Confessional interview: Em Rusciano

Performer, writer, singer, stand-up comedian and podcast maven Em Rusciano on surviving the past five years and meeting her best friend at 11.

Performer, writer, singer, stand-up comedian and podcast maven Em Rusciano.

The way I would describe myself in one sentence is…well meaning, chaotic, deeply feeling, hot, organised mess.

I didn’t believe I was funny until…other people who were really funny told me I was funny. It probably wasn’t until I was 34 and Denise Scott and Charlie Pickering both said to me, you should do a stand-up show. I don’t even know if I am funny. I have trouble perceiving myself but I know as a kid I always used humour to deflect from saying something weird. When I was little one of the first vinyls I ever listened to was Eddie Murphy’s Delirious and Raw and looking back on that now I don’t know if that was appropriate but my sense of humour was always really grown up and developed because my dad loves comedy and I grew up watching comedy. I was drawn to Lucille Ball, Roseanne Barr and Tina Fey and Whoopi Goldberg. There’s so many strong female funny women I was drawn to.

The past five years have been…beautiful, brutal and bonkers. That’s what my new show, Outgrown is about. I made the show because I wish I’d had something like it at the time I was going through everything. I’ve learned from experience that when I speak about the hard parts of life it makes them palatable and less heavy.

The reason I decided to workshop my trauma with an all out musical comedy extravaganza…is because it’s such a big story. It’s so dramatic what has happened. We’ve all just kind of gotten on with the fact that we experienced a once in a lifetime pandemic and that the world shut down and We were locked in our houses. Now we just all go about days like it never happened. Our ability to cope and get on with life does end up biting us in the arse later in life. So I want to slow down and acknowledge the last five years and make a song and dance about it. It’s good because it means I’ll never forget, it’s a cautionary tale, it hopefully gives people direction and is a great show.

My whole career has been…a series of me walking into situations I have no experience doing and going, yeah I can do that.

Some of the ways I’ve been misunderstood…is that people think that I’m rude or mean but I’m just autistic. I say things as I see them, I’m very literal. I’ve spent my life feeling misunderstood, which is something I think a lot of neurodivergent people can relate to. So I tend to over explain myself and say too much. I think there’s an assumption that I’m a really strong person that doesn’t care about what other people think but in fact I’m the opposite. I’m a hypersensitive person and I do read into everything and take in everything.

The moment I met my best friend at age 11…was when our parents worked at the infectious disease hospital in Melbourne and our Mums realised we were going to the same high school. So they decided to put together a pizza night. The Boomers were playing trivial pursuit in one room and we were put in a room with a DVD. I sat there and ate an entire family size pizza to myself and he was in awe of that. And then he bought up Madonna and Madonna is my biological mother, sorry to my Mum Jenny. We bonded over her and Star Wars and Divas. We’re both 45 now and we love each other dearly. He’s the greatest non-romantic relationship I’ve ever had.

My favourite outfit on stage to date was…probably the one I wore on my Rage and Rainbows tour in 2019. I had clouds on my shoulders which were raining crystals. I had a rainbow tulle waterfall coming off my leotard. The costuming for me and the preparation is my favourite part of performing. I love being on stage, but I enjoy meticulously planning all of the themes and colours.

Once when I was in New York…I was in Central Park and there was a group of Australian tourists who recognised me and wanted to come say hello. But at the time I had really bad gastro. Luckily me saying “I think I’m going to have explosive diarrhoea” didn’t shock them.

Em Rusciano’s will tour her new 15-date show ‘Outgrown’ nationally for July -August 2024, starting in Toowoomba, QLD on Thursday 11 July.