Summer Heights High creator says new show Angry Boys is inspired by people his characters have 'in posters on their wall'
Taking Chris Lilley seriously is tricky at first. It's just so hard to not see the characters; Ja'mie flicking her GHD-ed hair out of her face, her glycerine lips spitting another giggly, and probably racist, insult; Mr G mincing smugly across the playground; or Jonah, puckish and sad, screaming, "Oi, you got your period or what, miss?" across the classroom. Lilley isn't actually those people ? in real life he looks like a handsome version of Elliott Smith ? but he plays every single one of them and disassociation doesn't come easy. It feels like a long time ? too long ? since Summer Heights High first aired in 2007, but he's finally back with a new crop of characters in Angry Boys, a co-production with HBO that was three years in the making and, according to the Australian network ABC, "explores what it's like to be a 21st-century boy." Unlike anything Lilley's done before, Angry Boys ? which is already ABC's highest-rated show of the year and was the No 1 trending topic worldwide on Twitter the night it aired ? isn't, as Lilley says, "just about the lives and habitats of people in little pockets of Australia"; it goes worldwide. It's big, very bold and is, as his fans would hope, deliciously controversial.
Although Lilley's 2005 series We Can Be Heroes was popular, and critically well received, it was more of a cult attraction. But Summer Heights High was massive. It's the biggest-selling TV series of all time in Australia, and was also hugely popular in the US and UK. It was certainly the most exciting thing to come out of Australia ? their new MasterChef format excluded ? in a long time. For many, he's a genius. His courageous, boat-rocking comedy spends a lot of time with its (often contemptible) characters rather than flitting between them, and the worlds they inhabit seem so real that they only serve to heighten the comedy. And yes, it's jaw-dropping at times, but there's a heart the size of Uluru pumping away underneath it.
Lilley's ability to step into a character like a comfy pair of trousers almost certainly comes from all the time he spent creating them as a kid. "All I did when I was younger was make up characters," he says. "I had friends who'd play along. We'd just ring each other up and I'd be a character and they'd be a character, and it'd be this continuing story. There was never any acknowledgment either ? we just did it. It was completely real."
Lilley plays six characters in Angry Boys ("The most I've ever played"). There's Blake Oakfield, a champion surfer; S.mouse, a black American rapper whose only hit is a song called Smack My Elbow; Jen Okazaki, a manipulative Japanese mother who is pretending to the world, for the sake of her merchandising empire, that her skateboarder son is gay ("Skateboarding - gay style!"); Ruth "Gran" Sims, a guard at a juvenile detention centre; and her grandchildren, 17-year-old twins Daniel and Nathan Sims. "Daniel and Nathan were the starting point for the whole thing," says Lilley, who comes across ? unlike his characters ? as very shy. He's a reclusive comedian; preferring to exist through his characters rather than talk about himself. "I find it so funny that there's a woman playing their mum who I'm far closer in age to and yet, it's this real thing; you really believe she's the mum." The boys were in We Can Be Heroes: did he know then that he wanted to explore them further in the future? "Yeah, as soon as I'd finished that series I knew I had to do something else with them. The other characters in Angry Boys all came out of me wanting to explore the twins' heroes, the people they have in the posters on their wall. I like the idea of dreaming big."
'I never rehearse; I get the characters clear in my mind during the writing stage then when it comes to filming I go straight into it'
He says Gran has been the character "people have responded to the most". Which is funny, as he struggled so much with her during filming. "I didn't think it was going to work," he says. "I remember saying to the producer, 'I'm not sure about this', but it came together. Also, I never really rehearse; I get the characters so clear in my mind during the writing stage, that when it comes to filming I just go straight into it." Gran is perhaps Lilley's most complex character yet. At first, you dislike her. She's quite racist ? "Right, let's divide you into two teams: light skins and dark skins," she says before a football match between the young prisoners ? cold and narky, but beneath the caustic exterior is a woman who really cares for, and is respected by, the prisoners. She makes elaborate superhero pyjamas for them ("You can have Shrek or Superman") and brings her pet guinea pigs in to visit the inmates when they're sad or having trouble adjusting; it's like a prison-bed petting zoo. Internet forums have frothed over Gran's racist language but, as Lilley says, "She's a 65-year-old woman being incredibly inappropriate because she's from another generation." It's blindingly obvious he knows it's not acceptable: that's what he's laughing at.
Another character that has provoked a ripple of contention is bubblegum rapper, S.mouse. This is, after all, a white man pretending to be a black ? something wholly unpalatable to a lot of people. "When the press first found out about Angry Boys they were like, 'It's racist! He has a black character!' says Lilley. "But when they saw it they realised it's much more subtle." Subtle is a dangerous word to use when you're playing someone of a different race. However, S.mouse isn't offensive in the way David Walliams playing a Jamaican woman in Come Fly With Me is; Walliams makes his character's ethnicity the punchline, whereas Lilley has created a ridiculous character who just happens to be black. "It's not like I'm putting on a minstrel show or something reminiscent of another time that's going to rile people," he offers. "People can clearly see that's not my intention. It isn't about his race at all; I am not overdoing any stereotypes. I just thought it would be funny to have this young rapper guy desperately trying to rebel." And how does he rebel? He poos on a car bonnet, the only thing that gets him a whiff (literally) of street cred. Does Lilley anticipate any backlash with US audiences over S.mouse, and Jen Okazaki? After all, those Americans can be quite fussy about who says what about race and gender. "Ummm," he says, pausing to think. "No, I think the HBO audience will understand it. HBO are really excited about it. It's not in bad taste at all; I think I have a good gauge of when it's gone too far." Like with S.mouse, you kind of forget Jen's ethnicity; it's just part of the tapestry of her character.
Lilley is arguably at his best when he's playing women. It's terrifying how well a thirtysomething straight man can not just play, but become a woman, be it a waspy 16-year-old schoolgirl among her friends ("People are still so fanatical about Ja'mie; I get her quoted to me most days"), or a 64-year-old prison guard with shoulders like one of the New Zealand All Blacks. "People always say, 'Oh, you must interview people and copy their mannerisms and stuff', and I really don't," he laughs. "It's instinctive, like painting; you do a bit here, a bit there, and just kinda keep going until you feel like it's complete." Did he have any idea how Ja'mie would turn out, then? "None at all!" he laughs. "I just knew that I wanted it to be subtle, like, I didn't want to do a voice that was too high, or go over the top. Then suddenly I was hanging out with teenage girls and just became one of them. I'm interested in putting myself into characters that are so crazy but end up believing it."
One thing Lilley is not concerned with is being cool. "I'm not interested in being one of those comedians who wants to look good and be this 'cool' funny person," he says. "I don't care how weird or ugly I look. I like to totally immerse myself. That's why I admire Julia Davis; she's only concerned with completely becoming what she's created."
'I'm attracted to the idea of people that have these big aspirations that the audience know might never happen'
Is there a unifying trait in the characters he creates, then, that makes them so escapist? "I'm definitely attracted to the idea of people that have these big aspirations that the audience know might never happen, but they're lost in them." Like Pat Mullins? "Yeah, exactly like Pat." For those who haven't seen We Can Be Heroes, Pat was a 47-year-old woman who had one leg shorter than the other. To move around more quickly she developed the ability to roll along the ground at high speeds. Her ambition was to roll on her side from Perth to Uluru, though she had some setbacks during training, including having a gumnut lodged up her nose. In the final episode, it was revealed that Pat died of liver cancer and never completed her roll to Uluru.
It must have been quite a shock to actually become someone else in front of the camera for the first time. "Totally. It was like, 'Oh, this is real now. I have to put on a wig and do it properly.'" Are there hundreds of characters lurking in his head? "Not just in my head; I have books full of them. I like to keep characters alive. Apart from Pat, everyone I've played on TV is still around in my head. I feel like time hasn't stopped; to me, Ja'mie is still at school. I hope they can all come back at some point. I could do them all forever."
Speaking of keeping characters alive, is it true that Lilley's mum has a lifesize cardboard cutout of Ja'mie? "She rang me about that this morning!" he laughs. "She said, 'Don't tell people that, they'll think I'm insane!'" Where does it live? "In her house at the end of a corridor I have to pass to get to bed whenever I stay there. It's terrifying. It's so funny, when I first sent her a picture of me filming as Ja'mie she emailed back and said, 'I won't be showing this one at work, Chris', but then when people responded so well she went crazy for her. She begged a shop for the cutout! She literally walked through the whole shopping centre with it under her arm."
The Angry Boys characters may or may not provoke as much fanaticism as Ja'mie, but at the time of this interview, after only one episode has aired in Australia, Lilley says people are already stopping him on the street to talk to him about the show. And it's not just the kids, either. "I had a woman come up to me the other day, an elderly lady, who said she was 'soooooooooo excited' about the show and loved the twins. She said, 'I'm an 85-year-old woman and I'm your biggest fan'. I was really wowed by that." It's a type of person that loves what Lilley does, though; it's not age-specific. "A lot of people don't get it," he says. "But if you do get it, you really get it."
Source: http://www.guardian.co.uk/tv-and-radio/2011/may/28/chris-lilley-angry-boys
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