Harriet Kemsley’s debut comedy special ‘Woman Child’ streaming on Youtube, via 800 Pound Gorilla Media, is a universal foray into parenthood, marriage and how life’s script flips when a daughter comes along.
The perfect pick-me-up during the festive break, ‘Woman Child’ embraces wit, vulnerability and realisation, the culmination of tried and tested jokes from the comedy circuit demonstrating a masterclass in cathartic comedy as an art and a science.
I caught up with Harriet on her debut show and her inspiration to pursue comedy as a career. Her special follows numbers TV appearances including Live at the Apollo, 8 Out of 10 Cats does Countdown, Hypothetical and Roast Battle and takes bad aim at being married (for now), motherhood and the beauty industry’.
“The show is called ‘Woman Child’ and it’s mainly just jokes, fun and silliness. It’s all about me being a woman having a daughter and how things have changed. It’s also about what I want to protect her from. Using the show to explore this has stopped me from being frozen with worry – if you can find a way to laugh at life it helps you take action and move forwards in difficult times.”
“It’s been a fun few years working in comedy and you never know what’s going to happen once you put a show out into the world you have to start from nothing again. But this is how you get better I think, you can let go of stuff and then write new stuff to keep growing.”
Harriet started comedy after working in gruelling office-based work in London, soon identifying a need to find a community of like-minded people.
“When I started in stand-up, I was quite shy and odd, and I quickly built up a shorthand with people that finally understood me. I feel so grateful to be working in comedy and the key is that the more fun you have with it the better you will do its comedy and row meant to enjoy it.”
“When I think back to when I moved to London, it didn’t go very well. I was working very early long shifts at a news reporting service rounding up the stories of the day. It was very bleak and dark. I actually met [fellow comic] Heidi Reagan during this period before I moved into comedy.”
Harriet tried acting and found she was increasingly finding success in comedic roles. “Initially I thought acting was my escape route. I thought I wanted to do serious acting but I kept being cast in comedy roles.”
“What I love about working in stand-up is you can completely control your career – you can gig every night you don’t have to wait for people to pick you. I think it took those bleak days working in the office job reading the news every day to help motivate me to do something with all the information that I was reading.”
“Some of it actually made me quite angry and out of that I decided to make sense of it by making it funny and silly.”
“There are some jokes I’ve written in the past that wouldn’t work now and equally those that with time and experience I can bring them back and get them to work more.”
“You start to think ‘oh that joke didn’t work because I have to frame it like this instead.”
“If a joke is universal but no one laughs, I can tweak the way that it is delivered. My comedy friends often help with this as well and it’s what I really like about the comedy community. Comedy is a big family. Everyone has similar brains.”
“If no one laughs, you feel alone. But the upshot is that an audience responding and laughing can be really cathartic. Often, I find that by working on my jokes that I learn how to explain things better. It’s an art and a science.”
“My dad has a scientific mind and aways used to say ‘there’s beauty in numbers’ and jokes are the same – they have to be really precise and clear- I find that beautiful it feels momentous and lovely to think of comedy like this. I’m not worried about AI impacting comedy. You can’t beat human connection being in a room full of people laughing all together – there’s nothing better.”
Harriet Kemsley’s Youtube Stand-up special ‘Woman Child’ is available to watch now at https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PoXRwH2BiuI
