Chris Lilley is the man in the comic mask

WITH his hotly anticipated new TV series Angry Boys about to start, Chris Lilley talks about inspiration, control-freakery and the “real” him.

Chris Lilley

IT'S 1999 and a lean, rubbery-faced young man called Chris Lilley takes to the bare wooden stage of the Fringe Bar on Sydney's Oxford Street. "My students call me Mr G," he declares, as he begins delivering a volley of outrageous one-liners, and moves to the beat of a cassette tape recorder whirring away in the background.

Through the glare of the house lights he spots a table of mums from Turramurra North Public School, where he works mornings and afternoons as a childcare worker. He’s been telling them for years that he does stand-up – although he’s always sensed, like so many others, that they just see it as some flight of fancy. But here is real acknowledgment: turning up on the sly to see him. The poster outside the pub with the name “Chris Lilley” on it somehow carries more freight tonight. The performance earns him loud, warm applause from the 30 to 40 people watching. But he knows the comic character of Mr G – a camp, egomaniac drama teacher – needs a lot more work.

Fast-forward to the Logie Awards, 2008. Lilley, now with two trailblazing hit series under his belt (We Can Be Heroes and Summer Heights High) and a clutch of awards to his name, is doing a big musical stage number as Mr G. The team of young dancers perform admirably and the show receives a standing ovation. But Lilley isn’t happy. He knows that few people would have noticed how awkwardly the lights came on, or how the sound didn’t start on cue, missing the first couple of bars of Mr G playing the keyboard. But in his eyes, it was a mess. He had painstakingly gone over every cue with the technician in the sound booth, after rehearsing every last detail of the routine; now he knows he’ll never be able to watch it on TV. 

Fast-forward to late April 2011. The 36-year-old comic maverick is doing the publicity rounds for his show Angry Boys, the most eagerly anticipated TV series of the year. No other new show in recent memory has caused more buzz than this one, sparked in large part by an eight-minute preview aired on the ABC three weeks ago, and teasers released across the US, British, and Canadian TV markets, all preceded by a brilliantly orchestrated campaign of online clips that have created a frenzy on Facebook, YouTube and Twitter. The 12-part series – Lilley’s most ambitious project yet – premieres on May 11 but even after the first couple of episodes have aired, he’ll still be holed up in the editing suite at Princess Pictures in St Kilda, condensing the final instalments of the show from seven hours of raw footage per episode to 30 minutes of comic gems. It’s here, in this editing suite, that Lilley crafts the final laughs.

We’re soaking up the autumn sunshine at a long wooden table in a St Kilda café – and Lilley is recalling those grab-for-glory years in his twenties when he was a stand-up comic in Sydney. He says that some of those kids from his days as a childcare worker at Turramurra North Public – now approaching 20 years of age – have made contact with him in recent times. “I guess they’re excited by the connection, which is really nice,” he reflects. As if on cue, a small group of early twentysomethings, spotting Lilley, bypass a sea of empty tables and plonk themselves right down at ours, doing a bad job of pretending not to eavesdrop. I don’t blame Lilley for wanting to move inside to a more private spot. “I’ve noticed a fair bit more interest and recognition in these last few weeks – and the show hasn’t even started yet,” he says. Not that he has any real jitters. “You know, I really can’t wait till it goes to air. It’s not about, ‘Oh, now I’ll be more famous than ever’ – it’s about seeing people’s reactions.”

Angry Boys represents a dream deal for Lilley and a landmark one for the national broadcaster. Former ABC executive Courtney Gibson brokered a contract with America’s HBO, known for its groundbreaking, award-winning TV shows such as True Blood, Hung, and The Ricky Gervais Show – and its deep pockets. The resulting ABC/BBC/HBO co-production has given Lilley an unprecedented level of control over his projects – and stuffed enough dosh in his bank account to buy a new car, pay off his  house in St Kilda and buy a small place in Sydney.

Not that money has ever been a driving factor for the man. If it were, he could have easily cashed in with a second series of Summer Heights High – the DVD sales of which were the highest ever recorded in Australia – or risked prostituting his vision with an American version of the show. Instead, the master of the mockumentary has set aside the stratified teenage world of Summer Heights High in favour of something far more audacious: the breast-thumping universe of masculinity, of male heroes and jock culture. “That time in your life,” explains Lilley, “when you think you’re the big man.” Of the five pivotal sets of comic characters in Angry Boys, those twins from the South Australian town of Dunt, 17-year-old Daniel Sims and his hearing-impaired brother Nathan (reprised from We Can Be Heroes) are the “anchors”, notes Lilley. In episode one Daniel points proudly to his “legends” wall – a bedroom wall smothered with images of his surfing, skateboarding and hip-hop heroes.

These pin-ups provide a springboard for a completely new set of comic alter egos for Lilley to play out, spanning three different countries – Australia, Japan and the US. There’s champion surfer Blake Oakfield, long past his athletic prime, leader of the Mucca Mad Boys, with a “Play Hard Muc Hard” tattoo (an obvious piss-take of the Bra Boys’ “My Brothers Keeper”) emblazoned across his chest. The surfing has-been, missing both testicles from a gun accident, is obsessed with protecting his “waves” from a rival gang. “I’ve long been fascinated with the surf world and wanted to do something about the territorialism, the gang thing,” observes Lilley. “I remember the riots in Cronulla, how they were dismissed as a race thing. It’s a slightly frightening thing that’s out there at the moment. This idea that we’re Aussies, we have blond hair and this is our territory.”

There’s also the tough, trash-talking black rapper, S.mouse, creator of the best-selling hip-hop song of all time, now confined to his father’s middle-class home in Los Angeles after being charged as a public nuisance. “Like a lot of rappers S.mouse has got this insane confidence, spins shit about being from the ’hood when he’s really middle class, and isn’t all that bright,” says Lilley, who composed S.mouse’s hilarious rap song Slap My Elbow in his small recording studio at home, which he soundproofed with old mattresses. Combined, these characters represent self-deluded machismo in the extreme (“They’re like watching a bunch of male monkeys acting tough with one another,” says Lilley).

Lilley’s two new female comic creations may be his edgiest yet. There’s Ruth “Gran” Sims, grandmother to Daniel and Nathan, who is in charge of a Juvenile Justice Centre for Boys and lives with her colleague Penny in the prison grounds. “Gran isn’t shy about expressing her prejudices, but as you’ll find as the series moves along, she can also be warm and caring,” he says. Finally, there’s the soft-spoken Japanese-American Tiger Mum, Jen Okazaki – “the biggest, nastiest bitch I’ve ever played”, enthuses Lilley – who forces her son Tim on to the pro-skateboarding circuit and then lies to the media about his being gay to cash in on merchandising opportunities in the pink market. She lives in a sleek Tokyo penthouse and subjects Tim to regular pinch-tests with her fat callipers. “Jen would eat Mr G and Ja’mie alive,” says Lilley with relish.

Lilley has long specialised in the comedy of shock and awe – the clueless, snooty schoolgirl (Ja’mie), the creepy drama teacher (Mr G), the unruly misfit (Jonah) of Summer Heights High – but this new bunch of characters are unquestionably his most cringe-tastic yet. How US audiences will react to a white Australian comic daubing his face in black greasepaint to play a rapper is anybody’s guess. “I like to ruffle feathers a bit,” admits Lilley, between sips of Kirin – a Japanese lager that could have come out of Jen Okazaki’s fridge. “I like material that’s a bit shocking. I thought, if you were a fan of Summer Heights High, what would you want in a new show? You’d want the boundaries to be pushed further.”

Lilley says he has enjoyed surprising people since he was a teenager impersonating his teachers at school. “You know that somebody is always going to be offended,” he observes. “But I’ve never tried to make shows for everyone. If someone doesn’t like it [Angry Boys] they can watch something else. It’s kind of weird because I never really expected to reach this mass audience. I was sure Summer Heights High would be a cult ABC thing; I had no idea it would be such a big hit.”

What he finds endlessly amusing is how big, boofy blokes can be drawn to his bitchy, over-the-top female alter egos. “A bunch of guys from the St Kilda football team came up to me after We Can Be Heroes and told me, “We love Pat Mullins, we love Ja’mie,” he recalls fondly. “There must be something in the Aussie larrikin vibe that connects with cross-dressing,” he laughs. 

And this may be Lilley’s greatest gift as a comic: while we gasp – and then laugh – at his characters’ appalling racism, homophobia, witlessness and empty egotism, they somehow insinuate themselves into our hearts. He locates the soul of a character, shoves them into their natural environment, dresses them up in physical and verbal comedy and tosses in a few redeeming qualities for good measure. At a time when political correctness has meant that it’s become much more difficult to talk about things as they actually are, his comic vision seems fresh and authentic. But Lilley, who is already becoming the somewhat puzzled darling of academics and TV historians, doesn’t seem even remotely interested in uplifting analyses of his work. “I’ll leave it to everyone else to analyse why the shows work,” he says simply.

His prickly side
While you get the sense that Lilley would kill a small endangered animal to protect his comic vision (OK, scrap that, he’s been a vegetarian since he was five), he doesn’t gloat about his success. And guess what? The real, honest-to-God Lilley – over a beer and a long, relaxing lunch at least – is amusing and quick to laugh at himself, although he’d be the first to admit he’s not nearly as funny in person as his comic personas. Overall, he couldn’t be nicer or humbler or easier to talk to. 

Which doesn’t stop him from being a slight pain in the arse to interview. First, he insists on using his own photographer for our story – bypassing our own award-winning snapper who spent 13 years shooting celebrities in LA. Then he decides he won’t do a shoot at all: we’re given one exclusive portrait (used on our opening spread). I suppose a video interview for our website is out of the question? Yup, don’t even think about it. I’m pre-warned that his opinions on the issues of the day, such as gay marriage, are off limits. No, he doesn’t want me to speak to friends or family. He no sooner glimpses my digital recorder than he warily asks whether it will be used for a podcast. I reassure him it won’t. No, I can’t watch him work in the editing suite, not even for a few minutes.

Whenever my questions cross some unmarked line of intrusiveness, such as an innocuous request for some funny family stories while he was growing up, there’s a pause and, “Oh, I’m thinking of my family reading it.” Er, reading what exactly? That he slipped on a banana skin when he was seven?

As his new show is called Angry Boys, I consider it not unreasonable to ask what makes him angry. No answer. OK, we’re meant to assume the fey, flamboyant Mr G, of Summer Heights High fame (he doesn’t appear in Angry Boys), is gay, right?  And his new character, Gran Sims, who lives with another woman, is surely a lesbian? I only ask because it’s never explicitly stated in the show that they are... “This is open to viewer interpretation,” Lilley replies evasively in a later email. “But Mr G discusses in one of the deleted scenes that he’s looking for Miss Right.”

You suspect that, just as he controls what comes out of the mouth of S.mouse, Lilley would also like to determine what comes out of the mouth of the big, bad media. Which is why it’s so easy to get the wrong idea about the man: you might be tempted to think he must have some dark secret to hide, or that talent of his calibre is a sure sign of a hothouse personality. So I ask him about his biggest pet peeve with journalists. “That’s a good question,” he smiles. “I get bored with the constant probing for the clichéd tears of the clown, the dark side of the comic. They [the media] have invented this idea of me as being this notoriously shy recluse, an introvert. And it’s all because I won’t play their game. And there’s the odd one who’ll try to present me as some wild and crazy guy. And you know... sometimes I feel guilty because I seem to be too dull to give them the interesting angle they want.”

Hardly dull, Chris. Certainly a bloke fiercely protective of his privacy. Certainly a comic who is not “on” when he’s away from the camera or stage. Certainly a person who has enjoyed a remarkably sunlit life so far, not downplaying a few cloudy patches in his twenties when he led what he calls a “double-life” balancing stand-up gigs with jobs as a childcare worker and shop assistant (“I wasn’t where I wanted to be,” he recalls). Certainly reticent and reserved, but not painfully shy. After all, no one wins their own show in the slog-athon that is 21st century TV by being a shrinking violet, right? “That’s right,” Lilley concedes. “OK, so I’m not this huge extrovert, but sit me next to any other celebrity and I don’t think I’d be that much different.” Looking for a phrase to sum up Lilley’s core identity? Perhaps, “ordinary man with an extraordinary talent” might go some of the way.

So alas, no tales of a tortured artist. No on-set temper tantrums (well, none that we know of). No sordid tales of sexual misbehaviour (it’s a safe bet that with mobile phone cameras and Twitter at every corner, we would have heard of at least one piece of mischief by now). Even his fans can mistake his natural reserve and distance for shyness. “Fans feel they know me, so they want me to be on-the-spot funny, and it’s hard to fulfil their expectations,” he says. “Most people are really nice, though.” 

Lilley’s comic art is certainly winning him admirers in high places: Tracey Ullman, Dawn French and Barry Humphries all profess to be fans. It stems from his ability to fully inhabit his characters, which he spends months and months researching (for Summer Heights High he videoed kids in high schools and interviewed teachers; for Angry Boys he spent time in a juvenile detention centre, watched masses of surfing, skating and rap docos, and was heavily involved in the extensive audition process for the supporting cast, most of whom are non-actors).

“There are bits of me in all my characters,” he acknowledges, while warning against a too autobiographic reading of his work. “The characters are more like constructs from identities and features I’ve observed.” So there was no real-life Mr G torturing him as a teenager? “No, I had a female drama teacher. Mr G was completely made up. There are thousands of Mr Gs out there in different walks of life.”

Control freakery
Lilley pleads guilty to being a “perfectionist” but feels his shows would lose their mojo without it. “You can perfect things in pre-recorded TV, which you can’t do on the stage. And wouldn’t anyone, given the chance, want to be happy with the final result of their work?” No doubt – yet there aren’t too many other artists in this country who have the level of creative control Lilley now enjoys. It’s a product of many hard-fought battles over the years, dating back to his days on Big Bite when he’d sneak into the editing suite at Channel 7 and sweet-talk the editors into letting him choose the cuts on his comic characters Extreme Darren and Mr G. His name is all over the credits of Angry Boys – as writer, co-producer, performer. “Chris is insane with detail,” notes Carrie Kennedy, production designer on Angry Boys, who also worked with him on Summer Heights High and We Can Be Heroes. “He approves everything before it lands on the set.”

Control freaks don’t always get it right, of course. Ricky Gervais sacrificed an up-front salary in order to have total say over The Invention of Lying, and the result was a commercial and creative fiasco. But so far, to his credit, Lilley has been unerring in his creative instincts. Control freaks are also supposed to be notoriously difficult to work with, but colleagues describe an even-tempered man who brims with ideas, a perfectionist always looking for ways to turn a joke around and make it better. “Chris is very clear about what he wants,” notes Kitty Stuckey, costume designer on Angry Boys. “He’s trained himself up in all aspects of the production so he’s on top of everything. You won’t hear him say ‘That’s good enough.’ He wants the best.” 

Stuckey scoffs at the suggestion he may be too controlling. “It’s easier working for people who own their material. It’s the same with Jane [Turner] and Gina [Riley] on Kath and Kim – they put tremendous value on what they do.” Ask Lilley a question about his creative process – a dangerous one for any control freak – and he’s remarkably candid. And you suspect he couldn’t flourish without having complete control.

And here’s the thing about Lilley. He’s a comedian’s comedian. He never lets anyone in on the joke. Most of his co-stars and crew have no idea how his character will look or sound until he turns up on the set. Carrie Kennedy relates the story of the first day of shooting Angry Boys, when Lilley suddenly appeared as “Gran” Sims in a wig and fat-suit. “Amongst all these young testosterone-charged boys, out comes Gran, instantly commanding attention,” she recalls. “I’m not sure whether they were all shocked to meet her or whether they were just trying to get used to the sound of her voice. And then to see Chris bouncing in and out of character – holding Gran’s boobs, giving direction in his normal speaking voice, then straight back into character doing karaoke to an Amy Winehouse song.”

Nor do Lilley’s fellow cast members know exactly what will be said as the cameras hum away, despite detailed scripts that he labours over for a year or more. What he aims for is controlled insanity. “I keep lots of little secret lines that I hand-write on my script to deliver on the day,” he admits. “If I put them in the script they’d get talked about on the set and burned out by the time we get to the shoot. It’s great delivering the most insane line and seeing what happens.”  The mood on the set, he explains, is mostly serious, the real laughs coming out in the editing process. “I almost get worried when the crew laugh after a take,” he observes. “It makes me think it may not be really funny.”

Red-brick upbringing
Lilley got his first taste of celebrity at the age of three, when his new neighbour – Kamahl – moved in next door in their street in Turramurra, on Sydney’s North Shore. Over the next few years a steady stream of celebrities – including John Farnham, Bert Newton and Johnny Young – pulled up in front of his house in expensive sports cars and black limos. But the middle-class, red-brick home that produced Lilley and his three siblings was about as average as you could get, he stresses. His late father was a pharmacist who dabbled in musical theatre when he was young (“Dad was a funny man, not a joke teller, but was always in on the fun with me”) and his mother a nursing administrator (“Mum says I’m the least funny member of the family but we’re always sending funny messages to one another”). It wasn’t a sporting household, nor was it one of high culture (“we’d have Hey Hey It’s Saturday on, not the opera”).

The future master of mimicry was always “inventing characters and writing songs and serials” as a child. At Barker College in Hornsby, Lilley was a stubbornly below average student who gave his all to the school musicals. “I was prancing about dressing up as characters in school plays and impersonating the teachers,” he recalls. “I thought of myself as pretty average, but I guess it’s a bit weird to jump up and start imitating the school principal talking to his wife when you’re supposed to be giving a talk on Catcher in the Rye. I just enjoyed the shock factor and the entertainment value.”

There were a “lot of” Saturday detentions. “I was rebellious in the sense I wouldn’t do things I didn’t want to, especially sports stuff. I was at the bottom of the class and had this report card that said, ‘Chris might want to consider leaving at the end of year 10’. My parents were so distressed about it. They were like, ‘No future.’”

By the time he scraped into Macquarie University, Lilley had pretty much settled on his course: it would either be comedy, music, or both, even though “there was pressure to do something safe”. In his first year at uni Lilley wrote and staged his own show, which his dad attended and described as the best hour of his life. He’s never forgotten those words.

After being fairly anti-sport in his youth, Lilley seems to have taken up more jockish activities in his thirties. He’s been surfing for the past five years, loves the great outdoors and keeps a tent in the back of his car.  A fan of Duran Duran and other British pop in his youth, he’s now into American rappers such as Talib Kweli and Jay-Z and is occasionally spotted at hip-hop gigs in Melbourne (“I like music that’s big, bold, tough and confident”). He does all his own stunts on the shows – yes, that’s really him spinning his car as Daniel in Angry Boys, stirring up a dust storm. “Laura Waters [a long-time co-producer with Lilley and his most loyal advocate] says that when I got out of the car, she’d never seen me look so happy and glowing. I must have been channelling my inner hoon or something.”

In his down-time, Lilley hangs out with a group of close friends going to the movies, gigs and pubs, but he admits he is not a “holiday type of person”, preferring to concentrate on his work. Still unattached – he broke up with his long-time girlfriend three years ago – he says he enjoys his own company at home without being a loner.  His TV channel of choice is LifeStyle on Foxtel. “I have all the Grand Designs DVDs, and Location, Location, Location with Kirstie and Phil is my all-time favourite show,” he says. “English real estate is so irrelevant to my world and yet I’m like, ‘Oh no, don’t go with the conservatory’, or ‘Yeah, put in an upstairs bathroom.’” No, he doesn’t watch much comedy (“when you make a comedy show you become very critical of everyone else’s work; it’s like, ‘Oh, I see what you’re trying to do’”) but he confesses to a weakness for The Graham Norton Show (“he’s a very clever presenter but I’d still be too terrified to go on his show”).

So we won’t be expecting to see him doing the rounds of the TV chat-show circuit any time soon? “Some people are really good at that stuff; they have these big and bubbly personalities and want to show off,” he says, explaining that he gets asked to do these “ridiculous TV things” all the time. “I’d never hire a publicist just to maintain the celebrity thing... the only time I seek out the press is when I have a show coming out. I’m not into publicity for its own sake. And I don’t want crappy things said about my private life,” he adds darkly.

The words “show off” and “show-offy” sprinkle his conversation: you get the impression his greatest fear of all is to appear a wanker. Which probably explains why he finds that poseur’s paradise, the red carpet, especially tiresome. “I had some Channel 9 girl come up to me at the Logies once and demand, ‘I’ve got this interview with you in a minute so just stand right here.’ I told her I was on my way in and she’s like, ‘No, no, you are on the list.’ So I kept walking and she got pretty mad at me.” He pauses for a moment. “I’ll probably be dodging the red carpet at this year’s Logies. But then, you feel obliged to the fans, who’ve waited hours to see you.”

The discomfort ratchets up to 11 when he’s in a meet-the-press style situation, such as the media room at the Logies after the ceremony. “They’re firing questions at you and the cameras are flashing. They’ll get you to hold up a Motorola phone or something because they’re one of the sponsors of the event. I’ve refused to do it once or twice and I’ve got into trouble.” Almost as an afterthought he adds: “I don’t hide from the Logies and I don’t mind some of the showbiz stuff, but I would rather let the work speak for itself.”

Isn’t there a concentrated contradiction here – between the testicular fortitude he displays by throwing on a frock on national TV to spout racist invective, and his nervousness around a few nosy journalists and the risk of a rubbishy story here and there? “Yeah, I guess so,” he admits dolefully. “But on the show I do it in a controlled way to ensure I’m happy with the end result of my risk. Which means... I guess it’s not really that risky, after all...”

One thing that Lilley never seems to have doubted is himself. “Sometimes I don’t fully believe what’s happened. But I don’t go, ‘Wow, lucky me...’ I’ve worked my arse off. I am not a natural in-your-face type so I’ve had to really push myself to get my characters out there.”  

Not that he would ever take himself too seriously, like his trademark character, Mr G. He swears he’ll never fall into that trap. Despite its wicked social satire, Angry Boys is entertainment first and foremost. “A show should take nothing too seriously,” he says thoughtfully. “Least of all itself.”