Social media is a lot of people having their thoughts out loud at the time that they're having their thoughts. And it takes me weeks and months to understand what I think about something and by that stage, the world's moved on, so I just remain kind of silent," she tells Kim Hill.
Australian comedian and writer Hannah Gadsby Photo: Supplied
Hannah Gadsby performs her latest show Body of Work in Auckland on 8 October and in Wellington on 10 October.
Gadsby says only in the last year has she "come out the other side" after being catapulted to fame by her 2018 Netflix comedy special Nanette.
She assumed the frank discussion of mental illness and misogyny would make waves in her own "small comedy circles" but never imagined it might lead to a cultural re-examination of comedy itself.
"Such private personal pain and trauma then becoming a point of conversation for 'what is comedy'? That didn't really occur to me as a risk I was taking."
Gadsby's success has brought her financial stability, which she says "really helps the happiness project".
She feels lucky to now have the bandwidth, strength and support network to keep working, most recently on her "feel-good" live show Body of Work.
Being diagnosed with ADHD and then autism in 2016 has helped Gadsby be kind to herself and better understand her untypical brain.
"You're just a late bloomer when you're on the spectrum. It just takes you a little longer to find your feet."
Some autistic traits actually help with performance, Gadsby says.
"I'm hyper-focused on what is happening in the room. And when I'm on my game I can subtly change what I'm doing to bring more energy into a room or calm it down … I feel like a conductor and it's a really wonderful feeling."
Gadsby's mother, whom she reveals as a difficult figure in the recent memoir Ten Steps to Nanette, is now concerned that success will make her daughter egotistical.
"Now that I'm successful and have self-esteem she's a really handy person to have because she's never gonna let me get away with stuff. When you get to a certain level of success you absolutely can. People say no to you less and less and less."
Although her work is "top quality", Gadsby considers herself lucky as a lot of fellow comedians do great work and get nowhere.
She also feels well-suited to the study of comedy "because I love patterns and I am a creative thinker".
Before she became a funny adult, Gadsby was used to being a source of humour as a peculiar child.
"Peculiarity, when you're a little kid, is good for laughs. People laugh at peculiar kids."
Even with success and self-understanding, she is still in the process of "digging out" her own critical tendencies.
"It was really hardwired into me that there's something wrong with me, there was something wrong with my body, there was something wrong with what I desire… everything about me was wrong.
"It takes a lot of us a long time to just strip that back [and realise] we've got too much to do. The planet is imploding. We've got to stop thinking about how wrong other people are."
