Russell Kane: Cancel culture means 'we live in a world where nothing has meaning'

Yahoo UK

Russell Kane speaks with Yahoo UK about his comedy beginnings and why he&#39;s facing cancel culture with tongue-in-cheek mockery.

Transcript

00:00 We live in a world where nothing has meaning,

00:02 and everything has nuance,

00:03 and yet black, white characters have gone overnight.

00:05 Those two things are opposite, toxic,

00:07 and they are our world.

00:09 - How did your love of history first begin,

00:17 but also what made you want to look back

00:19 at famous figures and their legacy with hindsight?

00:22 - So I like people and stories.

00:26 That's what I've got, I was already into that.

00:28 And when I started doing "Evil Genius",

00:29 it was just a case of learning each individual person

00:32 week on week, which was a pleasure.

00:33 I would just pick up the Gandhi biography,

00:35 watch the Richard Asimov movie,

00:37 and just, it was a pleasure.

00:39 So it's stories about people that I love.

00:42 It doesn't matter whether it's Boudicca

00:43 or Diego Maradona, two subjects,

00:45 both have been done for the Radio 4 series.

00:48 That's where the passion comes from.

00:50 - Yeah, I mean, I was gonna ask about, you know,

00:52 transferring this story from the radio to TV,

00:56 like how, could you talk me through the process

00:59 of adapting it and changing it and making it unique?

01:01 - It was just, it made it easier, to be honest.

01:04 I mean, it just does.

01:06 It's already a pleasure to do on Radio 4,

01:08 but once you say, okay, now people can see

01:10 what you're saying, and we give you permission

01:12 to use archive historical, you know,

01:15 path a footage, it just makes my life so much easier.

01:18 - You obviously approached each figure

01:20 with the intention of deciding whether they're evil

01:23 or they're genius.

01:24 And I wonder, why did you want to pick

01:25 such extreme conclusions to draw from?

01:28 - I mean, there's a relationship between

01:29 the type of thing we're consuming

01:31 and the evil acts the person have done.

01:33 And there's obviously a cutoff where we go, "Cancelled."

01:36 And then I thought, well, 'cause the main thing

01:38 people often say is, "Well, how can someone

01:39 just be evil or genius?

01:40 Everyone's a mixture of both."

01:42 Of course, that's why the show's one hour long

01:44 and not one minute long.

01:46 We get that richness of debate mixed in with belly laughs,

01:50 people going back and forth,

01:51 people feeling uncomfortable with the audience,

01:53 like, "Oh God, just shut up, Russell.

01:54 We're gonna get taken off air."

01:55 All of that, we get all of that.

01:56 But at the end, we get it reduced to a simplistic,

02:00 idiotic, binary evil or genius.

02:03 Why?

02:04 Well, I suggest you switch on Twitter

02:05 and learn about the 2023 you're living in

02:08 if you think that's not how we live.

02:10 We live in a world where nothing has meaning,

02:12 everything has nuance, and yet,

02:14 black, white, cancel, gone overnight.

02:15 Those two things are opposite, toxic,

02:18 and they are our world.

02:20 But as a commercially viable format, it's (beep) gold.

02:24 So that's what we're doing.

02:25 (upbeat music)

02:28 - When did you first realize comedy was your calling?

02:33 - Where I grew up in a council,

02:34 it's like, you weren't exposed to theater and books,

02:36 and, "Oh, I wonder if Russell will be good at violin.

02:38 Or maybe he's a theater kid."

02:40 You just went to school, then finished school,

02:43 then got a job.

02:44 Had my dad been into a comedy

02:47 that was actually made me laugh,

02:49 maybe I would have discovered it earlier.

02:51 But my dad liked, I did like, actually, that's not fair,

02:55 'cause Laurel & Hardy and Three Stooges make me laugh.

02:58 But I can't do slapstick.

03:00 I managed to get all the way up to 18

03:03 without even realizing stand-up comedy was a thing.

03:06 Some of my friends got tapes of Eddie Murphy

03:09 and told me about it,

03:10 but I just never got around to watching them.

03:13 And then I got to uni,

03:14 and went to the one uni in England

03:15 that didn't have a stand-up night.

03:17 So I got all the way to graduation

03:19 without ever having watched, seen,

03:22 or really been aware of comedy.

03:23 Was I the funniest person in my group,

03:25 always making people (beep) themselves laughing?

03:28 Yes, but so what?

03:29 Everyone's got someone like that in their group.

03:32 Started at the ad agency in a middle-class environment,

03:35 and comedy night was one of the things they did.

03:38 I was like, "Oh my God, I'm 25 at this point."

03:42 I phoned up the local comedy club and went,

03:44 "Can I go on and perform for free,

03:46 just to see what it feels like?"

03:47 Yeah, okay.

03:48 Was loads of space in August,

03:49 'cause the comedians were in Edinburgh.

03:51 What's Edinburgh?

03:51 Had never in my,

03:53 I thought that was ballet and opera.

03:56 I had no idea the Edinburgh Fringe.

03:57 I'd literally, I promise you,

03:59 I had never heard of it.

04:00 Went on, did this set,

04:02 and it was like,

04:03 "Oh, (beep) I'm wearing the wrong shoes my whole life.

04:06 These are so, these are the shoes I'm,"

04:09 I couldn't believe it.

04:11 Then of course, it was just so quick.

04:14 I won all the competitions,

04:15 and by the time I was 30,

04:18 I was looking at giving up the dream career.

04:20 I'm a kid from a council estate,

04:21 working as a copywriter in an ad agency.

04:23 I'm like, "I'm gonna give up the dream career,

04:24 and I'm gonna go for it."

04:26 Then I won the biggest award you can win,

04:28 Edinburgh, the Perrier Award,

04:29 it used to be called,

04:30 Edinburgh Comedy Award.

04:31 Flew to Australia, won their biggest one,

04:33 same year, never been done in history,

04:35 and then that's it, my career was born.

04:37 Obviously my career's like that, like everyone's.

04:39 One minute you're hot, one minute you're not,

04:41 one minute you're too busy,

04:41 one minute you're busy enough,

04:42 but I've always had an amazing life from that point.

04:46 (upbeat music)

04:48 - What were the movies that you loved growing up,

04:50 and do you remember your first cinema trip?

04:52 - First cinema trip would be one of the Star Wars ones,

04:57 maybe the last one, Return of the Jedi.

04:59 I was a bit young for the first couple,

05:01 and I was just able to be taken slightly underage

05:03 for the third one.

05:05 Going with my great grandma,

05:07 very, very strong memory.

05:08 I've got good memory, I remember,

05:10 like I can remember being in the cot and stuff,

05:12 like my memory goes quite far back

05:13 to about 18 months old, two years.

05:16 And we'd made a deal on the bus there

05:18 that we would both pretend to be American

05:20 and see how many people we could fool.

05:22 And I remember the meal afterwards,

05:23 I can remember the cafe,

05:24 I remember the feeling of watching the film,

05:25 I remember everything about it, it was amazing.

05:28 And then once I got to about 14 or 15,

05:31 and we got hold of an illicit copy,

05:33 and it's still my favorite film, Alien, the first one.

05:37 Obviously by then the film was old,

05:39 it was 10, 15 years old, but I just, I loved it.

05:44 I just think it's the best horror film ever made,

05:47 better than Exorcist.

05:49 It's everything's in there about human existential fear.

05:53 The sci-fi holds up, it hasn't aged, the acting,

05:56 I just love it, I love it.

05:58 - Is there anyone in your life or career

06:03 that you would say had a defining influence on you

06:05 or any mentors that you had in your life?

06:07 - It's gotta be my dad, really, in my personal life,

06:13 who taught me how to do everything opposite to him.

06:15 I don't know if that was meant to be his lesson,

06:18 but hyper-masculine, knuckle-dragging, right wing,

06:21 down the gym, 3% body fat, weightlifting,

06:24 bouncer, lifeguard, scuba qualified metal worker.

06:28 And there's me reading and dancing.

06:31 It gave me something to react to,

06:33 but he's, I don't know a child

06:36 that felt more protected than me.

06:39 I just felt like no one could get in our house,

06:41 no one could hurt me.

06:42 My dad would kill them.

06:44 He was so strong and he worked so hard,

06:47 and he taught me about making money.

06:49 You put me in a desert,

06:50 I will start making money from selling sand.

06:52 I've always been the one in the group making money

06:55 based on what my dad taught me.

06:56 I don't rely on anyone.

06:57 In comedy, I suppose my first mentor

07:00 when I was still doing the day job was Lee Mack.

07:02 So my first manager said,

07:04 "Look, you can carry on working your day job,

07:07 but I need you to take a sabbatical

07:08 and support Lee Mack on tour."

07:10 And if you, I don't know what you know about comedy,

07:12 but going out as a support act

07:14 when all the audience have put their hands in their pockets

07:16 to see Lee Mack, it's an unforgiving 20 minutes.

07:20 And they've got to wait, they've got to sit through you,

07:21 and then they've got to have an interval.

07:22 So if it's an 8 p.m. show,

07:23 they ain't seen Lee Mack till 8.45 p.m.

07:25 So some people are going to be pissed off and disappointed.

07:28 They've never heard of you.

07:29 I look much younger than my age now.

07:31 You can imagine what I looked like when I was 28.

07:33 And no one wants to hear thoughts about the world

07:37 from a boy, they just won't take it.

07:39 So it really taught me to raise my game.

07:43 And watching Lee over and over again

07:46 for those three months,

07:47 something switched in me about how to do standup.

07:50 He never sat down and talked me through or guided me,

07:53 but just being on that tour,

07:55 sitting in the car with him, talking about the shows,

07:58 watching him, I never ever went back to the hotel.

08:00 I watched the show every minute, every night,

08:03 watching him do the same (beep)

08:05 same beat for beat to different audiences,

08:07 watching how he changed it.

08:08 And just, it was the final bit I needed

08:12 to bring my skill level where I could leave work

08:14 in 2006 forever.

08:16 What I think to be able to say,

08:18 I haven't worked since 2006.

08:19 This is not work, I'm doing my hobby.

08:22 (upbeat music)

08:24 (upbeat music)

08:27 (upbeat music)

08:29 (upbeat music)

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