FESTIVAL COMEDY RHYS DARBY
THE SPACEMAN COMETH
His time in the New Zealand army was good training for dealing with the impending Armageddon. Rhys Darby tells Brian Donaldson that comedy might yet rescue the world
showbiz
‘W hatever lies ahead in Rhys Darby’s stat might career, one continue to haunt him: he may never be as popular as Zippy. Or rather, not Darby himself, but one Murray Hewitt. The feckless Kiwi band manager he played in 22 episodes of Flight of the Conchords was voted i ve places down from the Rainbow legend in Loaded’s recent Top 100 Cult TV Characters poll. ‘As I l icked through it I thought, “There’s a chance I could be in here,”’ Darby recalls. ‘And then I thought, “Actually, I’ll be annoyed if I’m not in no here, 100 is a lot”. But Murray is in there at no 17 and I was pretty happy with that.’
a piece of that. The basic training side of it was very Full Metal Jacket, there was certainly a lot of abuse and holding very heavy artillery shells above my head and running through swamps. I probably should have joined the scouts but I went straight into the real army. Luckily, as it was New Zealand, we didn’t really get deployed anywhere, it was more of a civil defence outi t.’ At university, Darby studied sociology and philosophy and got his degree in art theory. ‘I guess it made me think a lot, broadened my mind. g After that I got a job in an art shop selling p r i n t s , p r i n t s , g
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Still, Rhys Darby has a head start on anyone in Rainbow (even Bungle) when it comes to performing innovative live comedy shows. His Edinburgh Fringe debut came in 2002 with Rhys Darby is the Neon r Outlaw and he has returned with four further o solo efforts. His 2012 effort, This Way to n Spaceship, is based on his debut publication al which he describes as ‘an autobiographical ut science i ction novel; it’s a handbook about on what you should do to survive the Armageddon if due at the end of 2012. I have this idea that if ve the world does blow up, the superpowers have ist got spaceships ready with a special invite list ves to get on board. What with me making waves on among the Hollywood set, obviously I’ll be on the list’.
how As difi cult as it might be to imagine how o a on Earth Armageddon could be crafted into a red live comedy show, it should be remembered on that Rhys Darby is a one-man whirlwind on of stage. His shows are a spectacular mixture of ity, bizarre sound effects, energetic physicality, aur surreal stand-up and, of course, dinosaur impersonations. how So what came i rst here: the idea for a live show that turned effortlessly into a book or a tome that suggested itself as a stage extravaganza? ‘Initially I was going to do a book tour with maybe 20 minutes of stand-up but by the time I i nished the book it kind of made sense to then turn it into a stage show because it would be a good way to try and sell it and also to put the whole package on stage.’
These days, Darby splits his time between Los Angeles and New Zealand with his wife and their two young sons, which seems as far away from the initial career path in the military he had appeared destined for. ‘I think I just watched too many 80s war movies: Full Metal Jacket, Platoon, Hamburger Hill; oh man, I just wanted
32 THE LIST 2–9 Aug 2012
but but that that only lasted about six months when it closed down due to a lack of sales. But I spent a lot of that time sitting in the shop writing comedy.’ Writing comedy was one thing; getting a chance of performing his material in New Zealand was almost as easy as i nding an enemy to declare war upon.
‘There was nothing happening there and to this day there’s only one full-time purpose-built comedy club in the country; there’s more of a scene now, with a good dozen or so comics making a living from it. When I was starting out there was one club and three or four bars offering the odd gig and at the time I was doing three shows a week in Auckland. I found that
I’d be doing Tuesday, Wednesday and Saturday and the weekend audience was like, “Hey, I saw you on Tuesday!” It would be the same people coming along.’ Still, that scene was the same one that helped him to carve out the role which he remains most famous for: that of Murray Hewitt on i rst the radio and then subsequent TV series of Flight of the Conchords. But it was a typically low- key scenario that brought it all about. ‘Bret and Jemaine were in Wellington and I was based in Auckland, but I knew of them from the the country’s comedy festival. They’d only just f just formed the Conchords the year I left New Zeala Zealand and it was two years after that that they went went to do the Edinburgh Festival. We were the only only Kiwi acts there so we connected up and they they got approached by the BBC to record a radi radio pilot. Jemaine asked if I wanted to play the the part of their manager and I had nothing else on, on, had an hour or so for lunch, so I said, “Oh yea yeah, I could come down and give it a bash.” Th The rest is history.’ A And that success has led to all manner of rol roles and hook-ups. One in particular still cle clearly has Darby somewhat star-smitten. A After working on the movie version of Danny W Wallace’s Yes Man, he formed a mutual ad admiration society with the i lm’s lead actor. ‘H ‘He’s just absolutely brilliant; he’s got that P Peter Sellers madness inside him,’ said one J Jim Carrey of his Kiwi co-star.
‘That was a goldmine; he didn’t need to d do that,’ says Darby. ‘He had done press for the i lm in New Zealand when he said it, so good on him. I was obsessed with Jim’s i lms when I was younger, and hoped one day to meet him and, lo and behold, the i rst i lm I do was with him. I think I just refus refused to believe that it was real and I didn’t take a minute to realise the full situation until the i lm was done. At the premiere I noticed myself up there on the screen with him but even then it felt like I had been superimposed into a i lm. ‘But the audience seemed to love it and only then did I believe that I deserved to be up there and, thanks to the Conchords, I felt that a lot of people loved what I was doing and so not as many people would have said, “Who the hell is this guy?”’
Rhys Darby: This Way to Spaceship, Pleasance Courtyard, 556 6550, 4 –27 Aug (not 8, 14), 8pm, £17.50–£18.50. Previews until 3 Aug, £11.