The comedy special is, in ways, a follow-up to her critically-lauded and Peabody Award-winning 'Nanette.'
Mikelle StreetAustralian comedian Hannah Gadsby's first Netflix comedy special landed her a Peabody Award. Titled Nanette, it was a full cultural moment, with some asking whether it was a stand-up bit or a Ted Talk. The project was an interrogation of personal trauma onstage, named after a random, mostly unrelated, barista. She says in the genre-bending special that she must quit comedy, that it causes marginalized to exploit their own histories in a presentation that is humiliation, "not humility." And now, the critically lauded jokester is back with her second Netflix special, Douglas.
"I'm excited for you to see it," Gadsby said in a new announcement video for the one-hour special, released Monday. "It's going to be good unless you don't like it. Then it's still going to be good and you'll be wrong." The project will release globally on the streamer on May 26.
Named after her dog, Douglas sees the Out100 honoree addressing in part the reaction to Nanette. When the special toured, including a 5-week Off-Broadway run, Gadsby would start things off by addressing the criticism of its predecessor, which often had to do with the performer's own appearance. Then, she proceeds in much of the same format, giving what is essentially a lecture, thinly veiled as laughing matter. Of the topics, Gadsby reveals that she is living with autism through an anecdote where it's not clear who, if anyone, should be laughing.
In a review of the Off-Broadway run for Out, our then-deputy editor Fran Tirado noticed that"watching someone in comedy create work around disability is revolutionary." Now the head of The Most, Netflix's arm for editorial content built around their LGBTQ+ talent, Tirado went on: "As Gadsby said in the show, ableism is a product of the patriarchy, and labels for neurodiversity are more often than not created by men, especially when women do something they fail to predict."
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