Jim Jefferies on comedy, cancel culture and why he’s worried about living in the US

Aussie comedian Jim Jefferies reveals why he can’t be cancelled and why he was attracted to a battler’s ‘Robin Hood story’ for his new podcast.

Australian comedian Jim Jefferies couldn’t give a damn about being cancelled.

The way he sees it, the people who want to cancel him weren’t going to come to his shows anyway.

“It’s very hard to cancel someone who’s got 40, 50 stupid things he said that he could have been cancelled for,” Jefferies says over Zoom call from his Los Angeles home.

“Every time I hear there’s an inkling that I could be cancelled, I’m like ‘which one was it?’ Like someone found an old interview of you saying something stupid and I’m like ‘that sounds like me’.

“But you can’t live your life worrying like that and let’s face facts here – you’re only cancelled for the people who want to cancel you. The people who still like you, still like you. And, look, I’m at a stage of life where I’m like ‘all right, whatever’. I’ll sit back on a beach somewhere being cancelled. I’ll be fine.”

Jefferies has been courting controversy for more than 15 years now, attacked from both sides of politics, praised as a hilarious, astute, fearless freethinker by his supporters and reviled as a sexist, homophobic misanthrope by his haters.

He broke through in the UK in the mid-2000s and then found even bigger success in the US, thanks to his sitcom Legit, the news-comedy program The Jim Jefferies show and his stand-up comedy specials, including a 2015 routine on gun control that sadly continues to resonate with every mass shooting in the firearms addicted country.

Australian stand-up comedian Jim Jefferies says he isn’t worried about being cancelled.

Early on in his career he was something of an outlier in the comedy scene in his own country, and worried that some of his success overseas stemmed from his broad Aussie accent and penchant for dropping C-bombs.

But more recent tours here, including this year’s sold-out run of dates, have been some of the most successful comedy tours Australia has ever seen and he says he feels gratified his homeland has finally taken him to heart.

“I do not feel like I’m an outlier anymore,” he says of this year’s dates.

“It’s good because a lot of young comics in Australia came up to me and said that they’ve been watching me since they were 16 or 10 or whatever and I remember watching comics who are my age now when I was a young comic. So, all those people have come through the ranks and so that made me feel old and very blessed at the same time.”

So, does he now feel like he is being held up as a role model in the same way he idolised the great Eddie Murphy as an aspiring comedian, watching his classic Delirious stand-up set over and over again? Hell, no.

“I would never tell you that I could be someone’s Eddie Murphy’s Delirious,” he says dismissively. “I feel like I’m somebody’s attainable comedian. When you watch Eddie Murphy, you go ‘I’ll never be as good as that guy’. When you watch me, you go, ‘oh that’s achievable’.”

Any changes to Jefferies’ comedy – and lifestyle choices for a man who has freely admitted to abusing alcohol and drugs – in recent years have more likely been driven by internal factors rather than the opinions of others. Now a married father of two, he’s more worried about what his children might think when they get to hear his sometimes confronting, expletive-laden material.

Jim Jefferies’ on his US news-comedy show The Jim Jefferies Show.

“That’s all you think about when you have kids,” he says.

“Whether you are going to let them down or whether you’re doing the right thing by them or what’s the responsible thing.

“Now, I get uncomfortable about my children hearing. I say jokes about my wife all the time, some very personal things about our sex life or whatever and I worry about my wife hearing it. But here’s the thing. You know who’s the last person who’s going to listen to that audio book or this interview? It’s my wife. She has to hear me all day. Like if she’s got an hour free, she’s going to sit back and go, ‘let’s listen to Jim talk some more’. So, she’ll never hear.”

Jefferies latest project is a podcast for Audible called The Outrageous True Story of Milky Moore.

The stranger than fiction documentary, narrated by Jefferies, tells the story of Luke “Milky” Moore, a down on his luck country boy who benefits from a bank error that ultimately gives him access to $2 million that isn’t his and sends him on a Gold Coast spending spree of strippers and fast cars while he desperately tries to stay one step ahead of the law.

As “a guy who got famous for doing some outlandish things”, Jefferies says he saw something of a kindred spirit in Moore and also saw it as an underdog story of a troubled battler who made poor choices rather than being a fundamentally bad person.

Coincidentally, he already knew about Milky, having been approached a few years ago to write a script for a movie based on his misadventures, with Liam Hemsworth in the frame to play the lead.

That project ended up falling over, but when the opportunity arose for the podcast, Jefferies was all in.

Luke ‘Milky’ Moore is the subject of the new Audible podcast The Outrageous True Story of Milky Moore.

“It’s a Robin Hood story, mate,” he says.

“You root for him through the whole thing and then you have to put yourself in his shoes the whole time. Those are the best stories – where you can relate to it. What would I do? If I was in this situation, would I take the money? Would I feel at fault? Would I feel scared all the time? Would I keep going? It’s a Robin Hood story with a bloke who stole from the rich and gave to the poor, and it just so happens that the poor was him.”

Jefferies has been open in the past about his struggles with depression and he says he also relates to Milky’s mental health issues, which stem in part from a car accident that left him with serious injuries.

“Completely,” says Jefferies.

“I think mental health it’s one of those things that until you’ve experienced it, it’s very hard to explain to others. You can’t judge someone until you are in their position, till you have walked in their shoes. You don’t know what state he was in. I’m not quick to criticise people in this world, because I know I’ve done enough stupid things myself.”

Jim Jefferies is back on the road in the US with his new stand-up show called Moist.

Jefferies is now back on the road in the US with a new stand-up tour called Moist – a title he chose because it was the most offensive word he could find that wasn’t actually a swear word – and he’s planning to turn it into another Netflix special, which should air next year.

After calling the US home for more than a decade, he says he’s more worried about living there than he ever has been, thanks to “out of control” gun crime and the deep political divisions.

“It’s not your day-to-day world, where you will be walking down the street worried about people with opposite opinions to yours,” he says.

“But I haven’t felt a time more in history that when I’m at a party I have to watch what I say. And not just my political beliefs but I might say something very mundane and then find myself talking to a QAnon supporter. This will be a person that you’ve liked for the last hour you’ve been talking to him and then you’re like, ‘oh, f--- me, this person’s batshit crazy’.”

The Outrageous True Story of Milky Moore, hosted by Jim Jefferies, is out now on Audible.

Originally published as Jim Jefferies on comedy, cancel culture and why he’s worried about living in the US