Comedian Kitty Flanagan on her shock Logies win, why she was a no-show, and what’s next for Fisk

Kitty Flanagan reveals why Sam Pang had to accept her Most Popular Actress Logie for hit comedy creation Fisk this year — and how she really feels about her surprise win.

It’s fair to say that the first season of the hit legal comedy Fisk wildly exceeded creator Kitty Flanagan’s expectations.

“It would be very fair to say that – oh my God,” Flanagan says with a hearty laugh, as though it was the understatement of the century.

“We were just hoping that people didn’t hate it, so when people liked it, that was such a bonus. But that’s the beauty of me – set your expectations low and you can only be pleasantly surprised.”

When it first debuted last year, audiences and critics alike immediately took to heart Flanagan’s awkward, perennially brown-suited probate lawyer Helen Tudor-Fisk and her co-workers at suburban law-firm Gruber & Associates, including the brother-sister combination of Ray and Roz (Marty Sheargold and Julia Zemiro), tech boffin George (Aaron Chen) and their revolving rosters of oddball friends, family and clients, played by a who’s who of Australian comedy actors.

To the surprise of Flanagan, who co-wrote the series with sister Penny and co-directed with Tom Peterson, it also proved to be popular with all ages.

“I was really pleased when people would say to me that their kids liked it because it wasn’t necessarily something we set out to do,” she says. “But we also knew that we wanted to find a show where if you were watching it and your kids came into the room, you wouldn’t have to go ‘Oh, God turn it off because they are about to get naked’.”

Marty Sheargold and Kitty Flanagan in a scene from season two of the ABC comedy Fisk.

But if Flanagan was surprised at just how much the gentle workplace comedy helped lift the nation’s Covid locked-down spirits, that’s nothing compared to how startled she was when Fisk was nominated at the Logies for the Most Popular Comedy Program and she was nominated for the people-voted Most Popular Actress. Flanagan was deep into production of season two in Melbourne when this year’s awards ceremony took place on the Gold Coast – and neither she nor her castmates could afford the risk of being struck down by Covid at Aussie TV’s night of nights and disrupting an already tight shooting schedule.

And, given she was up against heavy-hitters of the acting world including Deborah Mailman and Anna Torv, she reckoned that her chances of actually winning were precisely zero. Her comedy colleague and Fisk guest star Sam Pang concurred, which was the only reason he agreed to accept the award in the extremely unlikely event of an upset.

“It was something that I’d never expected,” she says. “And I also never expected that I would be so moved and so happy about it either. When it came up, I was like, ‘Oh, that’s pretty funny that I’ve been nominated’. And just the mere fact that Sam Pang went up to collect it is testament to the fact that we had discussed it and come to a conclusion that there was no way I was going to win it.”

She didn’t even have the broadcast on at her Melbourne home, having switched channels after Fisk lost to Have You Been Paying Attention, so she only found out her freshly minted Logie-winner status when her phone lit up with messages of congratulations.

“We had it on and I went ‘Oh, you know what, don’t watch it because I don’t want to feel weird and bad if I watch and then I don’t win’,” she recalls. “And then I’m going to feel sad that I didn’t win and then that feels silly to be sad that you didn’t win a prize that you weren’t expecting to win anyway.

Sam Pang accepts the Most Popular Actress Logie award for Kitty Flanagan at this year’s Logies. Picture: Channel 9

“So, I just went ‘turn it off, I don’t want to watch it’, and we were watching something else and I picked up my phone and went ‘oh my God, I think I won’ because I had about 20 messages. And I went ‘quick put the television on’ like some sort of idiot that I thought I could watch it later. So, I’m sorry to say I missed it in real time.

“But to win a popular vote was just not what I ever would have imagined could happen. As a paranoid, anxious comedian that sits in the corner thinking everyone hates it, to get a most popular award, I felt like Sally Field – ‘you like me, you really like me!’”

Fisk’s accolades didn’t end there – and Flanagan is still faintly embarrassed, and clearly chuffed, that it took the Best Series Award at Europe’s prestigious Series Mania TV festival, ahead of the Emmy and Golden Globe winning Hacks.

“That was just unbelievable because I adored Hacks ­– that was one of my favourite shows of the year,” she says. “To win that was so exciting. Just to know that what you think is very Australia-centric humour – there’s no one more Australian than Ray Gruber – transcended our borders and people in another country found it funny, let alone people who speak a different language found it funny. That was really, really rewarding.”

Flanagan says that the success of the first season was a double-edged sword when making the second. On one hand, cast and crew were more comfortable and confident with their characters and jobs – and on the other hand, there was the anticipation from the legions of fans, some of whom she’d met on stand-up tours around the country.

Marty Sheargold, Kitty Flanagan and guest star Stephen Curry in the new season of Fisk.

“Last time we thought, ‘well, we’ve done what we can and if people like it, they like it, and if they don’t, we’ve got no one to blame but ourselves’. This time, there is a bit of expectation where they are going ‘oh my God, we’re so excited about Fisk coming back’.”

Similarly, Flanagan says that Fisk herself is more comfortable in her baggy brown suit (“I love that suit, it just really helps you get into character – there’s something a bit slumpy about it gives you that kind of Helen-ness”) as the main wills and estates lawyer at Gruber & Associates in season two.

“Helen is more ensconced,” Flanagan says, “She has even got an office now that has stuff in it, whereas last time she was just working on a table, and we’ve just tried to kind of foster the relationships a bit more, to get even more into Ros and Ray and their relationship as brother and sister. And especially Ray and George – it’s all about the relationships in the office, and we always wanted to kind of keep it as real as we can.”

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Flanagan leaned on comedy mates including Pang, Dave O’Neil (with whom she does the hilarious snack-food centred podcast The Junkees), Ed Kavalee, Marg Downey and Glenn Robbins to appear in the first season. While she was initially worried she’d “tapped very favour I can”, there are plenty more to come, including her Utopia co-star and Working Dog comedy stalwart Rob Sitch.

“I know, I am shameless, aren’t I?,” she says. “I even went knocking on Rob Sitch’s door this time around and I couldn’t believe he said yes. That was a surprise but a delightful surprise.

“I thought he’d fob me with ‘I’d love to Kitty, but I’m a bit busy’. So, when I got the text and he said ‘yeah, I’ll do it’, I turned around and went ‘oh f---, we’d better lift our game if Rob Sitch is coming in’.”

Fisk, October 26, 9pm, ABC and ABC iview