By Allan Sko

Nina Oyama’s had a helluva year. Years, really. As well as the bread and butter of stand-up, the multitalented comic has flexed her performative chops in Utopia, Taskmaster, Deadloch, and The Tonightly with Tom Ballad, lit up the podcasting circuit, and even just last week won a writing award for Koala Man.

You’d be forgiven for thinking, as we plough tenaciously through another year, that she’s rushed off her feet. Not the case, it seems.

“A lot of those were made in the pandemic and just now dropped, so people think I’m incredibly busy. I’m not; please hire me!” Nina reveals. “The reality is, I’ve just been going to the beach and really need something to do because I’m addicted to work and without it, I have no purpose. So please hire me.” [speaking to Nina post-interview, she informs me in the short space of time that has elapsed, she is now inundated with work. You snooze, you lose]

This said, of course… “I’ve got a comedy tour coming up, which has been exciting to use a different part of my brain.”

I take this opportunity to award her promo poster for the Nina Oyama Is Coming Best In Show for the festival.

“Me on the washing machine turning the dial up?” Aye, that’s the one, Nina. “I’m glad you said that. A lot of people don’t understand that it’s me being horny; all they see is a funny photo of me being domestic. They obviously haven’t seen Madmen, or at least the scene with January Jones alone in the house.”

The photo shoot that produced this winning image also came with a very different kind of framing for Nina.

“As is often the case with a photo shoot, you have a lot of options,” she explains. “I had a big discussion with the photographer about which to choose: ‘This one’s funny; I like this one for you; your face looks good in this one, but this one is a better pose’.

“But I remember there being a big debate about shoes off versus shoes on. In the end, we went with shoes on. Otherwise, it’s somehow too intimate.”

Despite Nina being delightfully open about sex and sexuality (more on that later) this was a surprising blind spot in the oeuvre of horny.

“I never thought of bare feet as too much skin,” she admits. “Apparently, it is. Female comedians always have their shoes on. There’s a long legacy of barefoot male comedians.

“Tim Minchin was a huge barefoot guy, and Wil Anderson; thongs were his whole thing for ages. But women, we can’t do it, you know, because it’s just too distracting. Too many pervs rock up.”

The conversation at hand offers a segue into sex and sexuality, a topic that often falls within Nina’s comedic purview, gleefully exploring every sticky crevasse.

“I just like gross-out humour!” Nina effuses. “And I like being relatable. I started doing comedy when I started being sexually active, so it’s existed my entire career. I have no interest in being a clean comic. I think clean comics are secret sociopaths.”

At this point, light banter is had regarding being wary of those who listen to lounge music. As I like to do with any boundary-pushing comic, this soon leads me to ask whether there are any no-no’s subjects.

”Anything is good if it’s honest,” Nina states. “With good comedy, if you’re saying something disgusting but it’s rooted in relatability or touches on a universally human feeling, then yeah, I think you can say it on stage.

“Like, I don’t think you should say things that have… like, you know… Oh, God…”

Nina starts frantically looking around her apartment, a twinge of panic evident in her eyes. I swiftly go from being on tenterhooks for her half-finished answer to concern.

We would never return to this topic. For something altogether sinister and terrifying was at hand. Something that would show the strength and courage of Nina Oyama.

—

“Sorry,” she explains. “I just came into my house, and there’s this huge spider.”

Naturally, I offer to end the interview immediately so that Nina can evacuate the country without a moment’s delay. She clearly has a bigger issue to deal with. She has to put her house on the market for a start.

“It’s been in the lounge room,” she explains with remarkable calm. “And I’ve been keeping it there. I turn the light on so that bugs come in and it gets fed. I figured if I keep it in the lounge room like a pet then I never have to worry about it wandering about the house.

“But then I went away for a week…”

This is too much for me. What was, only seconds prior, a relaxed Zoom chat has instantly morphed into an exchange akin to a 2am campfire horror story. It takes all my mental strength not to imagine Nina clutching a flashlight under her chin, the beam facing upward to cast eerie shadows across her otherwise flawless features.

“I was hoping it was still in the lounge room,” she heroically continues. “When I came into the house, it was on the door and followed me as I made my way through the house. I can only assume that it missed me and was grateful that I was home.

“But I am terrified of it. If it was the size of, like, a 50- cent piece, I could handle that. The ones that are the size of your hand? That’s just excessive.”

Nina has given me the most raging sense of cognitive dissonance I have experienced. My mind wrestles between the revulsion of an arachnid spindling its wicked mesh of legs ever closer to my precious eyes, and the adorably quaint notion of its eagerly bounding after its human friend like a lovesick puppy.

Speaking of which, Nina’s plan for humane spider containment doesn’t end there. Her thinking, much like the spider in question, is big.

“We should breed huntsmans, like how we bred wolves to become adorable little dogs,” she says. “Breed huntsmans so that they just get small and adorable. Because yeah, I’m fucking stressed right now.”

With a promise to be her eyes for what’s behind her, the decision is made to bravely push forward with the interview. After all, Nina has a show to promote…

—

Now, where were we? Ahhh, yes. To take her mind off the impending situation, I ask Nina if she has a particular approach to the writing of a new show.

“I’m very shambolic,” Nina professes. “I have my little scratchpad and write down everything that’s on my mind in a stream of consciousness. Some of it has comedy angles, some of it doesn’t, and some of it is one liner-y type jokes.

“And then when I come to doing trial shows, I will pick those bits, and I’ll put jokes in them and punch them up. From there, a theme tends to emerge organically.

“That’s what I usually do, and it’s how I wrote this show,” she says, of …Is Coming. “That said, the last show was different. I had a bit with Chris Kenny’s news report about me, when he read out my tweets about politicians. I just thought that was so funny, I had to play the video of it.

“One of the tweets was along the lines of, “There are rumours that Malcolm Turnbull had his backbone removed so he could suck his own dick.” And Chris Kenny read that out, live, with a straight face, on Sky News. I just think that’s pretty funny.

And, of course, it is.

One of Nina’s many shining qualities is she is never backward in coming forward nor, indeed, is she ever inward in coming out.

“I always joke that I was the first ever bisexual girl comedian,” Nina says. “When did I come out—about 2015, I think, some ten years ago—nobody was doing bisexual material. I had headliner comedians tell me I was unique in that regard.

“Now, you can’t throw a rock without hitting a bisexual comedian—which is fine! I’m glad that people are discovering their sexuality. But I’m actually thinking of becoming straight now because that’s way more rare.

“But yeah. I did start it. So you’re welcome,” Nina concludes, with absolutely no irony whatsoever.

From here we pontificate and extrapolate (me the former, Nina the latter) on all things sexuality and identity through the exploratory lens of comedy.

“I think bisexuality goes hand in hand with stand-up,” Nina muses. “Traditionally, it’s a very masculine form and was dominated by men. Even now, it’s dominated by women wearing flannel. So, with that comedy space existing for the bisexual community, I’m glad that we’ve finally got a thing.

“Sexuality is extremely interesting and extremely complex, changing across the whole ever-widening spectrum,” Nina continues. “And identity politics is intriguing. It helps you understand yourself, but it can also be incredibly limiting or can become such an obsession with defining your identity that you forget to go outside because you’re too busy online defending being pansexual.

“So it’s interesting and useful, but everything in moderation. That’s my attitude.”

My two-cents to this discussion involves one of my great loves of comedy; as well as the build up and release of something as joyous and connective as laughter, it is an arena in which the taboo can be deboo’d, ideas and concepts can be explored in a safe environment, and discoveries about oneself—be it sexual identity or otherwise—can be made.

From my observations, I suggest that ethical nonmonogamy will be the next bisexual in terms of comedic exploration. Nina has thoughts on this and, somehow, this segues into talk about children. Let’s see how this was managed, shall we?

“I love ENM (Ethical Non-Monogamy, remember?) and the concept of it. Honestly, I think everyone should be ENM,” Nina asserts chipperly. “The problem, sometimes, is when people forego the E, and then it’s just, like, gaslight city.

“But I love the idea of ENM, and I’ve seen it work. I would like to try it myself.”

The E, of course, being the ‘ethical’ part of the equation, and something that can be navigated through the super-simple, age-old method of The Big C: communication. I mean, how hard could that be?

“Everyone always says, ‘Oh, communicating is SO easy; just communicate your feelings!’ Communicating is actually one of the hardest things you can ever do,” Nina states. “If you have a feeling that you feel stupid or embarrassed about, of COURSE you don’t want to communicate that.

“I’m a 30-year-old, and the people I know who are having kids now are so well versed in emotional language and therapised that I really feel like the next generation of kids, Gen Alpha or whatever they’re called, are gonna be so mentally healthy.”

As well as taking a quick moment to write down the term “therapised” to steal for later, this comment sparks the proud father in me, enthusiastically agreeing with Nina by referring to my two beautiful daughters as Exhibit A & B for this point. Having barely scraped double-digits each, they are already more world-wise, self-aware, and in charge than I’ll ever hope to be.

“Yeah, I hope she grows up and becomes Prime Minister,” Nina enthuses, kindly ignoring my manic energy. “When I get older, I’m gonna be the opposite of old people. I’m going to be so pro the children of the future. Like you say, they’re way smarter than me and more emotionally intelligent than I’ll ever be. I’d rather learn from them.

“Anyone older than me, especially baby boomers, I’m like, ‘Shut up!’ Everything they say, it’s like, you don’t know anything about the world! And you spent so much of your life emotionally destroying the generation after you.”

Quick note to my parents if they’re reading this: she doesn’t mean YOU. You’re one of the good ones, heheheh- heh-heh.

It is at this point that Zoom reminds me that I’m chronically poor by announcing my free 45-minute slot is nearly at an end. This also has an alarming effect; I’ve really pilfered THAT much of Nina’s precious time? She has a show to polish, awards to collect, beaches to comb, and an eight-legged monolith to feed.

As such, I ask if Nina has anything in particular to share before we lovingly part ways.

“My show is really filthy!” she says, with admirable assertiveness. “So don’t come if you don’t like filth!

“I’m always really scared that people will see I’m performing and think, “Oh! It’s the girl from Utopia and Taskmaster! I’m gonna bring my kids, and my grandma, and people who like family comedy.

“THIS IS NOT A FAMILYFRIENDLY SHOW.

“Like, I cannot stress this enough. It’s disgusting. So don’t come if you’re easily repulsed by gross-out comedy.”

Perhaps, I timidly offer, in the spirit of this chat and its exploration of comedy as a ground for self-discovery, it may open people’s minds?

“Nah, I want to preach to the choir, man! I don’t want to do any heavy lifting. It’s basically me talking about my pussy for an hour. So, if you’re into that, come. And if you’re not, that’s okay, I won’t be offended. I don’t know you.”

Nina Oyama Is Coming is on 23 March at T2, Kambri Cultural Centre, ANU. To hear Nina talk about her pussy for an hour is $32 + bf via Moshtix and is, quite frankly, a God damn bargain.