Interview #209 — Faustina Agolley
by Mimo Mukii
Faustina Agolley is a writer, producer, DJ, presenter and actor. Her work has included hosting flagship music program Video Hits, The Voice, and the Sydney Gay and Lesbian Mardi Gras. She made her stage debut with the Sydney Theatre Company and Melbourne Theatre Company’s co-production of the Molière Award–winning play The Father, alongside theatre luminary John Bell, and toured Australia and New Zealand as Oprah Winfrey’s resident DJ for her An Evening with Oprah tour.
Faustina has written on queer issues for Women of Letters (Penguin), Huffington Post, Sunday Life, Queerstories and The Wheeler Centre. Her short story ‘Sam’, published in the seminal collection Growing Up African in Australia (2019), explores loss, grief and her African identity.
Faustina speaks with Mimo about being Blasian Australian, owning your work, and stories that are FUBU: for us, by us.
Growing up in a Chinese household in Melbourne’s suburbs, you were constantly surrounded by and immersed in Chinese culture. What was your experience like of being visibly Black in a Chinese Australian community?
Every time I was out in public with my mum or my Chinese family in general, the optics of us being together was challenged over and over again. Lots of people were trying to understand the connection as to why I or my older Black brother was a part of my visibly Chinese family. A usual occurrence would be that we’d go to Springvale and pick up some duck, or char siu, or get some banh mi, and always, always the person chopping up the meat would be trying to ask, “Who is that child?” And then my mum would always say, “That’s my daughter.” Mum’s response was always met with disbelief—“That is your daughter?”—and then there’d be all kinds of nosy questions as to whether I was adopted. Heads would turn when we’d go to yum cha every weekend.
I’ve never once felt inferior when our relationships would be questioned. Obviously, there’s been tense racist moments when it’s actually been quite scary, like around the One Nation era in the ’90s. Much like being out in the world and visibly Asian since the beginning of 2020, it was very scary to be out in the world and visibly Asian back then; I really felt for my mother, and was on the receiving end of all those very public verbal attacks and physical threats. But, on the whole, aside from that, I’ve always had an enormous sense of pride in my culture and who I am as a Chinese woman.
If anybody had an issue with the fact that my mum is Chinese, or that I’m a Black child in a Chinese family, or that my mum had children who were both races, it had everything to do with them and nothing to do with us. That was because my pride in my Chinese culture was reinforced every day, especially from my Chinese grandparents. Within that house, we were referred to by our rank like other Chinese households; I was mei-mei (little sister). There was so much love and dignity and respect and storytelling, and there were so many rich cultural practices that we engaged in on a regular basis, especially around the Chinese festivities.
The only time I did feel really strange in a Chinese setting was when I would go to Chinese school in Springvale on the weekend. I’m trying to unpack why it felt uncomfortable—I think it’s because my mixed-raced cousins and I felt like the outliers among the hundreds of Chinese children who were far more fluent in Mandarin than we were. I have also always resisted the institution of school, so to have extra school time (on weekends) compared to other kids felt like punishment. And, even though I did love the language and engaged with it, my grandparents practised English on me in the home because they wanted to strengthen their English, so [Mandarin] wasn’t reinforced. Plus we spoke a completely different dialect—we spoke Fuzhou—so it was really, really hard for me to retain those language skills back at school.
In ‘Sam’, you write about finding and relating to a Black collective experience through television (by way of people like Oprah, shows like The Fresh Prince of Bel-Air and African American artists on Video Hits). Were there any Chinese figures who inspired you when you were growing up?
This is going to sound really sad, but I didn’t have Chinese figures in TV, music or pop culture to look up to growing up. What I did have was my family and life in a multigenerational home with them: my kung kung, my mama, my mother, my brother and my two Chinese Malaysian cousins. Although our lives weren’t reflected in pop culture, or any Aussie or international TV, our culture was reinforced within our home every day and with everyday life—from the dialect spoken in the home, to our food and annual cultural customs like Chinese New Year, the Lantern Festival, the Mid-Autumn Festival and the Winter Solstice Festival. The red cassette tapes came out for Chinese New Year and were on blast.
My Ghanaian identity wasn’t present in my life until my family went back to Ghana when I was in my teens. And, more generally, my Blackness wasn’t reinforced in the home, which is why I clung to whatever I had in pop culture, especially on TV and in music.
This really gets to the point of the power of media: how our culture/s, when packaged up in forms of entertainment, are the way to break through white-owned and white-operated media. It enters public consciousness at a national and, usually, an international level. I think that’s why entertainers who can tell their own stories, usually through music and the genres of TV comedy or action films, seem to break through and capture a broader set of audiences in in the most effective way.
My Chinese and [mixed] Chinese–white Australian male cousins loved Bruce Lee and Jackie Chan—Chinese men whom I didn’t personally find a strong kinship with. It wasn’t until my late teens to early 20s that I was quite taken by Korean American comedian and actress Margaret Cho. She did stand-up about being the Asian kid at school and having a lunchbox that was different from other kids’—you know, snacks like fried fish versus the white kids’ chocolate. I watched some stand-up of hers on TV with Mum, and the parts that made us feel seen were the jokes about her relationship with her mother and the pressures of being a woman, of marriage. The joke that really got us was as a kid working on a school project and there not being any glue in the house, so her mother tells her to use mashed-up rice instead—we laughed so hard, we were in tears.
Although Margaret isn’t Chinese, I was even more taken by her stand-up at the Melbourne International Comedy Festival one year. She focused on being queer in her late 30s to early 40s, and I recall her lamenting being strung along by an Australian woman she was excited about going on a date with while she was touring the country. I was still in the damn closet at the time and hadn’t really figured out my identity yet. Looking back, those stories of her dating or trying to date women were so important. When moments like this would present themselves, it’s as though they are speaking to a crucial part of me that was fast asleep, gently nudging me to wake up. All the while, I also recall my internal dialogue while watching Margaret on stage; I said to myself: I wish I could be more free. Margaret was speaking to a life that my entire being was longing for.
How do you manage or balance all of your different practices—writing, producing, DJing, hosting, acting—and do you have a throughline or philosophy that underpins your work in these various fields?
I don’t think I ever defined my choices with a throughline until I noticed a teaching in a personal-development course I took a couple of years back with Mel Robbins: choose things that expand you rather than shrink you.
I used to worry about managing or balancing all the things I’m interested in. I’d feel guilty about not putting in the same energy or time into them until my partner, who is a creative, asked why I was berating myself the way I was. Creativity takes time; ideas take time. So, ultimately, what becomes a priority in my calendar is whatever is the most compelling—a paid project where I’m needed and it has a defined timeline, or if not, then it’s returning to my own projects according to that philosophy of ‘shrink and expand’.
How have your experiences around race and identity been in the entertainment and media industries?
Coming out of Video Hits, I realised that I very much had a career that was a bubble in the Australian media space because, in that bubble, I was a part of a ‘youth brand’. It was a brand that made the network a lot of money. It meant that the network could leverage a lot of advertisers that wanted to target that youth demographic—and it was a commercially successful business … I put a lot of pressure on myself, like, Yes, I’ve got my dream job; now, I just need to keep it. I would spend so much time and energy and attention focused on my Video Hits bubble, whereas outside that bubble were these emerging conversations.
I was never interested in scripted narrative when I was a music-television host, and I now know why. It’s because I never really saw myself as a Blasian Australian in a scripted-narrative form. There are some incredible storytellers in Australia who have been able to break through the system; however, I do not think scripted TV and film live up to the full artistic and commercial success that they could be. My experiences with scripted television so far have been anemic, and a set of experiences over the past 18 months made me consider quitting altogether. There’s a few forces at play here: if you’re working in a system designed for making TV as it has been for over 30 years, which did not include whole groups and cultures of people, and if ‘diversity and inclusion’ are forced to fit into these systems as of last Wednesday, then you will run into problems at literally every step of production. In the words of Coco Solid at Semi Permanent Aotearoa in November 2020:
Seeking and asking people to provide emergency diversity is offensive and garners cosmetic results, so it ain’t even that smart for business; I don’t know why some of youse do it. And sometimes diversity is revealing shorthand for ‘I don’t have any meaningful integration for people I don’t look like’, which is shorthand for ‘I have a vanilla network and I don’t have the interpersonal range’. For some people to involve me based purely on my point of difference and your lack of consideration is hurtful and embarrassing, and it happens to our artists of colour here all the time … I feel like, in 2020, gestures no longer suffice; only hardcore embodiment will do. When you have respectful, deep relationships that you’ve built over a long time, you don’t have to go for the consultancy model, or hire ambulances at the bottom of the cliff to make your brand seem more engaged than it actually is. What harm do you personally, privately uphold and perpetuate on the spectrum of privilege?
What do you think is desperately needed in the screen industry in Australia?
More Indigenous storytelling, and more Bla(c)k and POC creatives to steward not just the seed of the idea, but also its production and output. To create stories from these communities today is meaningfully different from the stories by creatives who have had access to all of the resources and funding from 30 years ago to the present day. And for those old systems to interact with newer storytellers requires huge shifts in psyche and behaviour—or, at the very least, the knowledge that their usefulness may just be smoothing the path for them over any kind of a creative input.
As someone working in the creative industries, what kind of stories excite you?
FUBU: for us, by us. That’s it. That’s the answer.
What has been your career highlight so far, and what would you love to achieve in the future?
The highlights come from just doing the work as regularly as possible. I think how I define something that is ‘successful’ now is more to do with how I feel about it. If it’s something that feels like an act of service, that I can release into the world, that I’m confident I can get behind, that’s been future-proofed, then it’s work that I’m proud of. If there’s any sort of praise, great.
The feeling of wanting to leave the world of acting and scripted storytelling behind made way for greater conversations about what I want to fill my life with. I certainly don’t want to be inserted into a show as an actor-turned-paramedic performing triage to save a production from harming whole communities while facing hostility at literally every turn. I still love the arts, but it does mean building things in our own way, with a communal mindset. I’m developing a show at the moment.
And then there’s an idea I’m growing with my partner: haircare products for textured hair. Every time I work on its research and development, I have a feeling that opens me up and makes me much happier (in a work sense) than I’ve been in over a decade.
Do you have any advice for emerging practitioners in the entertainment industry?
Be discerning of people whom you’re thinking of collaborating with. Trust your gut. Also, own your own work, like a musician owning their own masters of their music. It’ll pay off long-term.
Who are you inspired by?
The past year has shown me that love and home are crucial for my being—I’m inspired by my mother. Her love, which is love through action or acts of service, is the most enduring, unwavering constant in my life. I wish, growing up, I was wise enough to understand reciprocity more, but I guess that comes with maturity. It’s only as adults that we have clarity in knowing what love truly is. I wish to reciprocate this back to my family.
What are you listening to?
I have this private Spotify playlist of RnB and neo soul called ‘SURF’ that I’ve played on and off for over a year—it’s the soundtrack I imagine while I’m out in the ocean and has D’Angelo, Solange, Erykah Badu and André 3000, Snoh Aalegra, The Internet, Ari Lennox. I also get so much out of listening to this NPR business podcast called How I Built This, which is about entrepreneurs and the businesses they created.
What are you reading?
Don’t Touch My Hair by Emma Dabiri—every paragraph is so fire.
How do you practise self-care?
I spend a lot more time offline. I walk with my girlfriend’s dog in Aotearoa or my two groodles when I’m in Australia, sometimes while listening to audiobooks or podcasts. I go to the beach and hang out, and I would surf if I wasn’t bloody injured. I really love the game Sneaky Sasquatch on Apple Arcade. I watch TV series with my partner, like Féminin/Féminin, Insecure, Breaking Bad and Bob’s Burgers. For many personal and professional reasons that I can’t explain here right now, I really feel like I’m coming out of an oddball 18 months. Back in April, soon after my birthday, an old friend of mine from LA reached out over email and wanted to catch up. We hadn’t spoken in what would have easily been more than two years. I told him everything that had been going down in life, feeling like a shell of myself, and he simply asked, “Have you been meditating?” and I realised I had dropped this many-years practice that has been so helpful to my wellbeing. I revisited Vedic meditation that day and it has been incredible.
What does being Asian Australian mean to you?
A person with a rich, complex culture that informs my life on a daily basis. And I love us. I love us so much.
Find out more
Interview by Mimo Mukii
Illustrations by Zachary Durian