Why Are You Like This? — A Roundtable

Humyara Mahbub, Niki Aken, Sarah Freeman and Olivia Junkeer speak to us about Why Are You Like This, a new series for ABC TV.

Why Are You Like This starts Tuesday 16 February at 8.45pm on ABC TV Plus, and all episodes on iview.

**How did Why Are You Like This come together?**

Humyara Mahbub: Naomi and I made friends at Splendour, obviously. I say obviously like we’re famous, like Kim and Paris. Anyway, we became friends, and then Naomi asked me if I wanted to apply for Fresh Blood with her and I said yes, not knowing it would lead to one of most traumatic experiences of my life: writing a television show. We did the webseries, and we didn’t all know each other that well yet. Adam and Jessie (the directors) were Mark’s friends and they were so much cooler than us.

Sarah Freeman: For those unfamiliar, Fresh Blood is a Screen Australia and ABC pilot program for new voices in comedy. Hum with Naomi Higgins and Mark Bonnano applied, got in and joined up with directors Jessie Oldfield and Adam Murfet.

Hum: And we went to Adam and Jessie’s house and I thought how does Mark know these rich people? They were so cool and their house was so cool and even the cups in the house were so fucking cool.

Olivia Junkeer: I remember walking to their door and being like this is a fucking cool door.

Hum: Right! Everything about them is so fancy and we were just grubs making a show about cum. Anyway after the web series we got the pilot, and that’s when Sarah and Niki came on board.

Sarah: I came on board to produce the pilot ep in 2018. I had been working in television and knew Adam and Jessie from commercial work. When Why Are You Like This won Fresh Blood, Netflix saw the pilot and came on board, and from there we were commissioned to go to full series. We got Niki (Aken) on board as script producer, an absolute blessing. The series stars Liv (as the Hum-inspired character ‘Mia’) alongside Naomi (‘Penny’) and Wil King (‘Austin’).

Niki Aken: Mark reached out because we’d worked together previously on a long form narrative with his sketch group Aunty Donna. I had a full slate but he was very insistent and convinced me to come on board. He thought I was playing hard to get but I was actually just too busy. That’s why we were working on weekends. We were all working insane Sunday sessions at the ABC.

Hum: Can we talk about how we got Liv? The getting and the keeping?

Liv: The getting and the keeping was so fucking hard!

Hum: It was so hard. The show is based on my and Naomi’s friendship. I’m not an actor. We needed to find a cool brown girl. It was insanely difficult to find Liv, even though she is so talented and working on one of Australia's most successful shows. We saw her tape and were like: she’s amazing. Mark said ‘I think she’s too young’. We were like, ‘Mark, you’re stupid.’ Liv just really got it.

Sarah: We ended up seeing a lot of amazing South Asian women for the role, but there was just something about your attitude and personality Liv, that was so fun and perfect for Mia.

Liv: I met Sarah first at the audition, and she was so nice and chill and she just calmed me right down. And then Jessie asked ‘Did you have this teacher at school?’ and I did, and she had the same teacher! And I knew it was going to be fine. I stuffed up in the middle and I was just like ‘Can we do that again’, and normally I’m so anxious in audition rooms. But then I was so much taller than Nom, and I thought I’m not going to get this—the height difference is too ridiculous. But then you guys called me and were like ‘Are you okay with gross stuff?', ‘Like what?’, ‘Like cum?’ and I was like—in what sense, what do you mean, what cum??, but I just said ‘Yeah, I am!’ My dad is in the next room and I was thinking, what is my Sri Lankan dad going to think about this?

Hum: I think you dealt with less cum that you thought you were going to.

Liv: No cum.

Hum: All you had to deal with was sucking bbq sauce off a chip.

Liv: That was chat though.

**Where did you draw inspiration from for Why Are You Like This?**

Hum: The inspiration is our friendships. And I guess it’s just our lives.

Sarah: It’s the world you see around you and how ridiculous it is.

Niki: A lot of things that resonated with me in the stories were maladaptive coping strategies that we have in the fucked up world we live in. Like spending too much on expensive skincare is not a sustainable way to deal with stress, but I relate to that storyline. It’s about honing in on the truth and embracing for better or worse these stupid but relatable things we do.

Sarah: So many great moments and jokes in the show people can find either funny or offensive, either way it’s because of the truths revealed beneath them.

Hum: It’s hard to say what the inspiration is because the inspiration is the world, which is terrible, and we have to live in it. There’s no mood board for it.

Liv: This is a bit random, costume-wise, the way I really felt I got into Mia was through costume. My outfits were so specific. But I would never wear what Mia wears, and I love that. It helped me really be Mia at the time. It was always something like little shorts and a shirt, always loud, and has something to say, which is exactly what Mia is.

Sarah: Hum’s laughing because she would never wear what Mia wears.

Hum: The wardrobe was actually very interesting for me, because I had this vision of how I see myself dressing, but that’s not necessarily what the final character is. And also real life isn’t styled for TV. But the work that the directors and the art and wardrobe departments put in did really build such a distinctive, complete and stylish world, even though sometimes when Liv was wearing a shirt I was like: I would never.

I’m thinking through the concept of ‘representation sweats’, which this series completely refuses. To me, Mia is quite an unlikeable character. What drew you to write/create her?

Liv: I don’t think she’s that unlikeable.

Sarah: I’ve found that a lot of nice people find Mia unlikeable.

Liv: Mia is like... What is Beyonce’s like uh… Sasha Fierce? Her alter ego! I feel like Mia is a lot of people’s alter ego. I wish I would say as much as I mean, like Mia does.

Niki: Yes, it’s wish fulfilment!

Liv: I wish I could be as mean as Mia, because it would get me a lot more places.

Sarah: I think a lot of women will find this character relatable.

Liv: I think that is a likeable trait, because it’s that voice in your head.

Niki: I don’t trade in the likeable/unlikeable binary. It’s a product of the patriarchy. The reason we are all saying we are drawn to Mia and what makes her a fascinating character, is precisely the reason that a lot of people would describe her as unlikeable. She’s not afraid to speak her truth even if it offends. It doesn’t mean she wakes up with a mission to hurt people. She’s full of contradictions, and she has these really beautiful qualities as well, like she’s fiercely loyal and protective of her friends. And then there are those moments where she says the things that might be extreme, but deep down we wish we had said something to that asshole at the cafe.

Liv: I think it’s like everyone—we all have different faces for our close friends and for the public and I think those contradicting Mias make her so loveable.

Sarah: Are you offended by the question Hum?

Hum: No, I am delighted by that. I think this relates to how people of colour are portrayed in television. We don’t need a bi WOC to be a paragon of morality on the show, bitch representation matters, I think she’s a great character in that she’s terrible, and that’s fine. She’s allowed to be terrible.

Niki: Liv, maybe this is something you’ve seen when you get sent scripts? You see all these white characters who get to do terrible things and get their redemptive arc, but everyone’s too afraid to let people of colour be complex and flawed.

Liv: I was a TV addict growing up, and you see so many white men who get to be the bad boy that everyone loves. Everyone loves the mean guy. I used to be obsessed with Vampire Diaries. There’s this mean vampire, and everyone loves him, and you ship him and this other girl, and we talk about Mia being unlikeable, and it’s because she’s a woman who says what she means. And then when we see the men doing it it’s meant to be so hot, and all of a sudden there’s a woman of colour and it’s like ‘she can’t say that.’

Television is always such a collective effort; what was it like working with one another?

Hum: Obviously it was my first writers’ room. Before this show I was illiterate. I have nothing to compare it to. With the webseries it was just me and Mark and Naomi in a warehouse owned by Mark’s brother. We just did yoga and talked about how we could add more cum.

Niki: You actually did keep doing yoga in the plotting room and I had to tell you to stop.

Hum: Which was actually very stifling of my creativity, Niki.

Niki: It was 4pm on a Sunday and I wanted to go home.

Hum: So when it got a bit more professional it was different. We had to sit in chairs and keep all our clothes on. But when we got to know you better Niki, it felt again like we were in a room with a bunch of friends. Then right at the end… what was that thing we did when we’d already started rehearsals but I came to Melbourne to write again?

Niki: Further on in the process after we’d brainstormed, plotted the episodes, written them, took them through various rounds of notes from the network, we brought in Adam and Jessie to give their director’s feedback. At that point we were actioning director’s notes, production notes from Sarah, in a little cafe in Fitzroy who were very kind to us and brought us food all day. I think one of Sarah’s notes was we couldn’t get a car for this one scene, but we could get a boat. And at first we were like this is ridiculous, why would any self-respecting young Melbournian get a taxi boat to cross the Yarra, but I think we eventually realised the potential in that concept so we just really lent into it. It was also, for us, a week where we were militant about jokes. We wanted everything to be as polished and as funny as it could be.

Hum: I found that week—I was hysterical. I think Mark and I—I don’t think we were sane for even a minute. It is so hard to go over something again and again and again and ask ‘could it be funnier?’ because you end up at extremes and it’s hard to tell if any of it makes sense.

Sarah: It’s also interesting because some of it’s about your real lives so you could be like “it didn’t happen that way” but it’s about the fine line between what feels real and making it work for television.

Hum: Absolutely. I think it was easier for Naomi because she was in rehearsals and had that access and understanding about what worked and what didn’t. But me and Mark were like… deep in a hole about canned clams.

This series feels like a step forward. Where do you see Australian comedy heading? Where would you like it to go?

Hum: Do we feel like we’re a step forward?

Sarah: Yes.

Niki: Yes. It’s a show that really knows what it is. You don't watch it and think we’re trying to pander to the widest possible audience. You’re going to like it or you’re not. For me that feels like a step forward, particularly on a traditional broadcaster.

Sarah: There’s jokes that only certain people will get, which makes you feel special if you get it, but also it’s not catering to a wide mainstream audience.

Hum: I want five people to understand the show, and everyone else can get fucked. I think that was something we could do because we had so many diverse voices and people involved, so collectively when people said “will people get that?'' we knew the answer was yes.

Niki: There is a lot of cultural specificity, which prompted the discussion of whether people would be able to relate to some of the storylines if they weren’t from that background. But it wasn’t our priority to centre the Anglo lens—every other show has been doing that since forever. The best funny and the richest meaning ultimately comes from telling stories driven by authentic and flawed characters. If you do that the universality takes care of itself. You can just google the words you don’t understand.

Sarah: I learnt about so much stuff making the show. Especially internet stuff.

Liv: I had to search up so many things.

Niki: What is a weeaboo? I still don’t know. But as much as we bang on about specificity, the series has universal touchstones- i.e. the episode “Infinite Mercy of God” is about someone trying to be nicer, it’s not actually about religion.

Hum: I do want to give credit to the white men in charge who let us do this. I think they were really good about this stuff. Ideally, I want more people to be given that freedom we had.

Niki: Definitely.

Sarah: For us it’s about different voices making different kinds of comedy. So we can see things we haven't seen before. Casting diversely (I hate saying that in that way) was done very consciously. We’re all from different backgrounds, that’s the world we live in and what we wanted to reflect. Seeing white people everywhere is boring.

Hum: I was surprised at how difficult it was to cast. But at the same time I would never want to tell a brown kid to go into acting instead medicine.

Liv: That’s what I was about to say! Because it is difficult. It’s different culturally. I don’t know what’s appropriate and not appropriate to say here but like, my parents didn’t want me to go into acting.

Sarah: It’s a self-fulfilling prophecy. When the majority of roles out there are for white actors, it can deter some people from acting, and when a role does come up, people (not us) can say there’s no one out there who is trained/experienced enough to take it.

Niki: There’s truth there, but there are many cases historically where that has been used as an excuse way too quickly. There is an aversion to actually doing the hard work, and when you see the shows where the casting directors and producers have done the hard work like The Family Law or On The Ropes where you’ve got communities represented, you can see it’s possible. It’s also a generational thing, if your family has grown up being economists or dentists you don't have the industry connections.

Liv: When the top dogs are predominantly white, and currently it takes a lot of time to find the right person, and if it’s not done properly it goes in a loop because it’s like that person wasn’t good, but that’s because they haven’t had as much experience. It’s a lot of work and if you don't put in the work it goes right back to the start again.

Sarah: Then if a show that happens to be diverse doesn’t prove itself in some way then it somehow reflects badly on the community.

Niki: Which is a double standard because if an anglo show fails no one ever says we’ll never do a show about an anglo family again.

Hum: But maybe they should stop.

Sarah: There’s also a lot of shows that are casting young people who aren't actors and they just do the work, so why don't we do the work to prepare non actors/new actors for the role.

Liv: Australia is such a small entertainment industry that you see the same faces over and over again, and that leaves no room for new people and that happens to be new brown people, because it happens from years and years of casting white.

Sarah: There’s the impression that if the person doesn't have the experience it's not gonna work out, but we’ve got to try to provide the support people need. This was my first solo tv producing gig, Jessie and Adam’s first tv directing gig, and Hum and Mark and Naomi's first time writing narrative television, and we made sure to surround ourselves with people who could support us, and that’s how we made a super cool show!

Hum: They just need to give more people more money.

Niki: The problem is that the Australian market doesn’t have a lot of money. More recently we’ve had initiatives like Fresh Blood that unearths new talent and lets edgier concepts and people with zero runs on the board come in and have a go. But it’s so competitive and there’s so little money. Only one of those 20 or 40 ideas that are picked can get a series. I don't think I know the answer. Apart from the Federal Government valuing and properly funding the arts.

Image / Supplied — Photograph / Supplied

When was this series produced?

Sarah: We were shooting in March 2020, and stood everyone down for four months. It was pretty tough. Although in that time I got a puppy (and so did Liv) which was amazing! When we finally got the show back up and running it was very difficult, with a totally different way of shooting. So many people weren’t allowed on set, we couldn't go between departments, and Liv couldn't get to know anyone she was later going to be mean to in a scene. We had a lot of rules and protocols to keep everyone safe. Everyone wore masks and only when “action” was called cast took them off. I’m so glad we got to finish the show. We were in post-production during the rest of the second lockdown of Melbourne.

Liv: That was so awful.

Niki: It was so hard.

Hum: Liv, were you doing this and Neighbours at the same time?

Liv: I was. It was really really difficult. I was getting tested every Monday, still am. Being on two shows was kind of stressful for Sarah and the producers at Neighbours, it was a big deal keeping everyone isolated and tracking everyone’s moves.

Sarah: And there weren’t a lot of productions shooting at that time in Melbourne.

Liv: No one was working, especially in the entertainment industry. I was so stressed out, I was living with my family at home, I have two siblings under 18, and I was trying to get everyone to just stay home and follow the rules. I was so scared that if my sister was to get Covid, I would get Covid, and everything would go to shit basically. My sister was in the middle of exams and trying to live her life, and it was nuts. I was so worried I wouldn't be able to work on Why Are You Like This and I couldn’t deal with the thought of that, because I love the show, and everyone was really persistent and worked with me and made it doable which I am so, so grateful about.

Sarah: It was really hard to get the show back up and running and there were so many safety protocols, I’m glad we got there in the end. But it meant Hum couldn’t visit set because she was banished in Sydney.

Hum: I am really sad that I couldn’t come to see it. But the show looks so good, so it all worked out, everyone knew what they were doing, it was just a fun thing I missed.

Sarah: I also wasn’t allowed to go to set then because I was non-essential!

Hum: Sarah, you’re essential to me!

Liv: When we were at the drag club to film, cops were coming every couple of hours to check if we were doing the right thing. We were at the cafe for Mia’s work and the news channels were filming us because we were filming.

Sarah: Because there was actually no one else outside in Melbourne and nothing to film!

Hum: What did they do with the footage?

Sarah: Nothing. It wasn’t on the news. But everyone was being so safe anyway - we were all distanced and in masks.

Liv: I got in trouble so many times from our safety officers. I just hate Covid! We had a safety officer with a 1.5m stick going around poking people to make sure they were distant. She was doing a great job but I wasn’t making it easy. There was a day where I had to keep walking up and down the stairs and I was so hot. I just wanted to sit on a chair but you’re not allowed to sit on a chair, so I just lost it. I hate Covid!

Sarah: I wanted to come up and help that day because it was so tough, but I couldn't go in so I just stood outside, and it was kind of pointless.

Liv: The safety officers probably think I’m a real diva.

Niki: Embrace it!

Sarah: But we finished the show and no one got Covid.

Hum: No one got Covid?

Liv: Not on our production. Which is amazing!