Chris Lilley (comedian)
Career
He began his career in his twenties as a stand-up comedian while also working as a childcare worker at Turramurra North Public School and a shop assistant. In 2003, Lilley made his debut in Big Bite, a Seven Network comedy programme, in which he portrayed extreme sports enthusiast Extreme Darren and the high-school drama teacher Mr G, a character that he continued in Summer Heights High. Big Bite was nominated for Best Television Comedy Series at the 2003 Australian Film Institute Awards, marking the first time a comedy programme from a commercial television network had ever been nominated at the Australian Film Institute Awards. It did not win. The producers co-credited Lilley; however, the show lasted only one series before being spun off into a comedy/variety programme. Lilley was a recurring guest on the programme, but it was cancelled after only a few episodes.
Lilley appeared in the film satire Ned, based on the Australian outlaw Ned Kelly. He appeared as the "MSN Butterfly" in a series of television advertisements and Cinema for MSN. He has also appeared on the Hamish & Andy radio show.
In 2015, Lilley was the main actor for The Stafford Brothers, Rick Ross and Jay Sean's "When You Feel This" music video.
We Can Be Heroes
After the cancellation of Big Bite, Lilley created We Can Be Heroes: Finding The Australian of the Year, a six-part series on the ABC, in which he portrayed various characters nominated for the Australian of the Year Award. The series was co-written with Ryan Shelton.
Lilley portrayed several characters in the series: Phil Olivetti, a self-obsessed police officer; Ricky Wong, a Chinese Australian university physics student from Melbourne; Pat Mullins, a 47-year-old housewife with a dream to roll on her side from Perth, Western Australia to Uluru, Northern Territory; Daniel Sims, a teenage boy who donates an eardrum to his deaf twin brother, Nathan (both Daniel and Nathan later appeared in "Angry Boys"); and Ja'mie King, a narcissistic girl attending a private high school in Sydney (Ja'mie later appeared in "Summer Heights High" and "Ja'mie: Private School Girl").
Lilley was nominated for Best Comedy Series and Best Lead Actor in Television at the 2006 Australian Film Institute Awards, and won the Best New Talent and Most Outstanding Comedy Program awards at the Logie Awards of 2006. He also received a Rose d'Or award in Switzerland for Best Male Comedy Performance. Following the series' success, it was sold to other countries under the new name The Nominees.
Summer Heights High
Lilley's second mockumentary series, Summer Heights High, aired on ABC TV in 2007.
In the series, Lilley played the series' three main characters at a public school: Ja'mie King, Mr G and Jonah Takalua. In March 2008, Lilley released a single, "Naughty Girl", based on the series, and performed in character as drama teacher Mr G.
At the 2008 Logie Awards he was nominated for four awards including Most Outstanding Actor and Gold Logie for Most Popular Personality on Television, and won the Silver Logie for Most Popular Actor and the Logie Award for Most Outstanding Comedy Program.
The series was sold to the United States, Canada, and the United Kingdom. Lilley embarked on a promotional tour of the United States in October 2008 to promote the U.S. broadcast of the series, which began airing on HBO on 9 November 2008. The BBC began showing the programme on BBC Three in June 2008.
When asked whether there would be a second series, Lilley stated, "I never thought about it in the beginning because it was always a one-off thing. I'm not into just cashing in and rolling off into a second series that is not as good. I really enjoyed making the show, so the thought of writing and going back there again is really fun and exciting, but I haven't made a decision on what to do next."
Angry Boys
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Angry Boys, Lilley's third mockumentary series, aired on ABC in Australia and BBC in the UK in 2011, and HBO in the US in 2012. The 12-part comedy series features six vastly different new characters played by Lilley. The show introduces S.mouse!, a US rapper; Jen Okazaki, manipulative Japanese mother; Blake Oakfield, a champion surfer; Ruth "Gran" Sims, a guard at a juvenile detention facility; and her grandchildren, South Australian twins Daniel and Nathan Sims (who also featured in We Can Be Heroes).
Lilley won the inaugural AACTA Award in 2012 for Best Comedy Performance in Television for Angry Boys.
Ja'mie: Private School Girl
Ja'mie: Private School Girl, which aired in 2013, is a six-part half-hour comedy series. It was produced by Melbourne-based production company Princess Pictures and Chris Lilley, and was a co-production between the ABC in Australia and HBO in the US. It was pre-sold to BBC Three in the UK.
On 8 September 2013, Lilley revealed that the returning character to the series was Ja'mie King, from We Can Be Heroes and Summer Heights High; he also revealed the title of the show.
Lilley won the 2014 Silver Logie for Most Popular Actor for his performance in Ja'mie: Private School Girl.
Jonah from Tonga
On 26 November 2013, Lilley confirmed that he would be reviving Jonah Takalua for a new show in 2014, titled Jonah From Tonga. Jonah had been introduced in Lilley's 2007 series Summer Heights High. At the conclusion of that series, Jonah was expelled from Summer Heights High School. In the new series, his father, Rocky Takalua, has sent him back to his homeland of Tonga to live with his uncle and their family in order to get Jonah's life back on track.
The six-part series was produced by Princess Pictures and Chris Lilley in conjunction with the Australian Broadcasting Corporation. The show was originally posted online on the ABC iView service, available for viewing by Australian residents, and on BBC iPlayer in the United Kingdom, from 2–4 May 2014, before airing on ABC1 from 7 May 2014 and BBC Three from 8 May 2014. In New Zealand Māori Television screened the first episode on 29 July 2017, but then withdrew later episodes.
Lunatics
In March 2018, it was announced that Lilley had been signed by Netflix to create a 10-part series, with the titular character not yet disclosed. Filming began at the Bond University campus on the Gold Coast, Queensland.
On 10 April 2019, a trailer surfaced online showing a number of new characters. The show is called Lunatics and features a group of eccentric characters with different talents or oddities. Alongside the series order announcement, it was confirmed that Lilley would star in the lead role. Lunatics was released on 19 April 2019 exclusively on Netflix.
Lunatics features six different characters, all played by Lilley, which include fashion retailer Keith Dick; estate agent Quentin Cook; 7-foot college student Becky Douglas; 12-year-old Gavin McGregor, who is an heir to an earldom; ex-pornstar Joyce Jeffries; and South African Jana Melhoopen-Jonks, a celebrity pet psychic who is also a lesbian.
Lilley collaborated with The Jonas Brothers and Paris Hilton with his Lunatics characters Keith Dick and Jana Melhoopen-Jonks.
Personal life
Lilley has been a vegetarian since the age of five.
He dated Milly Gattegno from The Faders DJ from 2014 to 2016.
Controversies
Lilley's series Summer Heights High gained significant controversy, criticism and media scrutiny for its portrayal of such issues as mental disabilities, homosexuality, sexual abuse, and racism. Even before the series aired, some community groups complained about a "rape joke" and Mr G's inappropriate "touching" of a boy with Down syndrome. The Herald Sun reported that parents and some teachers have considered the possibility that the show is influencing children to misbehave at school. Students were reportedly imitating Jonah and Ja'mie, repeating lines that were bullying, racist, and homophobic. Education Union branch president Mary Bluett stated in response that the show was "clearly tongue-in-cheek". After episode three, in which a character called Annabel dies after taking ecstasy, the family of Annabel Catt, a 20-year old woman who died taking drugs at the 2007 Good Vibrations Festival in Sydney, complained that the program had been lampooning Annabel's death. ABC apologised to the family, stating that the situation was purely coincidental and assured them that the filming of the episode in question had been completed eleven days before her daughter's death. ABC thereafter began to display a message before each episode stating that there is no link between the series' characters and people in real life.
On 29 July 2017, Lilley was the subject of criticism after posting a remix on his Instagram account of a music clip entitled "Squashed Nigga", starring the character S.mouse from Lilley's 2011 TV show, Angry Boys. The music video featured an Indigenous boy lying on the ground with his arms splayed. On 24 July 2017, the court case based on the death of Elijah Doughty had ended in controversy and was the subject of pro-Aboriginal protests. Just like the real case, Lilley's music video described an Aboriginal boy being run over and killed. It was reported that many who criticised Lilley's inopportune timing were blocked from his Twitter account, with Lilley later deleting his social media accounts.
Lilley's series Jonah from Tonga was called "racist" and resulted in protests from academics and Tongan youth concerned at the inaccurate and demeaning portrayals of Tongan culture. The show received criticism for Lilley’s imitation of a non-White person, which was dubbed by certain media commentators as “brownface”, an act they have compared to blackface minstrel shows of the 19th century and early 20th century. The creators of the 2004 ABC TV documentary series Our Boys stated that Lilley drew inspiration for the Jonah character from their work. The subject of Our Boys recalled being "absolutely embarrassed, full of hate, angry and exploited" by the "racist" Jonah character that was based on him. The series' director, as well as a teacher at Canterbury Boys High School also felt that the character "exploited" the Tongan students who Lilley had met while visiting the school after seeing Our Boys on television in 2004.
Many major US civil rights organisations wrote to HBO expressing their "deep concern" over Jonah From Tonga. These included the NAACP, National Hispanic Media Coalition, American Indians in Film/TV, Empowering Pacific Islander Communities and The Asian Pacific American Media Coalition (which itself includes the Asian American Justice Center, Asian Pacific American Advocates, Japanese American Citizens League, Media Action Network for Asian Americans, National Federation of Filipino American Associations, and more).
In 2019, Lilley was again accused of blackface by journalists for his Lunatics character Jana Melhoopen-Jonks, a South African woman. This accusation was later acknowledged to have been unfounded, as this character is "clearly white."
Following the 2020 Black Lives Matter protests, BBC iPlayer removed Jonah from Tonga from its online streaming service. On 11 June 2020, Netflix confirmed it had removed four of Lilley's series from its streaming service, also in response to the Black Lives Matter protests and movement. In the weeks following these events, Lilley posted multiple videos of content involving the Jonah character to his YouTube channel.
Filmography
| Year | Title | Role | Notes |
|---|---|---|---|
| 2001 | The Monday Dump | Army Reserve Guy | 1 episode |
| 2002 | Young Lions | Mick Dwyer | 1 episode: "Grand Prix" |
| 2003 | Ned | Customer 1 / Klansman | Film |
| 2003–2004 | Big Bite | Various | Also co-writer |
| 2004 | Hamish & Andy | ||
| 2005 | We Can Be Heroes: Finding the Australian of the Year | Also writer | |
| 2007 | Summer Heights High | Ja'mie King / Mr G / Jonah Takalua | Also writer and composer |
| 2009 | The Spearman Experiment | Himself | 1 episode |
| 2011 | Angry Boys | Various | Also writer, director, producer, and composer |
| 2013 | Ja'mie: Private School Girl | Ja'mie King | |
| 2014 | Jonah from Tonga | Jonah Takalua | |
| 2015 | Stop Laughing...This Is Serious | Himself | Guest; 1 episode |
| 2019 | Lunatics | Various | Netflix original series; also writer, director, producer, and composer |
Discography
Albums
| Title | Album details | Peak chart positions |
|---|---|---|
| AUS | ||
| Summer Heights High |
|
— |
| Angry Boys |
|
75 |
| Chris Lilley Theme Songs |
|
— |
| Lunatics |
|
— |
Singles
| Title | Year | Peak chart positions |
|---|---|---|
| AUS | ||
| "Naughty Girl" (as Mr G) |
2007 | 7 |
| "Slap My Elbow" (as S.mouse) |
2011 | 37 |
| "Squashed Nigga" (as S.mouse/Shwayne Jnr.) |
2012 | 70 |
| "Learning to Be Me" (as Ja'mie King) |
2013 | — |
| "Don't Be a Bully" (as Jonah) |
2014 | — |
Podcasts
- Ja'miezing (2021) (as Ja'mie King)
- Jana's Yard (2020) (as Jana Melhoopen-Jonks)
Awards and nominations
ARIA Music Awards
The ARIA Music Awards are a set of annual ceremonies presented by Australian Recording Industry Association (ARIA), which recognise excellence, innovation, and achievement across all genres of the music of Australia. They commenced in 1987.
| Year | Nominee / work | Award | Result | Ref. |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 2008 | Summer Heights High soundtrack | Best Original Soundtrack, Cast or Show Album | Won | |
| 2011 | Angry Boys – Official Soundtrack Album | Won | ||
| 2014 | "Learning to Be Me" (as Ja'mie) | Best Comedy Release | Nominated | |
| 2019 | Lunatics | Nominated |