The comedian tells FIRST how she dealt with a bad gig, meeting her first boyfriend on MSN Messenger and more.

First boyfriend

“My first real boyfriend I met when I was 14… I met him on MSN Messenger on the old dial-up. And then, what are we… 16 years later? He was my baby daddy. Oh my God, that’s so embarrassing! But I mean, it’s just like Tinder if 14-year-olds were allowed on Tinder. And that’s why they’re not allowed on Tinder.”

First idol

“When I was maybe 14 or 15, I went to a garage sale and in the book bin I found the autobiography of Malcolm X. I read it so many times and overnight became a militant separatist, and my mum was like, “Oh, that’s weird. You are definitely part white.” Still love Malcolm X, still my favourite book.”

First stand-up gig

“It was at the Manurewa Football Club. I didn’t want to do it, my dad forced me to. I left it until the day before to write my set and because I was just panicking. I was like, ‘I don’t know what the hell do you talk about?’ And he was like, ‘Just tell funny stories about stuff that happened when you were a kid or stuff that me and your mum did or stuff about your family.’ So I did it and I’ve never seen my dad happier. It was like he was looking at a different person. Ever since then we’ve been doing comedy together – we had a show in the comedy festival in 2021. Our relationship survived, we didn’t need too much therapy. Now we just take over the dinner table with our comedy conversations. Our family absolutely hates it.”

First time you bombed on stage

“I went up north and did this show in Matakana pretty early in my career. I felt like it went terrible so I went and got absolutely smashed with the locals. Met this lovely couple, the husband gave me 40 bucks, I chucked it in the pokies, won them a hundred bucks, gave it back to them, went out to the courtyard and this older lady gave me a joint, I smoked that in the courtyard and completely greened out, went back to the hotel and felt like shit about the gig and shit physically. So I try to do that as little as possible now.”