Lizzy Hoo gave comedy a crack at 32. Now she’s one of our brightest new talents

When Lizzy Hoo was a child, she was so shy she wouldn’t speak. Her mum became so worried, she sent Hoo to speech and drama classes to build her confidence. But inside, Hoo knew what she wanted to do.

“If people asked me what I wanted to be when I grew up, I would say comedian, which is wacky,” says Hoo. “And my family, I think they used to laugh at it. And I used to love that they laughed at it, but I was obsessed.

“I loved shows like The Comedy Company, with Con the fruiterer. And I remember getting a show bag at the Brisbane Ekka [the show], a Comedy Company show bag, and I got a visor and a whoopee cushion. It was the best.”

Now Hoo is one of comedy’s brightest new talents. Her confident, joyful stand-up – which scoops up stories about her family and school days, and annoying workmates – has won Hoo coveted spots on the Just for Laughs bill at the Sydney Opera House, performing at Melbourne International Comedy Festival galas, supporting Tom Gleeson and selling out shows around the country.

Hoo with her faithful companion Owen, the greyhound rescue. Credit: Simon Schluter

She’s cracked the TV market, too. On Have You Been Paying Attention? her quick and loose answers have made her a favourite, she is a repeat visitor on The Cook Up with Adam Liaw and has co-hosted the online travel series Escape To. Next month, she has an Amazon Prime comedy special, Lizzy Hoo: Who Cares!?

No one is more surprised by her rapid rise than Hoo herself.

“I’ve learnt to not expect anything,” says Hoo. “And just sort of go with the flow. Even filming my special, in my mind I was like, ‘Oh, that’s far down the track.’ I thought that was at least two or three years ahead of me. And then I got a call that was, ‘OK, there’s a possibility of you doing this. Are you interested?’ And I had to take a moment. Because in my bones, I was like, ‘What the hell? I don’t think I should do this just yet.’”

It’s all the more remarkable when you consider Hoo only quit her day job, as an account manager in marketing, at the end of 2021 to give comedy a full-time go. Even better, she only gave comedy a crack in 2017, at age 32. She was once again feeling a little shy, so she signed up for comedy classes at Sydney Community College.

Hoo (back right) on Have You Been Paying Attention? with (from front right) host Tom Gleisner, Sam Pang, Urzila Carlson, Tony Martin and Ed Kavalee.

“My mum said, ‘Why don’t you just do Toastmasters or something like that?’” recalls Hoo. “But I just went straight for the deep end.”

Four weeks later Hoo was performing stand-up at a class show. “I invited everyone that I knew in Sydney - my cousins, my bosses, my workmates were there. Now I look back and think that it is actually insane to do that,” she says, laughing. “And I thought it’d be just a once-off, like that’d be it. Just do the friends and family show and move on. But I loved it.”

A few open-mic nights followed, but often Hoo would park her car outside the venue, get out and then hop straight back in and leave. “I was in my 30s, like 32, 33, and thinking, ‘What am I doing? Why am I going out?’” she says. “It’s not who I want to be around, twenty-something dudes, I’ve got a job.”

But then it clicked. She practised in front of the mirror at home (The reviews? “Brutal.”) and soon became a NSW state finalist in the national Raw Comedy competition.

She then juggled comedy with a full-time job for about five years, gigging three of four nights a week and fitting in festival shows. She was, she jokes, the comedy equivalent of a mature-age student. “I didn’t hang out with friends. I didn’t do other activities. All I did was work and comedy.”

The hard work has paid off, though. Hoo’s profile began to build just as the industry began to finally open its eyes to a wider array of talent. These days the question isn’t just about having an equal number of women on the bill but, “Is the line-up diverse enough?”

“I think [there should be] opportunities for everyone,” she says. “I’m way more conscious of that [than it just being about more women]. “If I see an all-white line-up or something like that, I think, ‘Oh, you could have looked a little bit further afield.’ There’s loads of us, take a peek.”

Hoo describes herself as being made “from local and imported ingredients”. Her mum Barbara is from Toowoomba and her dad Chan was born in Malaysia. They met in Penang and moved to Brisbane in 1975.

Hoo’s stand-up draws wonderfully on her family – two slightly eccentric brothers (one attempted to set up a trout farm in his Melbourne backyard during lockdown, the other started a travel vlog when the borders were closed) and her skydiving mum. But the breakout star is her 84-year-old dad, a “born showman” who loves to play the ukulele in BUMS (Brisbane Ukulele Musicians Society) and names Ronny Chieng as his favourite comedian.

“His first job when he came to Australia was at Daydream Island,” says Hoo. “He left my mum on the mainland with my brother in a caravan park. And dad was having the time of his life. He was a baggage guy and then they had a talent show on the island and dad won, and became the entertainer. He would sing, do music and the drag nights. So he’s always had a flair. He loves a prank.

Hoo on stage performing her Amazon Prime stand-up special Who Cares!?Credit: Ian Laidlaw

“Whereas mum, I think, is actually funny. She’s dark. Dad’s probably given us this carefree, you-can-be-a goose attitude but mum has given me a dark edge.”

The first time her parents saw her stand-up, at the RAW Comedy state final, the feedback was honest. “Mum said to me afterwards, ‘Oh, you didn’t talk much about your Irish heritage,’” says Hoo, with a sigh. ” ‘OK, good to see you, thanks for the feedback!’ But she was happy that I didn’t swear.”

Hoo’s background has meant she is an easy target for predictable and boring criticism – she either talks about her background too much or, bizarrely, too little. Or that she leans on Asian stereotypes.

“It’s like, OK, every white comic is using the stereotype [about white people], but you just don’t call it a stereotype,” says Hoo. “It’s hard because that’s my life. Just because you think it’s a stereotype doesn’t mean that it doesn’t happen.

“And you’re like, I think you missed the point of the joke. You get lots of lovely little comments on social media that you kind of have to ignore, and some people think it’s a crutch to talk about your heritage and race and stuff like that. People have opinions on everything, you just have to shut it out.”

For her new show this year, Woo Hoo! (she swears she doesn’t have a long list of Hoo-related puns), Hoo is giving her family a break and instead looking at her life now that, at age 39, she has statistically reached the halfway mark.

“A few people that have helped me with this show have been like, ‘Oh, there’s no Chan this year? There’s not a lot of your brothers?’” she says. “And I’m like, ‘Yeah, it’s probably not fair that I put them in every single show.’ Although my dad loves it. He’s happy to be in the shows. But my mum hates it.”

Considering Hoo started stand-up to improve her confidence, how does Hoo rate her confidence now?

“I think it’s pretty good,” she says. “I’m still quite shy in new situations but then I come out of my shell. Even my mum is like, ‘I still can’t believe it, you never talked as a child and now this is what you do.’ So yeah, I think it’s OK.”

Lizzy Hoo performs at the Melbourne International Comedy Festival from March 30 to April 23; and the Sydney Comedy Festival from May 10-14.

Lizzy Hoo: Who Cares!? streams on Amazon Prime from April 6.

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