“Like all normal women, I hate myself,” says Christie Whelan Browne in her latest show. “And most people in this room have probably hated themselves at some point or another, so let’s talk about it.”
The actor and singer remembers a moment before she hit her teens, when she went from not knowing what beauty was to believing, “Whatever beauty is, I’m not that.”
Christie Whelan Browne stars in the upcoming cabaret show Life in Plastic.Credit: Simon Schluter
Best-known for her roles on Shaun Micallef’s Mad As Hell and as a musical theatre triple threat, Whelan Browne grew up – like many of us – with a certain doll with “her very specific measurements and unattainable, perfectly shiny mounds in all the right places”. From a very early age, she saw that kind of beauty as a standard, no matter how unrealistic it was.
In her upcoming cabaret show Life in Plastic, Whelan Browne reveals intimate details of her life, from her first heartbreak and ongoing body issues, to having issues conceiving. “Then you get to 40, if you’re lucky, and you realise that this is the body you’ve been given, and it’s done amazing things for you – like birth a child,” she says. “You find appreciation for yourself, but it just takes too long, or it did in my case.”
Co-creator and actor/writer Sheridan Harbridge looked at all the interviews Whelan Browne had given, as well as interviewing her, to write the script. “She made the stories out of my own words,” says Whelan Browne. “It has allowed me to reclaim parts of myself and celebrate parts of myself using comedy.”
Whelan Browne in Britney Spears: The Cabaret.
“Nineties bangers”, as Whelan Browne describes them, make up the show’s soundtrack. It’s a similar approach to Britney Spears: The Cabaret, which she made with Dean Bryant, interweaving comedy and songs in a one-woman show.
In September, Whelan Browne settled her lawsuit against Oldfield Entertainment, who she alleged victimised her after she said she was sexually harassed by fellow actor Craig McLachlan during its production of The Rocky Horror Show. Settlement details were not revealed. While she can’t say much, she was “very happy with the outcome”, describing it as “the biggest relief of my life”.
“There’s a very big personal cost. But I don’t regret it for a second,” she says. “What I feel is that – especially in terms of this show – why I’m on this Earth is to take a stand for myself and for other women. The fact that I grew up with pimples and braces … if that girl had known that her power in the world was so much more than the way she looked, she probably would have felt a lot better.”
There was an upside, though, she says.
“It made me a funny person because I was like, ‘Well, I’m not beautiful’. I leant into the fact that what I can do is make people laugh.
“I was put on this earth for much more than to look beautiful. I can see that and admire things in myself that have nothing to do with the way I look.”
Life in Plastic is at Chapel Off Chapel from October 24-27.
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