For anyone with their finger on the Kiwi pulse, Guy Williams would be a familiar name. And why should it not be? Aotearoa/New Zealand is Australia’s socio-historical sibling, a country we can learn a lot from. If Australians should pay attention to kiwi politics and kiwi history, we should also pay attention to Kiwi comedians.
I was delighted to hear that the host of satirical news show New Zealand Today, was embarking on a 2024 stand-up comedy tour of Australia and Aotearoa/New Zealand. Guy will perform in Sydney in April this year for the Sydney Comedy Festival.
I racked his brain for insight into what goes behind such an esoteric blend of journalism and comedy, his thoughts on student journalism, and what he thinks about Australian audiences. Here are the highlights from a strikingly anarchic one-hour-and-forty-five-minute interview.
I asked Guy how similar New Zealand Today — with its blend of comedy and investigation — is to conventional journalism.
Guy Williams: “I never studied journalism, so I don’t actually know, but I’d say a lot of it is quite similar. I’m kind of obsessed with journalism a little bit myself. There’s nothing more satisfying than when you do start scratching away at a story, and you start to pull back the layers.”
“We normally start with an article that’s already been written, and then we go deeper. But there’s been quite a few times where journalists will just write stories based on a court report, or just a wire, where the story will appear very funny and shallow. But then when we research it, it’s actually very serious and it goes dark real quick. And we can’t cover it.”
This reminded me of my prepared question about ethical considerations, which I sheepishly wheeled out. I was fairly sure Guy gets asked “what sort of ethical considerations go into making a show like New Zealand Today?” often, but I had to bite. For a comedian who proclaimed himself “just fucked in the head,” his answer became markedly philosophical.
GW: “Yeah, Yeah; Major ethical considerations. I’ve received criticism for putting people drunk on camera and stuff like that. I genuinely don’t have a problem with that. We normally check in the next day to make sure that the person is okay.
But there’s a weird divide – and I think New Zealand Today kind of shows that – in society; the easiest way to split it would be city versus country. You can see in a show like New Zealand Today how a guy like Donald Trump is successful. I mean, this sounds ludicrous but hear me out. The standard of decency and what you talk and joke about can be so much different in the city versus the country or small towns. As a comedian who tours around, I shuttle both lines. I’m an inner city, woke hipster. Well, I don’t think I’m hipster, but I’m from the inner city, the liberal elite or whatever… But I go out into the country, into these rough as guts areas. And that’s part of the charm of New Zealand Today. It’s a fish out of water.
Some people live in the city, and have an idea of politeness, or how you’ll come across on TV. But then you meet people in the country who are just loose as a goose, and just genuinely live a better life; a more carefree existence and I fucking love that. That’s one of the things I love about New Zealand Today: we show that there are different ways of living.
The show is rooted in love. In the end, no matter what’s happened in eleven minutes, I like to think it finishes in a place of love. And you go, ‘even though I don’t agree with that person, I still enjoy them and can see their perspective, or why they’re the way they are.’
Guy went on to give me some insight into how a person becomes a famous — or at the very least professional — comedian. The first ingredient, apparently, is “delusional confidence.”
GW: I have this weird thing; you’ll notice that people have it. I’m calling it delusional confidence… or a better name would be ‘James Corden disease.’ James Corden shouldn’t have hosted a major American late-night show. That’s not to say James Corden isn’t talented or amazing, but James Corden just does not have the talent to do an American late-night show.
And I have that same disease. I don’t know why. There’s much more talented comedians who haven’t made it as far as me because they don’t have this delusional self-belief. And often comedians will use drugs and alcohol — I don’t, I’m just fucked in the head.
But according to Guy, ‘James Corden disease’ will only get you so far. Socio-economic privilege, just as in everything, is key.
GW: Comedy is now dominated by rich kids. I come from a privileged background, my brother and sister are comedians. To be able to be a comedian now, you basically have to live in a big city and you need to be able to afford rent and not have to work. People in small towns are naturally hilarious, genius comedians. The number of people I interview where I’m like, ‘fuck bro, if you’d had the background that I’d had, you’d be able to be a comedian 10 times better than me.’ But that’s where privilege comes into it.
University is an oft-overlooked part of that privilege.
GW: I wouldn’t have even known comedy was a potential job before I moved to Wellington and had five years experience in the world at Victoria University. Whereas most kids have to decide their career for the rest of their fucking life at 15, I got to get to like 21 or 22. Because I spent like fucking four or five years at university. Considering I only got a three year degree, it’s quite funny. I did extra for experts. But having those extra years to see what was out there, was a privilege.
Guy completed a politics degree at Victoria University of Wellington, in Aotearoa/New Zealand’s capital. He explained to me how ill-fated Labour Prime Minister David Lange led him away from quantitative research and participant ethnography to holding the mic to eccentricity across the country.
GW: In university, I realised what interested me about politics was the comedy side of it. In 1980s New Zealand, we had a very funny politician called David Lange. He turned out to be a terrible prime minister, but he was very witty. He won a debate at the Oxford Union with an American guy who was in favour of nuclear arms. And he had a famous quip where – It’s always misquoted – ‘can you move away from me? I can smell the uranium on your breath.’
David Lange was more of a comedian than a politician. His political career was actually a disaster. He was a left-wing prime minister who ended up ushering in New Zealand’s right-wing, Reaganomics/Thatchernomics policies because he didn’t look over what his treasurer was doing, and lost control of his own party. I liked him for his comedy and his speeches, not for his politics. So I learned that lesson.
A vital artery of any University culture is its student journalism. So I asked Guy about his relationship with student media, and what it meant while he was in Wellington.
“That was one of my favourite things, the high school newspaper, which lasted briefly, and then the university newspaper. And the comedy that was specific to my area; it’s one of the real disasters of comedy becoming globalised. In the past local material worked really well, but Because of the spread of comedy like that, Netflix and YouTube, and people making stuff that’s global, you really sanitise to make it apply anywhere.
What I loved about my student newspaper at Victoria University — Salient, — was that the jokes were specific to Victoria University. That’s a really nice thing, because it makes you feel like you’re part of a club; like you have culture.
So I like that you guys are making something that has no commercial viability. No value outside of university. Nah, that’s not true. I’m sure you guys do like proper journalism and stuff, but if you’re doing comedy most of your laughs will only appeal to a university audience.
I told Guy about the controversy surrounding Honi’s own comedy forays. He spoke to memories of controversies that embroiled friends involved with Salient during his time at university.
GW: The lesson I learned was that sometimes when you have a controversy, you should apologise. I’ve definitely done jokes that people have gone, ‘that’s not okay,’ and I’m like, ‘yeah, you’re right, that’s not okay.’
But there’s some times where I’m like, It’s satire, it shouldn’t be taken at face value. You’re making fun of the problem, not making fun of the victim. So you can’t always let the backlash cut you down. Sometimes, you should, and I’ve apologised. But sometimes you’ve got to stay steady.
As a palette cleanser after all this university talk, I asked Guy whether there was such a thing as the oft-lauded Kiwi sense of humour, and whether this was different from our home brand Australian humour.
GW: I don’t know, because I haven’t travelled around the world enough. But is there a New Zealand and an Australian comedy? I’m still figuring that out. Australia is the first country that I’ve come and done comedy regularly outside of New Zealand. New Zealand and Australia would be pretty similar, apart from the in-jokes and some of the words.
Then Guy spoke to the difference between New Zealand Today and his stand up routine.
GW: On stage, comedians look good because they trial their material. I’m in Adelaide right now doing hit and miss comedy, getting ready for the Melbourne Comedy Festival, which is the big daddy for comedians. So by the time I get to Melbourne, I will hopefully have a flawless hour, but the poor motherfuckers in Adelaide don’t know that because they’re seeing the creative process at work.
“Comedy is crazy. ‘ you write a hundred jokes and maybe only two or three are worthwhile, you try those on stage and maybe one out of three actually works. The strike rate is low. The good news about television is that you can edit it. People are often quite impressed by New Zealand Today, how quick I am or the locals are. the truth is we shoot hours and hours of footage and cut it down to the best 11 to 15 minutes. You don’t see the amount of times I just eat shit, or really embarrass myself., comedy is pain.
Finally, I asked Guy an all important question: How was he feeling about the Sydney Comedy Festival?
GW: I love Australian crowds. New Zealand crowds are really hard. In New Zealand we have a real toxic mentality. We’re maybe insecure, but we’re like, ‘all right, make me laugh motherfucker.’ I’m sure you have that in Australia, but where the Sydney Comedy Festival happens, around Newtown people know comedy. They go to comedy a lot and they’re a snappy audience,? In New Zealand, we don’t have high comedy literacy, but doing a gig in inner city Sydney, in a place like the Comedy Store, is just the absolute dream because everyone knows exactly what you’re talking about.
They’re highly aware of irony. They’re okay at laughing at things that are on a line because they are aware that what you’re saying is not what you mean. As a New Zealand comedian, it’s like paradise.
Although I did have one of the worst crowds in Sydney last time. I was doing a late night Saturday show, where the crowd can be very drunk. It was actually fans of New Zealand Today, and that can attract the wrong audience. There are dudes who’re like I love how you go to small towns and just rip the piss out of them.’ I hope that’s not really what I do, but some people see it that way. I do political comedy, and it’s just loose guys who aren’t ready for that.
For some reason, I was doing material about how Top Gun Maverick is a sham. ‘Cause, it’s a Steven Spielberg fantasy Hollywood world where there’s a war going on where America are the good guys, and that was my joke. I said , ‘name a war in the last 50 years where America are the good guys.
If you look at most major conflicts: America, generally not the right side of history. I was making this joke and this drunk man took it completely the wrong way and ended up storming out of the room.
“He was loving the show up until this point. But he decided that I was on the side of Russia in the Ukraine war, I guess because America is on the side of Ukraine. Even fucking half of the Americans aren’t on the side of Ukraine. But he walked out when he decided that I was some sort of fascist.
“He actually ended up screaming at me: ‘You’re a Russian Nazi cunt!’ It was the craziest heckler experience I’ve ever had. I felt so bad, I almost wanted to chase after him and go, ‘Just for the record, I definitely support the war in Ukraine.’ No, sorry, so wait, not that way. I get it. Life is funny. ‘I support the Ukrainian defence of Ukraine!’ I support Ukraine. Like, fuck, it made me so upset that someone would come to my show and think that I’m supporting the Russian invasion of Ukraine. I hope that guy didn’t wake up the next day and tell his friends that I’m some sort of pro-fucking-Russian-invasion-of-Ukraine-comedian.
It actually freaked me out. what was worse is there was a TV executive in the audience. That was just honestly one of the worst gigs of my career. It happened in central Sydney, so hopefully it goes better than that.
Guy Williams is performing at the Comedy Store on Friday, 26 April at 8:20 pm. Some New Zealand Today episodes are available for Australians on YouTube. New Zealand Today airs on Channel Three in Aotearoa/New Zealand.
