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(Image: The Shape Of a Mother).
(Image: The Shape Of a Mother).

PartnersSeptember 24, 2019

It’s time to talk about bodies after birth, and not just stretch marks

(Image: The Shape Of a Mother).
(Image: The Shape Of a Mother).

The impact of pregnancy and birth on the body is immense, yet we rarely discuss the ways it impacts women’s lives, says Emily Writes.

Before writing this piece on pregnancy and postpartum body changes  I ran a short survey that I shared in a small Facebook group. Within half a day I had more than 100 responses. By the end of the day, 260.

I asked people who had been pregnant how their body had changed through the process and after birth. Those who answered were mostly pragmatic about how their body had changed – and for most, it had changed a lot:

I have no feeling around my C-section scar. More spider veins. Boobs are bigger, but flatter. Weak abdominal muscles, despite targeted weight training…so my stomach pooches out more. Skin is drier. More fine wrinkles. Stretch marks. My periods are heavier but shorter. My joints tend to get sore more easily.

*

I am a fairly fit and skinny person, but the excess skin I now have around my tummy makes me sad every day. It will never go away. Neither will the tear in my abdominal muscles, regardless of how much yoga I do. Giving birth vaginally to a breech baby was also fairly damaging, and carrying them caused my uterus to flop onto my bowel, so sex is now painful in certain positions. Really puts a dampener on your marriage.

*

Change in how my stomach sits, have an overhang now after C-section and surgeries. I had an obstetric fistula which has resulted in bladder damage and painful periods.

*

I gained 25kg during first pregnancy then lost 35kg the year after. Fell pregnant again and gained another 20kg, then lost it. And now having gone back to work, I’ve gained it all back and then some! So my poor body has been constantly changing over the last seven years.

*

My boobs are saggier and have lost their density on the top. My labia are longer. My cervix is lower. I have grey hair now.

*

Boobs saggier, anus higher up (hard to explain but that’s the best I can do), saggy skin on stomach, deeper voice, weaker core, much more prone to nerve pain in lower back, less comfortable during periods, and much worse ovulation pain mid cycle.

*

My back is weak, my pelvic floor destroyed, my teeth have degraded, I’m exhausted and my joints hurt, especially my pelvis.

It’s like a list of car crash injuries. And it seems unlikely that someone recovering from a car crash would be expected to lose weight immediately, get on some dick and/or love their stretch marks. Yet the prevailing focus on postpartum bodies is squarely on weight loss or “loving your body” or having penetrative sex.

What lies in between? Where did this focus come from and how can we turn the tide? What even is body image when your body feels broken?

Meredith Nash is a senior lecturer in sociology at the University of Tasmania, and deputy director of its Institute for the Study of Social Change. She studies body image in women during and after pregnancy.

Body image is a profound theme in women’s experiences of reproduction, she says – particularly for first-time mothers. She explains that the drive to drop as much weight as possible, as fast as possible, can “take hold in a way that can be very unexpected for women”. As to why, anyone who’s been through the up-ending experience of having a baby will understand the logic, at least to some degree: “[Weight loss] can be a simplistic way to take back control of your life when it has changed so much.”

Nash started her research more than a decade ago, when the narrative about postpartum bodies was just emerging: think celebrity “bump watches” and magazines asking “who bounced back faster?” She’s now a mother to a four month-old.

The focus on weight loss has grown over time, at the expense of any proper conversation about birth injury, ongoing health issues and body changes after pregnancy, she says. The psychological damage to women can be immense.

“It’s a huge emotional labour, and that’s on top of the physical stuff women go through when they have kids.”

The reality is that weight gain and loss is a small part of most postpartum experiences. 

Dr Meredith Nash and August (image: supplied).

Caitlin Day is a physiotherapist on the pre and postnatal wards at Auckland City Hospital. At Greenlane Clinical Centre she treats patients for pelvic floor dysfunction including prolapse, incontinence, bladder urgency, constipation, faecal incontinence, and sexual pain.

She also has a private clinic where she treats pregnant women for back and pelvic pain, rib pain and carpal tunnel syndrome; and postnatal women for pelvic floor dysfunction from childbirth, diastasis (separation) of their abdominal muscles, and “aches and pains from mothering”.

On top of that, she’s a mum to a 16 month-old. 

She reels off the statistics: one in three women who have had a baby leak urine. Around 50% of women who deliver a baby vaginally have a prolapse whether they know it or not. (A prolapse is where the vaginal walls have been stretched, allowing one or more of the pelvic organs to bulge down into the vaginal area.)

One in eight women who have had a baby have faecal incontinence or difficulties controlling their gas. Around 85% of women who resume sex by 12 months postpartum (including those who had a C-section) experience pain during vaginal penetration after birth.

“Pregnancy itself causes huge stretching of the pelvic floor, abdominal muscles and chest area from the increasing size of the baby, but also the pregnancy hormones, making us more stretchy,” Day says.

“A vaginal birth causes the pelvic floor muscles to stretch 2.5 times their resting length – no other muscle in the body can do that without completely failing. More stretch is caused by bigger babies, forceps, suction or pushing for a really long time. So it’s no wonder pelvic floor issues are so common.”

But common does not mean normal – or untreatable.

“Women who have leakage are eight times more likely to report a cure or improvement of symptoms if they perform pelvic floor exercises with a physio when compared to women who don’t do them. This includes behavioural changes like addressing how you are exercising, if you are coughing a lot, how you are lifting your baby, constipation – all of these things can make urinary leakage worse. Pelvic floor exercises can help too. 

“However, 30% of all women are doing their pelvic floor squeezes incorrectly, and the only way to know if you are doing it right, is to see a pelvic floor physio.”

Caitlin Day with her daughter Penelope, and in her work as a pelvic floor physiotherapist. (Image: Andy Day)

Leakage and prolapse can be further improved by a vaginal pessary, “a little soft removable device that you insert into the vagina that holds everything up – kind of like a bra for your vag. It can be fitted by some pelvic floor physios, or a gynaecologist”. Surgery by a gynaecologist is also an option. 

If there are options for women, why do so many struggle to get help? Nash suggests the transition in healthcare from pregnancy to postpartum can be jarring.

“When your body is on display as a pregnant person it’s in a positive way. Everybody wants to engage with your belly and talk to it and touch it because the foetus slash baby is this very public figure. 

“After the baby has come, it’s different. Having a pelvic floor check is not part and parcel of the process after birth. If you’re in pelvic pain it’s really up to women to deal with that themselves and the whole postpartum experience is cast aside. In terms of the after-effects on your body, if it’s not related to breastfeeding nobody really wants to know. And that’s really difficult. Women feel really alone in these issues and it can be really scary to have everything change so much with your body so quickly and then to face coping with that on your own.”

Net result? “I think women suffer pelvic pain and painful sex and they’ll suffer through that for years.” 

Many of the postpartum body stories Meredith Nash collected focus on what she calls “dealing with a leaky body”. “Post birth you’re bleeding for up to six weeks, and then you have breast milk leaking at all times. [It’s about] just having this body that you can’t rely on in a way that you could before you were pregnant.”

There’s no escape from your body – you’re stuck. If your birth involved an episiotomy or tearing you must manage stitches. Likewise, after a caesarean section you have wounds – internal and external – that must heal. 

Midwives recommend getting a referral to a pelvic health physio for concerns following any type of birth. “They can provide guidance for exercise and activity level, and the correct way to perform daily activities like lifting,” says midwife Kylie Gilbert. “The physio can also help with ensuring the correct way to do pelvic floor exercise which will help with healing.”

Penetrative sex is often the last thing on a new mother’s mind but Gilbert says pain during intercourse after eight weeks (but not before a birthing parent is ready) could be a sign something isn’t right.

“I usually advise that if it’s still uncomfortable after three or four times to see their GP for assessment and referral to a gynaecologist. And to do this sooner rather than later as waiting lists are long. Don’t be embarrassed – this is their job.”

The author immediately after the birth of her second child (Image: Photography By Jane).

Can we change the narrative so women are able to get support for postpartum body injury or health issues rather than being stuck with the immense focus on weight loss?

Nash doesn’t feel hopeful. She worries that the time for pushing back has been lost. The postpartum weight loss industry is now too ingrained, too strong, it’s making too much money.

“I think the sad part is that … people don’t even question it anymore. I think there was a time when there was space to provide a critique of these new cultural norms, whereas now it has kind of become accepted that women will lose their baby weight and their bodies have to be managed in line with how we expect women to manage their bodies.

“We’ve kind of forgotten how to be critical of it, because it has become so normalised.”

The emerging body positivity movement isn’t necessarily an answer either, she says. It can be conflicting and confusing for mothers already being forced to focus so much on their bodies.

“The trope of ‘my stretch marks are my battle scars’; ‘ my postpartum body is beautiful’ is something I have trouble with, simply because I think there is a place where women can feel sad about losing their bodies.”

In her thesis Nash shares comments by participant “Zoe” who feels “really upset” about her body post birth. And it’s not the stretch marks.

“…although Zoe seemed to be in awe of the important reproductive work her body had performed, when she said, ‘I suppose I should be grateful for [my body]’, she seemed to imply that giving up control of her body or having a changed appearance was acceptable given the functional purpose of a maternal body.

“…it is possible that Zoe thought that demonstrating ‘pride’ in her postnatal body was the ‘correct’ reaction to perform for me as a researcher because, in Australian culture, ‘good’ mothers are represented as being focused on their children and not themselves.”

(Image: Body Of a Mother).

When you’re losing basic functionality new stretch marks can seem like the very least of your problems. Not loving your body can feel like you’re in the wrong too, Nash says.

“And that makes me angry. Being upset about your stretch marks – women are doing exactly what they’ve been told to do by the culture they live. So to tell women to love their stretch marks, that is totally counter-intuitive to what culture is telling them about their bodies. ‘Am I a bad woman because I don’t love my stretch marks?’”

There should be a space to feel the loss or the transition, Nash says.

“There’s this expectation that women will just love their bodies how they are in this new way and that’s another kind of cultural norm that never gets spoken about, because it’s framed positively. It’s OK to mourn the loss of your body [the way it was] before you had a baby … it’s a transition you need to move through slowly. I wish there was more acceptance of that. I wish we moved slower in that way.”

Meanwhile, Day says she would love everyone to be told how the pregnant body changes, the risks of both a C-section and a vaginal birth, and how to tell when things aren’t right after delivery.

“I also would love all women to have a mummy ‘Warrant of Fitness’: a postnatal assessment by a pelvic floor physio at six weeks after birth. France gives all their women 10 free government-funded pelvic floor physio appointments after they have a baby. We don’t do that in New Zealand, so women usually have to seek help themselves. But mostly, I would love women to know that there is help out there if you are concerned about your body or how it is functioning. It’s free through your DHB – just get a referral from your GP or midwife, or you can seek help from a private pelvic floor physiotherapist, no referral needed.”

Nash agrees. The key, she says, is giving women better access to kind, sensitive, evidence-based postpartum care, leading to comprehensive, considered care for new parents. She’d like to see “more patience, more resources”.

“And for women? My wish for them is to not place too many expectations on themselves.”

Expectation isn’t just in the hands of post-birth parents though – all of society needs to consider the role played in placing pressure on new parents to return to a body state exactly as it was before (or better).

Perhaps nuance is the answer – a space where women are not expected to perform joy in their changed bodies for the benefit of others, to give cutesy nicknames like “tiger stripes” to stretch marks, to be “good” women reacting the right way to their bodies. A space where new mothers are able to feel all of their feelings without judgement or pressure – and to feel confident and supported in rejecting the expectation that their bodies are public property before, during, or after birth.

Without these spaces – for grief, growth and transition – healthy conversations that change cultural narratives on postpartum bodies seems impossible.

This content was created in paid partnership with Women’s Health Action. Learn more about our partnerships here.

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The Kiwi comedian Hall of Fame.
The Kiwi comedian Hall of Fame.

NZ on ScreenSeptember 20, 2019

Behind the scenes of Funny As: New Zealand comedians on how they do it

The Kiwi comedian Hall of Fame.
The Kiwi comedian Hall of Fame.

When comedy documentary Funny As was made, a lot of interviews got left on the cutting room floor which NZ On Screen quickly picked up. Here are some of our favourites.

We’re a pretty funny bunch us Kiwis. Trapped on a tiny island at the end of the earth it appears we’ve evolved just a bit differently and we’re kind of proud of that. And for decades we’ve used comedy to acknowledge that. 

Released in August, the five-part documentary series Funny As does an exhaustive job of celebrating the role of comedy in New Zealand’s cultural evolution. To create Funny As, producer Paul Horan conducted hours and hours and hours of interviews. The result is a powerful documentary that traces the different periods of New Zealand comedy and the influence it’s had on how we see ourselves. 

It also meant that many more hours of interviews were left on the cutting room floor. Until they were collected by NZ On Screen and made available online in their entirety. The catalogue is an incredible archive of dozens of New Zealand’s most important comedians speaking openly and extensively about their lives and careers. The Spinoff writers watched some of the extended interviews with their favourite comedians and shared what they learned. 

The legend in our midst: Ginette McDonald

Legend is such a back-handed compliment of a word. Front-handed, it means that someone’s life and work has put them in the history books – they’re the stuff of not just hazy collective memory, but record. They’re important. Back-handed, it means that their work is now over. The book is closed, it’s published, and it’s printed in paperback. They’re done.

The brilliance of Ginette McDonald’s extended interview for Funny As – a towering 133 minutes of your finest Wellington gold – is that it shows that she’s not a legend at all. Lynn of Tawa, and more importantly, the mind and soul that produced that character, is still with us and firing on all proverbial cylinders. The soul of comedy is that it exists as reflection – it reflects our stories back to us in the most digestible form. It lets us laugh at our own stories, our own trauma, and our own unspoken thoughts. It puts into words and structure many of the things we experience every day but haven’t expressed.

McDonald is a master storyteller – Lynn of Tawa reflected a very specific kind of New Zealander back at us, and as an actress, she has the kind of craft and charisma that means that she can carry any story to the back row and make sure the audience doesn’t just hear it but feels it. What this interview does is allow McDonald to be the master of her own story, telling the history of her life and career, and delivering with as much charm, wit and knowledge as she has with everybody else’s stories for the past few decades.

It’s not just a gem of an interview. It’s a goddamned gift. 

– Sam Brooks



The cerebral charisma of Chris Parker

I still vividly remember the first time I saw Chris Parker. 10pm, a damp Tuesday in May, a packed Basement Theatre. My third show of a long night, the start of a long week. Filing in with a bit of sense of duty, regret already gnawing, wondering balefully if I’d stay awake. Then ‘Camping’ happened, a one hour, one-room play based on a double booking in a motel in ‘70s New Zealand, more sexually electrocuted than charged.

It was the single best comedic performance I’ve ever seen on a New Zealand stage. Parker has supreme command, considers every element of what he lays out. His extended Funny As interview on NZ on Screen displays those two elements – intellect and charisma – in full. 

He talks about growing up in Christchurch, a closeted gay kid with “too much energy”, with ballet and theatre less callings than ways for his parents to protect their home; about what ‘Hudson and Halls’ meant to him (“I became really psycho about David’s hair”); about his Fred award-winning ‘Camp Binch’, and performing a section of it for wine-swilling deputy principals in 2018, the kind of people who presided over a high school experience which he found so miserable. 

He talks with conviction about his identity as a gay man, about camp as an expression, about the way political correctness, far from constraining comedy, has simply allowed a whole lot more people in. All the while this cerebral quality shines through in equal proportion to the simple exuberance of having eyes on you, of making people laugh.

He’s quick to praise those who’ve played major roles in his career. Director Jo Randerson, “the ultimate radical”; Snort, an improv collective which has become a family who “support and raise each other up”; Rima Te Wiata “one of my comedy idols”.

Towards the end he’s joined by Tom Sainsbury, his co-star in ‘Camping’, and you see the interplay, the way that the pair elevate one another. It’s to the great credit of Funny As that its scope was as concerned with the current generation of comedic talent as the past, and broad enough to take in theatre and improv. The interview sprawls, well over an hour, yet is never less than fascinating, never begins to sag. Nothing Chris Parker approaches ever does.

Duncan Greive




Cal Wilson’s worst gig ever

“Being in comedy is a bit like loving an alcoholic,” Cal Wilson says in her extended Funny As interview. “When they’re sober, they’re amazing to be around, but when they’re drunk, they’re an arsehole.” Cal reflects on plenty of arsehole moments during her comedy career, but the amazing times also shine through. She speaks of the joy of learning her craft through the vibrant Christchurch theatre improvisation scene, forming lasting friendships with other female comics, and building a career that’s seen her perform around the world from Melbourne to Montreal.

But for all these positive comedy experiences, Cal Wilson’s finest anecdote is about her favourite worst gig ever. It was the early ‘90s, and her Theatresports troupe was hired to perform at Tegal’s Christmas party. It didn’t go well. “They hated us, which was fair enough,” Cal says. Their stage was blocking access to the bar, the audience was drunk and angry, and in the end, the factory workers pelted the comedians with chicken drumsticks until they made a hasty exit.

“We left under a hail of chicken fire,” Cal recalls. “It was like Saving Private Ryan, but with chicken drumsticks instead of bullets.” Amazing, indeed. 

Tara Ward



How to Dad sees us, and that feels good.

Having a child is a beautiful and transcendental experience, but it can also be a deeply isolating one. To be a new parent is to upend the way you structure and consume and perceive time; to submit your entire self to a being who has no concept of the above and whose literal survival depends on your dedication to every single one of their pre-verbal demands.

It was three years ago, body-stoned on benzos and sleep deprivation, when the accidental autoplay of a rural aunty’s Facebook share introduced me to the works of Jordan ‘How to Dad’ Watson. Wilfully hammy and parodically blokey, Watson’s videos spoke to my experiences as a clueless, chronically harried new parent in a way that little else did. From mealtime explainers to baby-weighted ‘dad bod’ workout tips, each video’s gradual and barely discernible descent from reasonable-enough tips to deadpan absurdity felt like solidarity in the truest sense – a tacit acknowledgment of the futility of trying to truly predict or plan for the pure chaos that is raising another human, and an endorsement of anyone getting through it by doing whatever worked.

In his extended Funny As interview, he radiates a predictable humility, referring to his dad as his greatest comedy inspiration and talking about how the project’s initial success was entirely accidental – a supportive joke for a new-parent colleague that ended up being a lot more popular than he’d expected. The most subtly revealing moment comes when Watson’s asked how, as a primarily online comedian, he deals with trolls, to which his response is that although his videos have seen more than 250 million views worldwide, the number of truly vile comments he’s received numbers “only 10 or 20” in total. 

He seems surprised by the disparity, but it’s a testament to the warmth and inclusiveness of his work – there’s an innately Aotearoa quality to his material, his delivery and his Swazi-and-stubbies perma-costume, but its message is universal: if you’re a parent and you’re trying, you’re doing enough. And we love him for that. 

Matthew McAuley



Frickin Dangerous Bro: the three wise men.

The humour of Frickin Dangerous Bro, the comedy trio of James Roque, Jamaine Ross and Pax Assadi, is purely contagious. Each has one of those unique soulful laughs, fuelled by the humour of each other’s jokes, that are impossible not to join in with. Watching their show, and watching this 90-minute interview, feels like sitting on the couch in a flat with your closest friends laughing at the in-jokes special to just your squad. Except the jokes are so much bigger than that, and so much more important. 

Frickin Dangerous Bro built their reputation on making jokes about race. They laugh at the idiosyncrasies of their own cultures (Roque is Filipino, Ross is Māori and Assadi is Pakistani/Iranian), and examine the parts of Pākeha culture they find the most bizarre (Birkenstocks, bath bombs, Lululemon). 

The extended Funny As interview takes a deeper look at their humour, and what the group describes as the role of comedians as philosophers. By sharing their experiences with audiences they can discuss ideas that are too hard to talk about without using humour. They see comedy as the best way to talk about racism, privilege, and social power. 

They understand how important humour is for our social interactions and relationships. Initially, it felt like it was a defence mechanism for the difference they felt to the dominant culture in New Zealand. Then it became a celebration for their difference and a weapon against anyone who challenged it. In the interview, Assadi recalls their first show as a trio where a man in the front row whispered racist slurs under his breath when Assadi would pass his seat. He didn’t respond and continued the show despite the comments. 

“If that happened now, we’d fucking destroy him,” says Ross in the interview. 

“We are so confident in who we are now,” says Assadi. 

Simon Day



Jackie van Beek is elbow deep

Like the improvisation style of comedy she’s famous for, almost anything goes in the career of Jackie van Beek. She thrived in the ‘90s Wellington theatre comedy scene, alongside mates Jemaine Clement, Bret McKenzie and Taika Waititi. She’s performed in strange places, like that time Dai Henwood organised a performance for some unsuspecting One Red Dog diners (“people just wanted to eat their pizza, but we had Jonny Brugh in a red vinyl suit, playing his guitar, often with his leg up by someone’s pizza”). She even stuck her arm up a sweaty penis puppet in My Brother and I are Pornstars, the play she co-wrote and took around the world.

 How many other Funny As comedians can say they’ve gone elbow-deep inside a talking penis? Hardly any, probably.

“I’ll do anything, if it’s with a good group of people,” van Beek says, and you get the sense she loves comedy because she loves the people she gets to make comedy with. Whether it’s improvising on What We Do With the Shadows (“loose, fun, meticulous chaos”), or making The Breaker Upperers with Madeleine Sami, van Beek generously shares every success with the people who inspired and encouraged her, or just helped hide her dog when the landlord came to visit.

 It’s a delight to hear van Beek speak about the joy of creative collaboration, of working with talented people who, like her, are passionate about creating work that “celebrates the weirdos that Kiwis are”. After watching her on Funny As, I just want to celebrate Jackie van Beek, comedy legend.

Tara Ward



The timeless fart jokes of Jason Fa’afoi and Anthony Samuels

It is a truth universally acknowledged that farts are the funniest thing that can ever happen. So, cogito ergo bum, someone being called Farty is surely the funniest name a person can be called. Jason Fa’afoi and Anthony Samuels knew that during What Now! in the 90s, and they still know it now. “You gotta go back to the old trusties” says Samuels, by way of opening their Funny As interview. “When someone farts, that always makes you laugh – that’s just honest, eh.” First of all: trusties. Second of all: Samuels has extremely cool cornrows now. 

It’s been two decades since I thought about these two at all, so to see them both looking essentially exactly the same, beaming at the camera and cracking each other up, is an absolute joy. Fa’afoi talks about how bullies at school used to call him Farty-foi, a name that he hated until Samuels took one look at him, called him “Farty” and history was made. Reliving their days as young guns learning the ropes on What Now!, there’s a special kind of magic in realising that all the hijinks of your childhood Saturdays were as organic as they seemed. 

Some of my favourite anecdotes include Farty’s ongoing misinterpretation of the ‘wrap it up’ hand signal (he thought it meant kept going), how the pair would spray the cameraman in the groin while recording their live links because they couldn’t do anything about it, and how they welcomed Carolyn Taylor to the team by putting an empty Coke can on her head and shooting at it with a BB gun. It’s clear that the chemistry between these two still lingers, not unlike Farty’s finest. Fill your absolute pants with this walk down memory lane. 

– Alex Casey



The rise and rise of Flight of the Conchords

Despite being by far our most successful comedic exports, it’s comforting that, grey-flecked beards aside, Bret McKenzie and Jemaine Clement don’t appear to have changed a bit since the days I’d vaguely recognise them walking down Cuba St, looking like pretty much every other Wellington dude in the late 90s/early 2000s. 

The extended interview with the duo, collectively known, of course, as Flight of the Conchords, runs for an impressive 122 minutes, covering everything from their TV-obsessed childhoods to their first creative collaborations after both dropping out of uni (burying Dai Henwood in a grave for a play at their Hawker Street flat; fortnightly Shortland Street auditions; disastrous corporate gigs and awkward stag nights).

Gems from the interview include the low-key pair reminiscing about the awkward process of becoming famous; their insights into the crossovers between Wellington’s comedy and music scenes; and Clement’s continuing glee at giving TVNZ shit for the fact it rejected their pilot (Flight of the Conchords went on, of course, to star in an HBO show that brought them worldwide fame).

It’s pretty clear why there’s no love lost between Clement and New Zealand’s television industry – he relates one cringe-worthy episode of a white producer pitching a show called The Brown Boys to him, Taika Waititi and the guys from The Naked Samoans, where they would “talk about being Meeri”. “We didn’t want to play into those stereotypes, it didn’t feel right,” says Clement. “They would keep trying to make the Billy T show but without Billy T, which of course is not possible.”

I loved the snippets about the early days of Wellington’s comedy scene, particularly the pair’s interactions with the now madly successful Taika Waititi. McKenzie worked a hospo job with him at a “fancy pizza” restaurant, and cracks up as he recalls Waititi’s open disdain for customers. Clement, meanwhile, reminisces about Waititi’s “anti-comedy” methods that included trying out new personas in public – he’d approach people on the street in character, complete with fake paunch, teeth and wig, and scare the bejesus out of them. 

Towards the end of the interview is where the pair really loosen up and drop some gold quotes, so be sure not to miss the last half an hour or so. 

– Alice Neville



 

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