Hannah Gadsby left her audience in stitches after she took to the stage to present the Outstanding Directing for a Drama Series Emmy, during her debut appearance at the Awards.
Having climbed the Hollywood ladder at speed, Hannah Gadsby became an overnight sensation earlier this year after her stand-up special Nanette was added to Netflix.
The Australian comedian performed a self-deprecating monologue before presenting the accolade to Stephen Daldry, resulting in fans taking to Twitter to state that she had been the funniest of the entire night.
Hannah Gadsby left her audience in stitches after she took to the stage to present an Emmy
Who is Hannah Gadsby?
Hailing from Smithton in Tasmania, Hannah Gadsby is an Australian comedian who rose to global prominence after her stand-up special Nanette was released on Netflix earlier this year, but she has been present in the comedy circuit for a number of years.
According to The Sydney Morning Herald, Hannah had a tumultuous childhood and apart from being hit by five cars in the space of eight years while she was riding her bicycle, she has had pancreatitis, a partial wrist fusion, two knee reconstructions, a clavicle reconstruction, gall and kidney stones, glandular fever and shingles.
Hannah incorporates all of this and her experiences growing up as the youngest of five children into her comedy, and in turn, helped her to win Raw Comedy in 2006, which was her first attempt at stand-up ever.
Following this, she won the Directors’ Choice Award at the 2010 Melbourne International Comedy Festival and other accolades at a number of festivals in Edinburgh, Adelaide and Sydney.
Hannah Gadsby has won a number of accolades at festivals in Edinburgh, Adelaide and Sydney
Alongside this, her 2010 show The Cliff Young Shuffle, was acclaimed after it followed her decision to walk 300 kilometres across England after she had forgotten to pack her antidepressants.
In other shows, Hannah has taken a self-deprecating approach, her most memorable lines being about her chubby thighs – ‘I once scalped a girl playing leapfrog’ and her lazy lifestyle – ‘If I walked any slower, I’d be busking’.
Her breakthrough show in 2009 was mostly based on her relationship with her mother and focused on her coming out as a lesbian to her mother, but also featured stories about how she had treated her daughter’s ailments with Vicks VapoRub and dressed her in beige tracksuits and purple pleated golf shorts.
After becoming established in the comedy circuit, Hannah revealed that she had found a home in the industry. ‘There are strange people everywhere.
‘You just have to scratch below the surface. Most accountants are strange, let’s be honest. The thing about comedy is it gives you a platform to expose your own shortcomings so it becomes a public display of weirdness. That’s hard to do as an accountant.’
Hannah Gadsby walks onstage during the 70th Emmy Awards at Microsoft Theater in LA
In addition to stand-up, Hannah also starred on the television show Adam Hills Tonight and appeared as a guest on Good News Week, Spicks and Specks and the New Zealand programme 7 Days. Hannah also wrote and presented a three-part series called Hannah Gadsby’s Oz in 2014.
Nanette
Nanette, Hannah Gadsby’s Netflix special was released in June 2018 and resulted in the Australian comedian becoming an overnight sensation, despite having written and toured for 10 years. After her success, she spoke to Vanity Fair about how she had decided to quit comedy altogether.
‘I’m living someone else’s dream. Cracking America just seemed too hard,’ adding that: ‘And it’s just kept going. And I think I could still keep going. But I will not. I have to stop.’ In Nanette, Gadsby revealed that she is gender nonconforming enough to create tension whenever she enters a room.
This is why she she developed a sense of humor as a way to diffuse it and one that hinged mostly on self-deprecation. Speaking to her audience, Hannah said: ‘When you boil a joke down to its very bare essentials, it simply needs two things: a setup and a punch line.
‘What a joke is in this situation is a question I’ve artificially inseminated with tension. I do that. And it’s what I keep doing. I make you tense. And then I make you laugh. Over and over again. This is an abusive relationship!’
Hannah went on to state that she would be shunning jokes that profit from her own suffering, an idea she had after seeing comedians use Amy Winehouse as a punch line in the documentary Amy, or Monica Lewinsky being used for reliable laughs by men.
‘Perhaps if comedians had done their job properly and made fun of the man who abused his power, then perhaps we might have a middle-aged woman with an appropriate amount of experience in the White House – instead of, as we do, a man who openly admitted to sexually assaulting vulnerable young women because he could!’
Although she started work on her new book Ten Steps to Nanette, Hannah was forced to put it aside because of the emotional demands of the show.
‘I’m learning how this whole thing works. I’m thinking about what I want to do. I’m too old – not too old, but I’m tired—to put a lot of energy into something I don’t really want to do. And I am genuine when I say I can walk away,’ she said.