‘Complete disaster’: Celia Pacquola on brutal stand-up comedy fails and her career coming full circle

Comedian Celia Pacquola recounts an embarrassing onstage incident, as she describes her role on a hit TV series as like providing ‘warm comfort to people who are basically sh*tting themselves’.

Celia Pacquola remembers sitting in the studio audience watching her friend Felicity Ward walk through the famous blue doorway back in 2009.

Pacquola was fresh to the stand-up circuit and couldn’t imagine ever having the courage to take part in the chaos of a show like Thank God You’re Here. “And now I’m hosting it,” she tells The Binge Guide with a laugh.

As for Ward? She’s the first woman to take on the role of the cringe-worthy boss in an upcoming Australian version of The Office for Prime Video.

“A lot has changed since I started doing comedy, which is also where I met Hannah Gadsby – and look at what they’re doing,” Pacquola says of the Tasmanian comedian.

“A lot of the people I came up with are doing amazing things.”

Listen to Celia Pacquola on Stellar’s podcast Something To Talk About below:

Therein lies the beauty, says Pacquola, of hosting Thank God You’re Here. Each week, she welcomes a new roster of comics to bluff and joke their way through a secret improvised sketch that’s only revealed when they open the blue door.

One scenario may see the unsuspecting guest helming a spacecraft; in another they might find themselves a cult leader or a star of a ridiculous soap opera. “As a comedy nerd, it’s great,” Pacquola enthuses.

‘I don’t like being in charge!’ Celia Pacquola is the latest guest on Stellar’s podcast, Something To Talk About. Picture: Supplied

“We have a range of up-and-coming comedians, who I have heard of but am not super friendly with because I’m not out on the scene as much anymore.

“And we have close mates like Luke McGregor and people I really admire like Kitty Flanagan or Ross Noble who were the generation before me.”

When the show’s producers told her they were bringing it out of retirement in 2023 after a 15-year absence, she feared they wanted her as a participant.

To her relief, the Working Dog Productions team – who also make Network 10 comedy quiz Have You Been Paying Attention? and ABC satirical comedy Utopia, both of which star Pacquola, and the latter of which sees her and Flanagan up for Best Lead Actress in a Comedy at this year’s Logie Awards – said they wanted her as its frontwoman, taking over from previous host Shane Bourne.

“I’ve been asked to host stuff in the past and I understand why – people think I’m conversational,” she says.

“But I don’t like being in charge and being responsible for other people having a good time.

“When they asked me about doing the job, I was like, ‘Oh yeah, I could do that’. It’s basically traffic control and being a warm comfort to people who are basically sh*tting themselves.”

For more from Celia, listen to her on Stellar’s podcast Something To Talk About below:

Not all shows are successfully rebooted, though. Nostalgia can only carry a show

so far and Pacquola’s biggest concern about fronting the renewed format was that she didn’t want to “break it – because I loved the show so much, back in the day, and I worried that when it came back it would be destroyed.”

Thankfully, the humour of Thank God You’re Here still lands.

And Pacquola believes that’s because the combination of silliness and fear never goes out of style.

“Everyone can relate to that feeling of tension and not knowing what will happen,” she says. “It’s fun to watch someone put on the spot, particularly people who are used to being in control.

“To see these people, who we already know and love, put themselves in extremely vulnerable positions and then, when backed into a corner, watching what their minds come up with is just fun.”

Series 6 of Thank God You’re Here premieres at 7.30pm on August 14 on Network 10 and 10 Play. Celia Pacquola is the guest on a new episode of the Stellar podcast this weekend.

To listen, search for Something To Talk About wherever you get your podcasts.

Originally published as ‘Complete disaster’: Celia Pacquola on brutal stand-up comedy fails and her career coming full circle