When Urzila Carlson came face-to-face with pop legend Cher while , she was all of us. Caught somewhere between startled and elated – perhaps elartled – the comedian’s brief chat with the “Believe” singer at the side of the 40th anniversary parade was adorably dorky.
“Afterwards I was thinking there was no way you could play it cool,” she chuckles over the phone from her home in Auckland. “It was absolute panic, I couldn’t believe it. She wasn’t supposed to be there and I wasn’t supposed to interview her, but I thought ‘I have to take this opportunity, I’m never going to get it again’, and she was so lovely. ”
Carlson’s wife Julie, with whom she has two kids, was by her side all night. She says they’ll never forget the vibe. “They say Disneyland is the happiest place on earth, but I think it might be Mardi Gras. It was like attending your best friend’s wedding, but staying sober enough to really enjoy it. I hugged so many people, I can’t even tell you. I was covered in glitter from head to toe and I didn’t put any on.”
A sort of Russell Crowe/Crowded House scenario, Australians have claimed the Kiwi-by-way-of-South-Africa as one of our own. In fairness, she does spend almost half the year here, working the comedy festival circuit. Her new gig, Studies Have Shown, hits the at the end of March, before heading on to the , with stops in , , , , the , and too.
It takes pot shots at the ridiculous research results she hears on the radio while incessantly travelling. “The most interesting one I’ve heard recently are the effects of cocaine on honey bees and I’m like, number one, who’s got left over cocaine? Number two, I didn’t even know bees had nostrils? I’d be so freaked out if I came into my kitchen and there were a couple of bees just cutting lines on the counter. Last thing you need is a bee with a lot of confidence and energy, you know?”
RECOMMENDED
Miss Mardi Gras? Here's how you can catch up
Comedy wasn’t a route Carlson expected to go down. After tiring of the violence in South Africa that saw her caught up in armed robberies at traffic lights, her workplace, and at home, she moved to New Zealand in 2006, taking up a role as a graphic designer in an advertising agency in Auckland.
It was a colleague who first encouraged her to channel her riotous office banter into stand-up material for an open-mic night. Loaded with Dutch courage and with a phalanx of besties packing out the audience, it went well, so much so that the venue manager called her the next day wanting more.
Even as the bookings took off, Carlson resisted the career change, but not because she wasn’t into it. “About a year after my first gig my boss said to me, ‘you have to choose, it’s either comedy or advertising,’ but at that point I couldn’t really afford to leave, because I’d taken so much leave to go and do gigs in Australia that I owed my work a month’s salary.”
Lucky for us, the boss was basically telling her to follow the funny, and handily made her redundant. With the shortfall covered and a few month’s pay in her back pocket, Carlson was free to pursue comedy full-time. A decade later, she still loves it, even if the touring can get wearying.
Heckling, at least, she rarely has to deal with. I wonder if it’s because of her forthright spirit and willingness to go anywhere, including discussing Julie’s miscarriage in a heartfelt moment during last year’s Unacceptable? Carlson says it’s much more straightforward.
“I know it’s nerve-wracking, coming to a comedy show. People won’t sit in the front row because they don’t want to be humiliated in front of a room of full of people they don’t know, but I always open by saying I won’t pick on my audience. I feel they come to see the show, not be the show.”
Not that you should push your luck. “Just because I won’t doesn’t mean I don’t have the skills. I can rip you apart. I just choose not to.”
On the subject of ripping people, I wonder what Carlson made of the backlash to 60 Minutes presenter Charles Wooley’s intrusive interview with New Zealand Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern. “About when the baby was made and how hot she is? REALLY? I know, but how encouraging is it that, as a society, every single person that you talk to that has seen that interview is like, ‘that was so cringey'?”
She’s not surprised Ardern took it in her stride. “She’s so used to people asking stupid questions. It’s almost like when Justin Trudeau got in and he’s also hot and young so people were obsessing. It’s out of the ordinary that we don’t have an old white dude in charge. It was the same when Obama came in. People were excited and asked some weird questions.”
Carlson has now seen marriage equality become a reality in South Africa (2005), New Zealand (2013), and Australia last year. I suggest we should send her on a mission to roll it out worldwide. While she says that progress brought relief, she also notes that the situation is much worse elsewhere, including several African nations where homosexuality is still punishable by death.
Though Carlson will often joke in her shows about throwing a few numbers into the alphabet soup that is the ever-changing LGBTIQ+ label, she says it’s really not hard holding love in your heart.
“To be quite honest with you, I don’t understand everything in the community, but the important thing is not to be an asshole,” she says. “Just live with acceptance and realise that however people identify, that is their business. I don’t need to be negative about anybody else. I just need to be supportive and appreciate difference.”
For more information about Urzila Carlson, including Studies Have Shown dates and to book tickets, click .
Studies Have Shown is at the March 22-25, March 29 – April 22, then the April 26-28, April 18-19, May 2-3, May 9, May 10.
