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Sam Wills as Tape Face. Image: Supplied
Sam Wills as Tape Face. Image: Supplied

Pop CultureJanuary 25, 2025

Who is the man behind the world-renowned Tape Face?

Sam Wills as Tape Face. Image: Supplied
Sam Wills as Tape Face. Image: Supplied

Following his headline act in the Christchurch Buskers Festival, Alex Casey chats to Sam Wills about spending two decades as the elusive Tape Face. 

It’s a Thursday night at The Isaac Theatre Royal in Ōtautahi, and the fly swats, rubbish bags, and coat hangers littered across the stage make it seem like someone is holding an impromptu garage sale. But not long after Tape Face dawdles out, eyes rimmed with heavy kohl, hair spiked to the heights of mid-2000s emo, and mouth concealed behind black duct tape, do these humble household objects quickly become the stars of the show. 

Soon enough, an old pair of loafers takes on a new life as one of the Jackson 5, oven gloves morph into star-crossed lovers, and an audience member who looks like your uncle brings the house down with one simple dance move. Tape Face’s audience-inclusive mime comedy has been transforming the inane into the magical around the world for two decades. But what does the person behind the tape have to say about being our most successful silent export? 

These days he performs a six-nights-a-week residency in Las Vegas, but Sam Wills’ performance origins go way back to 1980s Timaru. After receiving a magic kit at the age of 12, he honed his showmanship by “stalking” Jaffa, the only professional clown in town. “I followed him around and watched his shows over and over,” Wills laughs over Zoom from his home in Vegas. “I found out where he lived, knocked on his door, and auditioned myself on his doorstep.” 

Working for Jaffa on the weekends as a teenager, Wills then moved to Christchurch to study circus arts just as the Buskers Festival was its infancy. “When I was a young student, I would just be in awe of these incredible performers from all around the world and I would just watch them over and over and over,” he recalls. His first show was in the Buskers Festival in 1999, a “really bad” act that involved “four fire clubs and two dozen raw eggs”. 

After a few years of “freak show stunts” including hammering nails up his nose and eating lightbulbs, Wills moved to Auckland and started doing stand-up comedy. In 2005, his show about his time as a street performer – Dance Monkey Dance – won him the Billy T Award. “I think everyone had that expectation that I would just keep doing more of the same, so I just tried to do the opposite and found a silent character that had no tricks at all.”


Soon after, he started playing with the character of Tape Face, a wide-eyed mime with a satchel of surprises. “In Auckland, at that time especially, there was a whole bunch of comedians doing traditional stand up, on a stage, with a red curtain behind them,” he says. “Then I would come out and I could see the audience go ‘what hell is this?’. I still love those moments of confusion, where the audience goes ‘how can this be a thing’ and then slowly start to understand it.” 

As for the persona itself, Wills says that Tape Face is essentially himself as a young boy. “There’s a sort of inquisitiveness to it and silliness and play. I think the main word that I always latch onto is play – to just get up there and just interact and play with people.” The eyeliner and hair is a hangover from his time as a goth in the 90s, and Tim Burton was also a large creative influence. Surprisingly, he didn’t get into silent comedy stars until after Tape Face was born. 

“A lot of people think I must really like Charlie Chaplin but, to be honest, I can’t stand him,” he laughs. “I much prefer Buster Keaton because he was always the underdog and he was a wee bit cooler than Chaplin. Buster Keaton is also known as stone face – he had that no expression thing going on. I definitely picked that up from him for Tape Face because, if you just do a long blank stare at people, you can always find a lot of comedy that way.” 

Buster Keaton had a huge influence on Tape Face

In 2007 he returned to Christchurch, and the Buskers Festival, but this time as Tape Face (then known as The Boy With Tape on His Face) and won the people’s choice award. “It’s pretty cool because, with that prize money, I was actually able to fund going to the Melbourne Comedy Festival which got me spotted and started a bit of a reputation – I wouldn’t have been able to do any of that without Christchurch and that iron chicken award.” 

Wills spent a decade in the UK touring and honing his act at the Edinburgh Fringe, before America’s Got Talent came calling. “Something people don’t realise is that shows like AGT have talent scouts who spend all their time looking for people. They had actually been after us for a number of years, but the timing never worked out.” In 2016, the schedules aligned, and Tape Face entered the “bananas” machine of America’s Got Talent. 

In his first “audition” on the show, he unleashed his now-famous pair of amorous oven gloves to a standing ovation from the audience and judges alike. “I like the fact that we don’t know who you are or what you are going to do,” said Simon Cowell. “Simple, clever, unique, funny – brilliant.” Heidi Klum thought he was “creepy” at first, “but then I really, truly loved it.” Howie Mandel put it plainly – and accurately: “I think your life has changed tonight.” 

After that first video went up on Youtube, Wills says things did change pretty quickly, and his dream of a Vegas residency finally seemed like a possibility. “My goal was to try and stick around for as long as you could. You never want to win these type of shows, because you’re then stuck in a terrible contract for the rest of your life. But in America, television is still the be all and end all – if you are on TV, you are famous. In New Zealand, I feel like it’s not as huge of a deal.” 

Tape Face didn’t win America’s Got Talent, but he didn’t have to. He landed his first Vegas residency in 2017, and has been a mainstay in Sin City ever since. “The whole thing was bananas. It’s so not normal,” he laughs. “I’m still recovering from it.” Now with a “relentless” six-nights-a-week residency at the MGM Grand, the Tape Face multiverse appears to be ever expanding, sometimes even with other people stepping into the role (to mixed reception). 

And when he’s not sloughing off eyeliner and playing vintage Mario Brothers to unwind, Wills is continuing to dream up new directions for Tape Face. “I’m playing with the idea of turning myself into a firework, which I think is pretty funny,” he says. Whatever he takes to the stage, he’ll likely debut it in front of a home crowd. “I always write new things with the intention of showing it in New Zealand first, because Kiwi audiences are always so damn honest.” 

Back at the Isaac Theatre Royal, after taking us through a fierce Jedi battle, a 1970s dance floor, and the last hole of a PGA final, Tape Face’s Buskers Festival show ended on Thursday night with one last spectacle that had the whole theatre jumping out of their seats and shrieking like little kids. But as the lights went up and we quietly filed out into the unseasonal cold of the real world, that damn understated Kiwi honesty Wills mentioned wasn’t far away. 

“Well,” said one woman to her friend, “that was a bit different, eh?” 

The World Buskers Festival is on in Ōtautahi from Jan 24 until Feb 4.

Keep going!
Rhys Darby’s life in television (Image: Tina Tiller)
Rhys Darby’s life in television (Image: Tina Tiller)

Pop CultureJanuary 25, 2025

‘It made me who I am’: The TV series that changed Rhys Darby’s life

Rhys Darby’s life in television (Image: Tina Tiller)
Rhys Darby’s life in television (Image: Tina Tiller)

The comedian and actor takes us through his life in television, including the British sitcom that changed his life and the trauma of 80s Telethons. 

You may know him best as Murray from Flight of the Conchords, or Stede Bonnet from Our Flag Means Death, but Rhys Darby is taking time away from the small screen to return to the stage this year. While he loves nothing more than “getting the skinny jeans out and having a jump around onstage”, Darby explains from his LA home that his first tour in 10 years – The Legend Returns – has also come out of necessity. 

“I’ve been concentrating a lot on TV and film here in Hollywood, but ever since the strikes, the industry has gone into a weird space,” he told The Spinoff from his LA home. “There were so many streamers and so many opportunities, and now I think they’re all starting to collapse. A lot of it is because of where we are headed with AI – I think we’re turning a big corner with how television is made, and I’m blessed that I’m not just sitting here waiting by the phone.” 

He intends to confront some of his concerns about AI and Big Tech onstage, which is ironic for a performer who spends more time than most making robot noises. “It is a funny juxtaposition, because I do love sci-fi tech like robots, spaceships and UFOs. I used to just make jokes about this kind of stuff, but now I have to actually deal with it in my own life. Hopefully my silly sense of humour is just going to lighten everyone up, rather than feels like it has an agenda to it.” 

But there’s another motivation for Darby’s long-awaited to live comedy. “The world has been pretty crap since the pandemic,” he says. “Instead of doom-scrolling and looking at the news, you’ve got to keep creating and having fun and being silly and being kind, because that, for me, is the key to humanity. That’s also what makes us that’s different from the rest of the animals – although some of my cats do make me laugh very hard.”

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— Editor

My earliest television memory is… Watching BBC comedies with my mum is a really strong memory for me. Dad’s Army was our ultimate favourite, but there was also Open All Hours, Fawlty Towers, Hi-de-Hi!, It Ain’t Half Hot Mum, Steptoe and Son, Blackadder. Monty Python’s Flying Circus was my personal number one because of the silliness of that show and how it broke boundaries with comedy and absurdity, it completely inspired me to to become a comedian. That’s really what made me who I am, because I would watch these comedies with these funny, funny actors in them, and I would just feel really warm around them. It definitely inspired me to want to be one of those people one day. 

A TV moment that haunts me is… I’m taken back to the Telethons, which we used to have in the late 80s. There were always famous actors that might have come in from America or the UK, and they would be doing something out of the ordinary like taking their shirts off and doing press ups. Sometimes they’d even be kissing, and that’d be weird. Telethons were weird like that, because you’d be used to these actors as their characters, and now there they were as themselves. But then again, adults still call me by my character names, even now. 

The NZ TV ad I can’t stop thinking about is… I do like the Pixie Caramel one where the guy is lined up against a firing squad, and he asks for a Pixie Caramel as his last request. He takes so long to chew it – because it has the longer lasting chew – that all the guys with their rifles just fall asleep. It’s so funny and silly, I loved that and the Milky Bar kid ad and the Creme Egg ad and the Crunchie Train Robbery ad. I like ads with a bit of action in them. 

What I will say is New Zealand makes really good ads, because we know how to be creative with not that much money. Now that I live in America, the ads here are just the worst. They’re really bad and the comedy in them is bad, they are always talking to a really badly animated inanimate object. They obviously put all their effort into their TV and film stuff, and when it comes to the commercials, it’s just really not what we would settle for back home. 

My TV guilty pleasure is… I do like period shows. For some of my old army buddies, that’d probably be embarrassing to admit. Basically, I love costumes. Bridgerton, Downton Abbey, the Gilded Age – I’ll watch anything with costumes. I like the time travel aspect of it, imagining that you’re in a different time where there’s no artificial intelligence or cellphones or people doom-scrolling or social media. I think a lot of that stuff is actually the scourge of humanity right now. I like the times where you’d have to write a letter to reach someone, or you’d have to ride on a horse to get somewhere. There’s something romantic about having to wait. We don’t have to wait for anything anymore, I think we’ve lost the joy of suspense. 

My favourite TV project I’ve ever been involved in is… It’s a hard one, because Conchords was my first TV show. It was with my mates and it totally blew my mind, because I never thought I’d ever get to America and be doing Kiwi comedy for the world. It really was a huge moment and made my own career flourish, but ultimately I would have to say Our Flag Means Death. Not just because I am in a costume, but because of the representation on that show and the subjects that we dealt with. I think it was done beautifully and set in a time where you had this juxtaposition of horrific pirate violence mixed with silliness, love and kindness. It was a beautiful thing to make, and I’m really proud of my work on that and the work of a huge number of New Zealanders.

Fred Armisen and Rhys Darby in Our Flag Means Death

My dream TV project to work on is… The original Battlestar Galactica. I would be a new hot shot pilot, like Starbuck, but I’d be funny, and still I’d have my accent. Everyone would be really interested in where I’m where am I actually from, and I’d just say “well, just like you guys, we’re all from Earth, and we’re trying to get back to it”. I think that would be pretty cool. 

My most controversial TV opinion is… Remakes: do we need them? Some work and some don’t. There’s some really great nostalgic stuff in the 80s like Magnum PI and MacGyver, which got remade and lasted quite a few seasons, although I dropped out after watching a couple of episodes. But then there are some shows that might have worked really well in the 80s, and you watch them back now and they’re dreadful. There is racism and sexism and all this stuff that is not funny anymore. We’ve changed as humans and we’ve become better, and sometimes it is good to update a concept and make sure that it’s more inclusive and everyone can enjoy it. So actually maybe I think remakes are both good and bad – not very controversial. 

The last thing I watched on television is… The Day of the Jackal with Eddie Redmayne. I highly recommend it.

Rhys Darby’s The Legend Returns tour begins in March – click here for more information.

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