Lisa Kudrow as Valerie Cherish in The Comeback. Image: HBO.
It’s not a particularly groundbreaking claim to state ‘all artists are delusional’. You definitely have to be a bit cooked to believe the random ass thoughts that fly out of your mind are special and deserve to be consumed by a wide audience. I’m allowed to say that by the way—not only do I personally identify as ‘delusional’, I’m also on Twitter (a platform that famously rewards random ass thoughts).
When I tell people I started performing stand-up comedy at 17 years old, they always ask ‘Why?’ As a (now) 28-year-old comedian, people seem to think I unlocked my destiny early. But the reality is that I was just super depressed, craved attention, and—importantly!—I had this ridiculous idea that one day I could be a famous comedian. Most people define delusion as an unshakeable belief that is persistently held, despite being contradicted in reality. But in the entertainment industry, where dreams infinitely outnumber actual successes, people just call it ‘believing in yourself’.
You might think, ‘Oh but Nina, you weren’t deluded, because now you do comedy for a job’. While that is technically true, in some ways I haven’t changed at all. If anything, I’ve gotten worse: I’m more depressed, more attention-seeking and more deluded than ever. In this industry, as the bar for success moves higher, the more grandiose your dreams must become to survive. Of course you need to be good at your work and have genuine talent—but above all, you need to secretly believe you are basically Jesus. Or the next Michaela Coel, or Phoebe Waller-Bridge, or Ali Wong (who are my personal Jesuses…or Jesii, if you will). Balancing self-awareness with self-delusion is like walking a tightrope—ironically one of the few performing roles you can’t afford to be delusional about (you’ll literally die).
In this industry, as the bar for success moves higher, the more grandiose your dreams must become to survive.
For female and non-binary people trying to ‘make it’ in this deeply misogynistic industry, there’s an extra layer of cognitive dissonance that has to occur. Ask any female comedian how many times they’ve been told that they are ‘funny for a woman’, or any female creative how many times their pitches have been thoughtlessly dismissed by an old man writer, only to be hit on by that same dude later. They wouldn’t be able to tell you because they’d have lost count. Also, don’t actually ask us those questions—we hate to be reminded that these things happen! I’ve had to assure myself I’m not just a ‘diversity hire’ for about ten years now. It’s like some kind of Self-Deception Turducken; you have to convince yourself you are Jesus, while everyone thinks you only scored a place at the table because the producers of The Last Supper were either trying to sleep with you or fill a quota. (And yes, there were producers at the last supper—who do you think told all those guys to sit on the same side of the table? It’s not natural! Also: only one woman? Sounds like a lot of writers’ rooms!).
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The Comeback, a TV show from 2005, is a perfect study of the embodiment of this kind of female delusion in the entertainment world. Valerie Cherish, a narcissistic and cringey actress played by Lisa Kudrow, is a washed-up, formerly ‘young and hot’ sitcom star from the 90s, desperate to make her comeback as the daggy old ‘Aunt Sassy’ on cheesy fictional sitcom Room and Bored. Layered and self-referential, The Comeback is crafted around raw footage of a fictional documentary that is being shot at the same time, which follows Valerie’s attempts to claw her way back into the public eye. It’s a cult classic; a favourite of Bojack Horseman creator Raphael Bob-Waksberg and Australian comedian Zoë Coombs Marr.
In every episode, Valerie is pushed to breaking point. She is made to compete with every single woman around her and is constantly being told she is not good enough, not hot enough, not funny enough or too old. The whole time she is being undermined, Valerie has a big smile fixed on her face and amicably nods her way through it all. Her affected, positive facial expression is betrayed only by her eyes, which increasingly seem to scream in pain. By the end of each excruciating 28-minute episode, when it seems as if she is going to bust, Valerie is given one very small, but pointed, win. Her eyes stop screaming and begin to glow with joy and gratitude. It is in these moments that the abusive relationship women in showbiz have with their own industry becomes excruciatingly clear. This toxic dynamic is something that Valerie Cherish has conditioned herself to enjoy, in some sick way. Sadly, it’s one that I’ve learned to love too.
You have to convince yourself you are Jesus, while everyone thinks you only scored a place at the table because the producers of The Last Supper were either trying to sleep with you or fill a quota.
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In this industry you never forget how disposable you are, because there’s always someone younger, funnier or prettier than you, ready to take your place. When I was first starting out in stand-up, a random open mic comedian told me I was the ‘ugly, shit, unfunny version of Gen Fricker’ and for several years afterwards I became fixated on hating Gen. She became an avatar for everything I wasn’t, and I spent years trying to differentiate myself from her, while also comparing all her successes to my own. Now, Gen and I are friends but I’ve had to unlearn so much of the internalised misogyny that the comedy industry impressed upon me as a teenager.
Because of this volatility, you’re made to feel disproportionately grateful for every small thing thrown your way. I was once on a commercial set and the star of the shoot was a bully who wouldn’t stop grabbing at my body, made loud startling noises in my ears and asked repeatedly if I had a boyfriend. I responded as amicably as I could because I didn’t want to rock the boat, until a scene where the script called for me to be on my hands and knees for a long period of time. Between takes, the horrible star and a male comedian graphically mimed what it would be like to fuck me doggy style, and made exaggerated, loud orgasm noises as if they were me. The cast and crew all laughed. It was so humiliating and it took all my focus not to burst into tears. When I ignored them, the star came up to me and asked if I knew why everyone was laughing at me, then made the comedian do his impression of my orgasm sounds to my face. It was one of the worst days of my life, but I knew it would be on TV—an opportunity worth its weight in gold if you’re an up-and-coming comedian whose prime goal is visibility.
But this kind of stuff only happens to desperate people that are just starting out, right? Wrong. To quote Deb Vance from Hacks: ‘It doesn’t get better, it just gets harder.’ This year marked the debut seasons of The Newsreader and Hacks, two television shows with narratives that riff on similar themes to The Comeback: an aging female icon attempting to retain relevance in the misogynist entertainment world. Set in 1986, The Newsreader is an Australian drama about anchorwoman Helen Norville, whose suicide attempt inadvertently kicks off a complicated office romance that ultimately revamps her public image. Conversely, Hacks is a modern-day comedy, centred on Deborah Vance, a Joan Rivers-esque comedian, forced to work with an insufferable millennial writer in order to elongate her Las Vegas residency.
In this industry you never forget how disposable you are, because there’s always someone younger, funnier or prettier than you, ready to take your place.
When we first meet Helen and Deb, it is obvious both have had to make huge sacrifices to sustain their delusions even after establishing themselves as pioneers at the top of their field. Both women are lonely and have no life outside of their work because their life is their work. They have had to navigate misogyny in their careers for so long that they are cynical and deeply traumatised by their own success. The bleakest part is, as they’ve gotten older, they’ve had to go to even further lengths to retain that status. There’s an implicit understanding that they will always have to work ten times harder and look ten times better than the men around them, whether it’s Helen getting up at 5am to exercise and blow dry her hair, or Deb staying ‘youthful’ by getting a horrible eyelid surgery with a terrifying nurse. Unlike Valerie Cherish, who is begging to be let back into the entertainment industry for a second shot at stardom, these women are begging to stay in a world that once revered them because they have nothing else.
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I don’t think being deluded is bad—so often it feels like a necessity—but I do think when it’s taken too far it loses its usefulness. Rampant delusion builds resilience, but it can be at the cost of your own sanity and self-awareness. It makes me think of female comedy pioneers like Ellen DeGeneres, who has an infamously poor reputation. Ellen might be a monster now, but I wonder whether she was forced to create a toxic work environment under a sickly-sweet public persona in order to be able to retain power on set. All the ‘That’s not true, Ellen’ jokes in the world won’t undo the bravery and backlash of coming out as lesbian in Hollywood in the 1990s. I’m not saying Ellen DeGeneres is a good person now, but I’m sure at one point she had more of a soul.
Of all the deluded women I’ve mentioned, the one I’m closest to is Valerie Cherish. If I’m lucky, I can hope to be Deborah Vance, and if I become successful enough to get ‘Caucasian Rich Brain’, maybe I’ll become like Ellen. Almost thirty, it recently dawned on me that I don’t really have any other tangible skills besides comedy writing and acting. Broadly speaking: I’m fucked. But also, most of the time, I love what I do! I love it so much. This might be messed up to say, but I’m glad I’ve had bad experiences on set because I am so much stronger for it. Maybe if it happens again, I’ll know what to do, and if I ever become a showrunner, I will go to great lengths to make sure this kind of behaviour never happens.
I believe the answer to balancing delusion with reality lies in resisting the status quo. Sometimes, as eloquently said by Michaela Coel, it means saying no.
But the truth is, I don’t want to be like any of these women. I believe the answer to balancing delusion with reality lies in resisting the status quo. Sometimes, as eloquently said by Michaela Coel, it means saying no. And sometimes that means getting out of the bubble of industry, at least for a short while. In her short, but impactful Emmy Speech for I May Destroy You, a show that she wrote, isolated in the countryside, by herself (most shows are written with a team or various other people helping to develop the concept), Michaela Coel said:
In a world that entices us to browse through the lives of others to help us better determine how we feel about ourselves, and to in turn feel the need to be constantly visible, for visibility these days seems to somehow equate to success—do not be afraid to disappear.
The problem for most women in this industry is that we don’t want to disappear because we think people will forget about us and we’ll stop getting work. I’m no different; I’m literally terrified that if I go more than four days without posting a pic to Instagram, everyone will forget how cute I am. But I hope that when I really need to, I can find the bravery within myself to step away. Until then, I’m just going to grit my teeth and stay deluded. Feel free to help me, by following me on Twitter.
