Tim Minchin fires up about ‘f*cking sh*tshow of a Kardashian-type world’

The award-winning musician and comedian gives a searing interview about the cutthroat world of show business, and how Kardashian culture is taking everyone down with it.

In the cutthroat world of show business, Tim Minchin is making his own rules. As the multi-talented star launches the second season of his award-winning Foxtel comedy series Upright, he muses to Stellar about defying stereotypes, cancel culture and surviving in, as he puts it, a “f*cking sh*tshow of a Kardashian-type world”

Tim Minchin is constantly adding new hyphens to his already lengthy string of titles: composer-lyricist- comedian-actor-writer-producer-director.

But when he’s sitting in the back of a cab and the driver asks him what he does for a living, his answer is simple. “I’m a muso,” the Tony Award-winning artist says.

“I mean, it almost feels a bit inaccurate now, but I am a musician. And all through being a comedian I was really just a funny muso. My shows are concerts... they’re there to make you have fun with music.”

It can be hard to believe that Minchin – with the instantly recognisable lanky locks and black eye make-up – would need to explain to anyone who he is or what he does for a living.

After all, he’s been sporting his signature shabby-chic look for decades and is in no hurry to change it.

Especially now that he had a small preview of what he’d look like without his tussled mane while donning a short wig in a flashback sequence for Upright – the Foxtel series that (in typical Minchin form) he co-writes, executive produces and stars in.

Tim Minchin: ‘I don’t have a great self [esteem]. I grew [my hair] to hide because I’m in this industry where I felt rejected by every agent’ Picture: John Tsiavis

“I posted a photo of myself [in the wig] online and everyone said, ‘Don’t ever cut your hair, man!’” he says.

“Look, I grew my hair because I don’t have a great self [esteem]. I grew it to hide because I’m in this industry where I felt rejected by every agent. And even still, it’s a weird f*cking thing.

“I don’t think I am an ugly dude, but I have been made very explicitly aware – in my early career when I had had no success – that I was not handsome enough.

“I thought, well, I can’t be hot, so I’ll be quirky. And it worked. So now I have my hair and I wear my make-up and people find me attractive because you make do with what you’ve got.”

The second season of Upright sees Minchin, 47, and his co-star Milly Alcock reprising their roles as Lucky (a self-absorbed pianist) and Meg (a tough-talking teen runaway) for another journey through the Australian outback.

While season one followed Lucky as he dragged his beloved piano across the Nullarbor to see his dying mother, season two has the duo dealing with torrential rain in Far North Queensland as they try to track down Meg’s mum.

“I hope the [Queensland] environment features in the same way,” he says.

“It’s much more a Heart Of Darkness story of a journey up a river. In my head there were tips of the hat to The Tempest and Heart Of Darkness…Upright [season] one worked metaphorically and that stuff is still in there, but there’s no piano in Upright [season] two because that would have felt cheesy and contrived.”

Even without the keyboard, music plays a key role in the show’s return.

“And this is very much Milly’s season,” he enthuses of his young co-star, a relative unknown when they first worked together and now an up-and-coming Hollywood commodity thanks to her starring role in the hit television series House Of The Dragon.

He continues, “She’s very lucky and very talented. And you [have] got to be lucky and talented. You can be one without the other and you don’t get sh*t.

“And she was brilliant in Upright. And that gave her an extraordinary portfolio. House Of The Dragon were very, very sensible to cast her because she is very, very good in it.”

Minchin is just shocked it wasn’t him the House Of The Dragon casting agents wanted because, he adds cheekily, “I was born to do Game Of Thrones. I love getting naked on-screen. I’ve got the hair, I look Celtic.”

Minchin is no stranger to success himself, having turned two hugely popular stories – Roald Dahl’s book Matilda and the 1993 film Groundhog Day into stage musicals.

Matilda won five Tony Awards and seven Olivier Awards. But perhaps the greatest testament to Minchin’s talent is the fact that Bill Murray – who famously had an acrimonious falling out with his close friend and the film’s director Harold Ramis while shooting Groundhog Day – came to see the stage show.

“Twice in a row,” Minchin adds. “He loved it!”

But even now, with all of his accolades and celebrity endorsements having fortified his self-esteem, there are times when Minchin feels pangs of insecurity.

“I was in line to do a movie with Naomi Watts a couple of years ago and it was [the] lead,” he recalls. “It got all the way to the money people in the USA, and they made all these excuses [about not casting him]. But I knew what it was about.

“At this age, I was fine with that because I have my own power. But this is a f*cking, f*cked industry. It doesn’t just play on the body images of women, it doesn’t just play on the self-esteems of people of colour – it plays on everyone because it’s a f*cking sh*tshow of a Kardashian-type world.”

The Kardashians – and the brand of modern-day feminism they represent – mystify Minchin. He boasts proudly that his daughter Violet, 15, “wouldn’t be able to pick a single Kardashian out of a line-up”.

Tim Minchin wrote the award-winning stage musicals Matilda and Groundhog Day. Picture: John Tsiavis

Tim Minchin: ‘This is a f*cking, f*cked industry. It doesn’t just play on the body images of women, it doesn’t just play on the self-esteems of people of colour – it plays on everyone’ Picture: John Tsiavis

Having “come of age” in the grunge culture of the ’90s, Minchin was surrounded by women eager to shake off the shackles of male-constructed femininity.

He explains, “There was no talk of needing to be non-binary or anything like that, in order to present [differently]... all the women I hung out with were educated, mostly hetero, but not all, and what you would now call ‘butch’. They all wore overalls and sneakers.

“That female empowerment is now that you should be allowed to present yourself [Kardashian-esque] as a feminist – and sex-positive feminists argue it has nothing to do with the male gaze and all that – I’m just like, wow.

“And, yet, when I go to the beach now, I am like, ‘We won! The men won!’”

Minchin realises that his views on feminism could raise eyebrows. But he has never been afraid to voice his opinions even when they made him a target for vitriol and abuse.

Two protest songs, ‘Come Home (Cardinal Pell)’ and ‘I Still Call Australia Homophobic’ were particularly polarising.

“If you wrote a book on the role of satire in Australian politics, in hindsight, it was a hell of a moment in terms of art intersecting with culture,” he says of his Pell song.

At the time, Minchin had no fear in writing about Pell because he knew exactly who it would enrage, and he wasn’t afraid to make enemies of those people.

The rise of cancel culture, however, has made him a little more gun-shy about speaking up on some issues because it could make him the target of his “own tribe” of progressives.

“I don’t know how to talk about this subject without talking for two hours,” he says, sighing.

“Talk of cancel culture eats itself. And to have a straight, white, powerful man talking about cancel culture is unlikely to be taken in the spirit in which it’s meant; it’s not likely to be listened to charitably.

“It’s not likely to be observed by some as a genuine contribution to the conversation because of cancel culture. It’s an ouroboros that eats its own tail.”

He makes one final, resounding point. “Conversation about cancel culture coming out of my mouth is subject to cancel culture.”

Tim Minchin features in this Sunday’s Stellar. Picture: Holly Ward. \

Season 2 of Upright premieres at 8.30pm on November 15 on Foxtel and Foxtel On Demand.

Originally published as Tim Minchin fires up about ‘f*cking sh*tshow of a Kardashian-type world’