The award-winning comedian and upcoming star of Taskmaster NZ takes us through her life in TV, including the call of the Beaurepaires ad and the power of Fran Drescher.
When Abby Howells was cast in the upcoming season of Taskmaster NZ, her first call was to her parents back in Mosgiel. “I actually had a time in my life where I went through a breakup and I moved back in with my parents and had no job, so me and my mum and dad just watched all the British and New Zealand seasons of Taskmaster together,” she tells The Spinoff. “They were so stoked when I got to call them and say, ‘Hey mum and dad, guess what? I don’t live with you anymore, and I’ve got a job, and it’s Taskmaster’.”
As a huge fan of the series, which pits comedians against each other in a series of nonsensical and complicated tasks, Howells says it’s the mix of predictability and unpredictability that makes Taskmaster so special. “It’s also this process of falling in love with the people,” she says. “A new season starts and you’re like, ‘oh, I’ll never like these ones as much as the last ones’ but then you always fall in love with them.”
But being on the other side of Taskmaster brought with it some new revelations. “When you do the tasks, it’s just you for the whole day, so you’re like the special princess of the day,” she explains. “They do a really good job of making you feel good about yourself, so I walked out thinking: ‘I think I’m going to win Taskmaster’. Spoiler alert, I’m not good at Taskmaster.” In fact, before one live studio task, Howells was told that if she lost the live task, she’d be the lowest scoring contestant for a single episode across all the franchises.
Although she’s popped up on plenty of comedy panel shows such as 7 Days and Guy Mont Spelling Bee, Howells says Taskmaster captures something special. “It’s the first time I managed to totally lose self-consciousness on television,” she says. “I also found that the things I felt the most embarrassed about ended up being my biggest successes, because they’re the funniest.” Turns out there’s some surprisingly deep life lessons in a show where contestants hold up two milk bottles over a microwave for as long as possible.
“Maybe it’s the enjoyment of human folly,” she says. “We are all imperfect in this life.”
My earliest television memory is… I had a special version of The Wizard of Oz that my parents taped off the Sunday movie classics. It was a very special edited version that my dad put together that cut out all the scenes with the Wicked Witch of the West because she was too scary. I used to watch it all the time, and I remember pushing it into the VHS and thinking, “I’m so sorry, Dorothy, I know you’re tired because, but I want you to do it all over again.”
The show I used to rush home from school to watch was… Cardcaptors. I honestly can’t tell you what it was about, but it was Sailor Moon-adjacent. I think it was about a girl who harnessed the power of the elements, and put them into a special wand, and also her outfit changed. I really had to run home fast to catch even the last five minutes of Cardcaptors.
My earliest TV crush was… Ash Ketchum from Pokemon. He had a sassy attitude and good Pokemon abilities. I really thought he could make it work and I could be a beautiful and caring stepmother to Pikachu.
The TV moment that haunts me is… I don’t know if it was a movie. I don’t know if it was a TV show, but it was a man trapped inside a burning car. I think I snuck down one night and turned on the TV, and there was a scene, and I was like, standing in front of it, like transfixed by this man trapped inside a burning car. I can still so clearly picture it, his seatbelt was all melted. I also think, possibly, he was Jesus?
The best NZ TV ad of all time is… The Beaurepaires Christmas ad. The Beaurepaires man would step out of the garage, for once in his life, and into this animated winter wonderland, and he’d start singing ‘Walking in a Winter Wonderland’. Still an omen of Christmas for me, whenever I would see the Beaurepaires Christmas ad I thought, ‘wow, the yuletide is approaching, school is almost over’.
My TV guilty pleasure is… Honestly, I feel guilty that I don’t watch that much television because it’s too much hassle. But instead, I’ll watch a six hour video essay on YouTube. My dream video essay is “here’s a defunct theme park you’ve never heard of before, we’ll tell you all about it in four hours”. For a while I got into YouTubers beefing with each other, like Tati Westbrook and James Charles. I didn’t even know them, but I would happily watch a three hour video essay all about their downfall. I think I was in quite a dark space mentally.
My favourite TV moment of all time is… I loved The Office UK so much. I had never seen something that was that funny, but also had that much heart to it. After all my family had gone to bed, I’d sneak down to the lounge, make myself a little hot chocolate, and then just watch The Office over and over and over again. Unfortunately, it’s become tainted because of Ricky Gervais generally growing to be someone I don’t respect anymore, but that final episode where Dawn comes back and kisses Tim is the most romantic thing in the whole world. It felt so real, it wasn’t overly cheesy, it wasn’t like all their problems have been solved, it just felt like the dawn breaking.
My favourite TV character of all time is… Any iteration of Sherlock Holmes. Whether that’s your Cumberbatch, your Johnny Lee Miller, I think there’s just something very compelling about his character. Also, he’s very good at solving murders and his powers of observation are second to none.
The most stylish person on television is… I feel like she gets brought up all the time, but Fran Drescher in The Nanny. I think there’s something about her being a comedian too, and that she let herself look hot. When I first started performing, I would dress down. I would wear blazers and ties, and I cut my hair really short and wore low shoes. I had this weird idea that if you were a female comedian, you couldn’t be attractive or feminine on stage. Someone like Fran is so funny, but also so feminine and fashionable and hot, and she did not apologise for that. These days you see a lot more high fashion female comedians, but I would say she’d be one of the first comedians I saw that was really glamorous.
The funniest TV show ever made is… This is going to sound like a real comedy nerd answer, but it’s Garth Marenghi’s Darkplace. It stars Richard Ayoade, Alice Lowe and Matthew Holness. And it’s got cameos from people like Noel Fielding and Julian Barrett and Stephen Merchant, all your favourite comic heroes. Basically the premise was that Garth Marenghi was a horror writer, and he created this series called Garth Marenghi’s Darkplace, but it’s supposed to be bad. It cuts between a documentary about Garth Marenghi and the episode of Darkplace. It’s just so perfectly bad. It’s all on YouTube and I think it’s the funniest show of all time.
The TV show I’ve always wanted to be involved in is… I would like to be on The Traitors NZ, and I would like to choose who The Traitors are. I don’t want to host it, and I don’t want to be on it because I can’t lie. I just want to watch it, maybe I’d just hold a boom or something.
My controversial television opinion is… I reckon let’s cut down on streaming and bring back the video shop. Part of the reason I don’t watch as much television is because I go on and I’m overwhelmed with choice. I wish I could still go down to my local Video Ezy in Mosgiel, where the lady knew my name and would keep DVDs for me under the counter that she thought I might like. If I could only get television through leaving the house, I think that would be really positive for my mind and my spirit and my vitamin D levels.
A show I will never watch, no matter how many people say I should is… Breaking Bad. Seems stressful. I was late to the game, but I started to watch it back then I had a Twitter account, and I tweeted “I finally started breaking bad” and then someone random immediately replied saying [a major spoiler]. All the bloody wind was taken out my sails, and I swore to never watch Breaking Bad after that.
The last TV project I worked on is… 7 Days. It was actually a really good one, because New Zealand is so small that I think the entire cast of 7 Days was actually on the same pub quiz team. It was really nice, everyone felt really comfortable with each other and it kind of just felt like goofing around with friends.
The last thing I watched on TV was… My partner and I started to watch the latest season of True Detective with Jodie Foster. We’ve only watched the first episode, but it’s got a lot of good stuff going for it. Jodie Foster, of course, but it’s a murder mystery set in Alaska after the final sundown, so everything’s in the dark. Spooky. And did I mention, Jodie Foster is in it?
Taskmaster NZ, starring Abby Howells, begins Tuesday August 6 on TVNZ2
