August 14, 2024 • 39 mins
This week’s guest is Māori comedian Kura Turuwhenua.
She doesn’t have to try to be funny, she just is. Kura’s mind is wonderfully abstract, allowing her to channel the lived and imaginative through her craft. Our mate shares how stand-up led her to recently sketch writing for Only In Aotearoa alongside an all wāhine team. Plus, she settles for us: hāngi or boil up?
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Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:00):
It's the Flavor podcast network Island Roots Auckland Ways. This
one's for the Brown brothers and sisters who want to
be one with themselves, their culture, their identity, their roots.
This is Island Roots Auckland Ways.
Speaker 2 (00:21):
Solo for love Everyone and welcome back to Island Roots
Auckland Ways. Hello Alissa, Hello Im that you're wearing right now.
Speaker 1 (00:29):
Thank you so much. It's from let's all take a guess.
Where can it possibly be? From? Ruby?
Speaker 2 (00:36):
Yeah, I'm obsessed at this point. They need to come
out with a collection and your name.
Speaker 1 (00:42):
Please or like, I don't know, I could do like
a little sponsorship Ruby. If you're listening, shout out come
on Ruby. I was actually recognizing a Ruby recently. Shout
out to Gene. She works at Ruby, and she was like,
I love your podcast, and I was like, I'm obsessed
with you. Hook it up, hook us a.
Speaker 2 (01:06):
Step up with some free clothes le weirs Ruby like
orally for Sive.
Speaker 1 (01:12):
Like, people don't even ask you what I'm wearing. Anybody
that's a nice top. I love a red pink moment.
Me too, the red pink moments.
Speaker 2 (01:21):
Yeah, it's giving like Rihanna on one side, Nicki Minaj
on the.
Speaker 1 (01:24):
Other Okay, Pink Friday, My rebel fragrance.
Speaker 2 (01:29):
Was cool, Yes, which is good, By the way, is
it really as well as our guest smelling?
Speaker 1 (01:39):
I don't know what could have smells like? Sorry, why
I've been trying to work on my seatways lately. Yeah,
mind a way, A bit of the jaw that is
literally incredible. Like I was saying to her off the mic,
she just speaks with such integral and it's so clear
(02:03):
that she's so genuine about what she's saying. Yeah, there's
no mistaking where she stands.
Speaker 2 (02:07):
Yeah something Everything she sees comes from her heart, like
she would like take these pauses before she spoke.
Speaker 1 (02:14):
They just drop the hardest value your life.
Speaker 2 (02:17):
Honestly you but just couldn't even write what she said
in an essay.
Speaker 1 (02:20):
Oh fuck you bitch.
Speaker 2 (02:24):
So here is Kudaina right now on the podcast.
Speaker 1 (02:30):
Welcome back to another episode of Island Routes, awkand Ways.
Please welcome comedian writer all around legend could sort of fat.
Welcome Kudda. How are you going today?
Speaker 3 (02:42):
All good?
Speaker 1 (02:43):
Yeah? Did you get an okay? Yeah?
Speaker 3 (02:45):
Yeah yeah yeah. I drove in and it was starting
to rain, but I was just saying before that the
studio is so soundproof, like because there's Hundi's raining before.
Speaker 1 (02:54):
You can hear a thing. Yeah magic, yeah.
Speaker 2 (02:57):
Yeah, well could have. As always, we like to show
what we love about home. So whatever home is to you,
if you think of home and you think of maybe
it's where you live or where you grew up or
where you go away, and consider home, what is home
to you and what do you love about it? We
will start off first and Alyssa, what do you love
about home this week?
Speaker 1 (03:15):
It's actually I think I've definitely shared that I love
this about home before, but it's the botanical gardens and
money they were Yes, I live in Reware, was brought
up in Rewa and the gardens is like such a
such a spot and money there was it is.
Speaker 2 (03:29):
I went there for the first time in several years
for Matadi y Yeah, and it was gorgeous.
Speaker 1 (03:37):
It's bigger than I remember. It's actually really big and
it's really nice and I recently did the mistake of
taking a boy there and so I feel like I've
had to go there a lot recently and just like
reclaim the space for myself.
Speaker 2 (03:51):
Do you like go in and just like freaking like
with holy water.
Speaker 1 (03:55):
Yeah, very much that. No, I actually did. I took
my friend Dorin there and we had like sit on
the bench right, and I was like, can we just
sit here for a moment, just reclaim this bench.
Speaker 2 (04:05):
Yes, rebuked energy that were once there.
Speaker 1 (04:09):
Yeah.
Speaker 3 (04:10):
Did the guy do something weird?
Speaker 1 (04:12):
Yeah he got he got cat put it.
Speaker 3 (04:17):
I think my cousin's also taken, dude.
Speaker 1 (04:21):
And then just been like.
Speaker 2 (04:24):
You's sorry, better fly very.
Speaker 1 (04:30):
Bad sorry dog park. Yeah.
Speaker 3 (04:33):
Okay.
Speaker 2 (04:34):
What I love about home this week is.
Speaker 1 (04:37):
I love my cooking girl.
Speaker 2 (04:40):
Okay, really because I've gone flooding and so like I've
had to rely on myself. You really have to rely
on yourself for ship. Yeah, like you need a cook
for yourself, you need a clean after yourself, like all
these things when you live with your family, like it's
a shared task. It kind of is to an extent
when you're floing, but there's more ownership that you do it,
(05:01):
like you clean up after.
Speaker 1 (05:02):
Has this been like a big culture shock for you.
Speaker 2 (05:05):
I'm just always used to like my nana's cooking or
my papa's cooking, or getting home and my mum has
cooked something. So I guess like not that I didn't
know how to cook, because I knew how to cook,
but just that I'm cooking more and I'm like learning
to romanticize at all and still seeing it as a
chore because that's what you know.
Speaker 1 (05:26):
Now it's like fun alone time.
Speaker 2 (05:28):
Yes, put the ear pods on Jammer podcasts and studying
my favorite dishes right now.
Speaker 1 (05:40):
Stir fry. Love a stir fry. You just jam hoist.
Speaker 2 (05:43):
And sauce, oyster sauce, fish sauce, yep, and then your
protein of your choice. What are my other faves?
Speaker 1 (05:51):
I love a good toasty, A nice toasty toasty.
Speaker 2 (05:57):
There's a nice m What else I love?
Speaker 1 (06:00):
I love a big brickie. You guys love big breakfasts. No,
there's too much going on? Is it too much for you? Yeah?
Similar to the similar Before we were on the mic,
I was saying, how sad which is sometimes overwhelmed my
tastebuds and my like sensation, they get like sensory overload.
Speaker 2 (06:17):
Yeah.
Speaker 1 (06:17):
I feel like sometimes a big breakfast I get sinsory overload.
Speaker 3 (06:20):
How about you could have big breakfast can be quite
hardcore for me? I reckon, I don't.
Speaker 1 (06:26):
Know, it's just what's too much about it.
Speaker 3 (06:29):
I think it's just because it's the first thing that
your body has got to deal with, true, and it's like,
oh man, I've only just woken up and you've just
like filled me with every food group, possibly because.
Speaker 1 (06:42):
It's like calves, there's meat. Another very ation.
Speaker 3 (06:47):
One that's interesting what you said before though about like
flooding and and having to rely on yourself, because that
I had the same experience because I grew up with
quite a big household, and yeah, everyone is relying on
each other, and that's kind of the be a minimum,
Like that's the base level expectation from everyone. But then
(07:08):
when you're in a flat, like when I was living
in an apartment in Uni, I was like, whoa, we
really are out here of fending for ourselves right now. Yeah,
Suddenly what you thought was the be a minimum is
actually quite a lot for real.
Speaker 2 (07:23):
Bro even like stuff like cleaning and things like that
needs to be organized. Where As like if you live
with your family, it's almost like you read each other's
minds and you're like.
Speaker 1 (07:33):
Okay, i'll do I'll do that.
Speaker 2 (07:35):
Yeah, But like it needs to be like divv up
properly in a flat situation, if you get what.
Speaker 1 (07:39):
I mean, do you have are you flitting at the moment? No? Okay?
Do you have a roster in your flat? No? Okay?
Now do you guys read each other's minds or do
you just tell someone you're going to do something? We
just tell each other.
Speaker 3 (07:51):
Oh okay, that's all. You sort of feel the simmering tension.
Just wait for the group group chat, passage prisons.
Speaker 1 (08:03):
Thankfully, I don't. Yeah, we just tell each other.
Speaker 2 (08:06):
But the whole cooking thing, we have like very like
diverse tastes and food, so we're never going to have
the same meal.
Speaker 1 (08:15):
Yeah. Nice, So I'll go home to go love, go on,
thank you? What do you love about home this week?
Speaker 3 (08:25):
What I love about home is literally just going back
home because I love with my quardor. I'm my auntie,
oh beautiful and my cousin now. But I love just
going back home and seeing what my accordor is watching
on TV. Because it's quite arranged, like he'll go from
watching the American politics. Yeah, because he hates Donald Trump.
(08:48):
So he's always he's like his number one hater, and
so he watches everything like you know, he's one of
those haters where he's well researched.
Speaker 2 (08:57):
I like he's hating his heart. I want to know,
like what you're doing because I want to hand on
the exactly.
Speaker 3 (09:04):
But he can go from that to like watching documentaries
about skin walkers and like, oh.
Speaker 1 (09:09):
My gosh, he really does have a range.
Speaker 3 (09:11):
Yeah, he's got a big range to like World War
two to like nature documentary, Like he's got it all.
He watches like we watched Breaking Bed together, I Love you, Yeah,
and he would have been like eighty nine eighty eight
or something and he was like, oh my god, these
people are terrible. Let's watch the next episode. Yeah. And
(09:32):
I just love hanging out with him and my aunty
as well, and just because when we go home, I
tend to try and switch back into the eel and
he was raised in wine Man and he speaks too
ideal and so it's like, oh yeah, I get to
go home and speak a Maldio again.
Speaker 1 (09:49):
Yeah, it's cool, cool.
Speaker 3 (09:50):
And just talk about you know, stuff that eighty nine
year olds fine cool, which is a lot oh.
Speaker 1 (09:57):
By the sounds. Yeah, I thought you were going to
be like, oh, he's watching like the Chase. Of course
that's part of the New Zealand television. There we.
Speaker 3 (10:18):
Stand up was when I was in halls at UNI,
right and they just had this like like open mic
night kind of thing and I was like, oh, I'll
do a stand up sit and I did it and
I was pretty bad. People laughed, But it's not something
that I'm like, I'm so proud of this city. Yeah,
it was pretty like what I would call heck now.
(10:41):
But ever since then, I just started signing up to
open mic, like proper open mic nights at bars and stuff,
and I just kept on going. I was, yeah, pretty
bad at the time, just like not as personal I guess, yeah,
like my style has become now. But yeah, it was
(11:04):
really just a case of I kept on signing up.
I kept on showing up to the gigs and practicing
and crafting and writing, and then stuff started happening. I
started getting put on sort of more lineup shows rather
than open mic comedy. And then I think I was
twenty one when I did my first TV stand up gig,
(11:26):
which was Peck Society's comedy mixtape, And then ever since then,
I don't even know what I've been up to really.
I think I've been doing a lot of writing, yeah,
a little bit of performing, I'd like to get back
into performing properly. Just it's a bit hard right now
because life is quite expensive and comedy is quite expensive,
(11:46):
especially because I love quite far away from the city
and all the gigs are in the city. But yeah,
I guess now most of my comedy is like written
not on purpose, but that's just how it's ended up.
Speaker 2 (12:00):
Yeah, yeah, I suppose like it was just the more
you did these open mic notes, the better you got.
Speaker 3 (12:07):
Yeah, it's interesting because for comedy, every single gig is different.
Like you can you will get better and better and
better and more comfortable and better at responding and better
at listening. But that doesn't necessarily mean that every gig
is going to get better and better a beater, like
they're quite all over the place, like it depends on
(12:30):
the crowd, It depends on the vibes of the day,
It depends on how on you are, Like, yeah, the
variable is there.
Speaker 1 (12:39):
Yeah, have you ever been on stays to be like funk,
I really need to pivot this content right now. You
had to just like completely be like, oh, I can't
keep going.
Speaker 3 (12:47):
Yeah, there's been times where's like I've just said something
I shouldn't have, Seid like there are things that I've
said on SAYD that I regretted saying, and I was like, mm, yeah,
I need to leave this. I need to turn way
to something else right now because this is not This
is either not what I thought it was gonna be,
like yeah in my head, or it's just like the
(13:09):
crowd just doesn't care for it, and I just need
to go to something that I know they will.
Speaker 1 (13:14):
Like, Yeah, do you have like some things where you're like, oh,
like every crowd loves this?
Speaker 3 (13:18):
Well, yeah, yeah, I would say that the song that
I do is one of those bits where it's I
don't think I've ever had a bad response to that.
Speaker 1 (13:31):
Yeah, yeah, I was this was gonna be the next
question anyway. But I love the way I actually saw
you perform it. I'm the why twenty five nor that
I almost yeah, so wild, but it was. I just
loved your shit so much. I've always been a fan
of you, but like actually being able to see you
in your life, I was like, this is hilarious, Like
(13:52):
this to me is like so good, and I love
the way that you have infused like comedy and music
like with that song, I wish I was gay. I
was I was getting. Yeah, first of all, how did
you come up with that song? And then also like
what at what point did you decide to infuse like
comedy and music together.
Speaker 3 (14:11):
I think I wrote that song either when I was
nineteen or twenty. I was just watching a lot of
Flight of the Concord. Oh yeah, Flight of the Concords,
because I grew up on them. I was like, I
would love to do some musical comedy, and so I
just picked up my guitar, I went and lot myself
at my bedroom and I just wrote it nice. I
don't exactly know what the inspiration was. I think it
(14:35):
was just one of those times. So sometimes you just
get a random creative boost and it's like right, right,
right right, Oh my gosh, this is actually not bad.
Speaker 1 (14:43):
Yeah.
Speaker 3 (14:44):
And then but the interesting thing is that the first
time you write it down on paper is not what
it's gonna be, like feva, Like, if I were to
read what I actually wrote, it would probably be a
completely different song.
Speaker 1 (14:57):
Yeah.
Speaker 3 (14:57):
So it's over time and over you know, because each
time you play it, depending on the room, you might
say something different to what you write. You might say
something that you feel just would be funnier on the spot,
and then that thing you thought of on the spot
becomes a locked in line in the song. Like even
(15:19):
the interesting thing about song musical comedy is that you're
actually playing with the conventions of music, because comedy is
all about subverting the expectations of the audience. And so
with musical comedy, it can't just be a song that's funny.
It has to be a song that like you actually
(15:41):
have to consider what goes into writing song, what goes
into the structure of a song, what do people Oh
my gosh.
Speaker 1 (15:46):
Hitther Yeah he works on his building. I'm sorry, oh
my gosh, speak of the devil.
Speaker 3 (15:55):
But yeah, like it's it's a lot more than just
writing the jokes, Like you actually kind of have to
like writing music and know what goes you know, what's
the bridge, what's a chorus? What are people waiting for
you to do? Yeah, because everyone kind of has a
built in ear as to what a song should be,
and so you have more to play with. Yeah, well
(16:17):
you just have a lot to play with than just
compared to Stand Up Alone. Yeah, but even stand Up Alone,
it's like a whole entire world of its own stuff.
So yeah, I think it was just like I just
like writing music and so it was fun to mooge
those loves together. Although I need to write another song,
(16:38):
we would love that and I'm just so lazy so much.
Speaker 1 (16:45):
Yeah, it does seem like a lot of if it
to be honest, do you have a gig though? That's
been like your favorite so fat m.
Speaker 3 (16:54):
I actually really enjoyed that hy twenty five gig just
because it was just a room full of young women
who were all entrepreneurs, are like thought leaders, and it's like, wow,
you people are like actually doing something around and it
was just cool to be in that space and be like,
(17:18):
let's just have a good time. Let's just chill and
relax and smile, because, especially knowing just the sort of
level of work you guys were doing, it kind of
felt like, I don't know, just a real privilege to
be able to share joy nice. That's how I see
(17:38):
comedy is making joyful space, Yeah, which is really important
to me, especially for hard workers. Yeah, it's important to
have time to just be happy.
Speaker 1 (17:48):
It's such a I love that. I'm like an in
comedy phonetic, Like I really love very much comedy that
comes out of this country period, and so like that
I'm also so on that buzz, Like I feel like
being a young woman in this world can be really
hard sometimes and like the layer of being like Speaker
or Mardy, it's not an easy world or this is
(18:11):
not an easy city to live in, and then we
have like the cost of living crisis that like making
space for joy is so important, like you actually can't
live life without pockets of joy, like we need those,
we need those moments of hope in order to make
the slave with living.
Speaker 3 (18:31):
Yeah, my mom, when I was a kid, she used
to tell me if Marty couldn't laugh, we would just
be crying all the time.
Speaker 1 (18:37):
Yeah, and you were like, you know what I want
to do. I want to make people laugh.
Speaker 3 (18:44):
Yeah. Pretty intense thing to say that, but I don't
think she was necessarily wrong.
Speaker 1 (18:54):
Yeah, well that was the next question actually, speaking to
like being Mardy and growing up Mardy, you went to
a school that was really similar to mine, and I
found being at that school very culturally challenging, and I
felt like my some oneness was like really obvious in
a way that wasn't like nice And like to me now,
(19:17):
being someone, Yes, I love that. I love being someone.
It's everything to me. I want people to know I'm Simon,
but back then it was kind of like a shameful
aspect of my identity. But the question is, were you
always like super strong in your Mardi tonguel or as
we're going to a school like we did, that it
impacts you in any way.
Speaker 3 (19:38):
I think that my whole life, I have always been
Maldy and I've never known anything else but to be Maldy.
And when I was at Burdeane, I was always confident
in my Mildy tongue I had. I actually started at
(19:58):
Tikol hunger deal or Tetsuda home, so Maldi is technically
my first language. But the thing is that afterwards I
went to mainstream schools and my Maldi got less good,
really well, it didn't get worse, it just didn't get better.
And my final like Tedyl, was always in our home,
(20:18):
but it wasn't necessarily spoken to me twenty four seven,
which is what you need to have a language relationship
with your caregiver.
Speaker 1 (20:27):
But it was never a secret.
Speaker 3 (20:29):
To me or a surprise that we were Maldy, and
I never felt uncomfortable when we, you know, would go
to different events with Fino or tonguey or those kinds
of things, which it's interesting because tonguy, I think, is
one of the biggest places where Maldy connect with their
Maldi tongue nowadays, if they're not already immersed in it.
(20:53):
But I was always pretty chill, like honestly, when I
was in school, there was no sense of shame because
it was not something I knew that you could be
ashamed about. I would go to school and it was
white Airs, and I'd feel like it was white Airs,
but I still went to Kabaka and I did Copuka
(21:14):
for like maybe twelve eleven, twelve years or something, so
it was always just a natural part of my life.
And then I'd go home and all my family are
Maldy and so there was no shame. There was no
feelings of detachment for me until my parents started saying
(21:35):
things to me, Like I remember when I was in
high school, my parents were like they said to me,
and I put it in my showhohak guy. They started
saying stuff to me like, oh, we know you're ashamed
of being Maldy and we know that you don't like
DOINGUK because of that, And that was quite random to me,
(21:59):
like and I say random really intentionally because it came
out of nowhere. Yeah, because when I was a teenager,
it was not something I really thought about. It just
was my life. And to have my parents say something
like that to me, which was quite a definitive sort
of judgment that they had come to, was like.
Speaker 1 (22:21):
Yeah.
Speaker 3 (22:21):
And it was only when they said that when suddenly
the concepts of shame and girl got introduced to me.
And I would have been like year twelve, like you're
living year twelve, and so I've gone all this way
like I'm a happy little milded girl, and I got
a couple of yeah, yeah, exactly what we binging out
and doing my homework and all that jazz. And it
(22:42):
was only when they sort of started saying stuff I
was like, oh, maybe I'm not a happy little molded girl. Yeah,
And I think that because it was so random it
was I was okay because the shock of it was like, oh,
that's so random. I don't know what you're talking about.
It's very upsetting that you've said this, but it's too
(23:02):
out of the blue for me to really fully be like,
you're right, I don't know anything, because it's just like,
what the hell are you talking about because sometimes I
could say random stuff because they're also very creative and
creative people say creative things. But yeah, it's interesting. It's
(23:23):
only gotten more complex now that I'm twenty three. Yeah,
where I look back and I'm like, huh, that's quite
interesting what was going on there? And all I can
say to that is that that was them going through
their own stuff.
Speaker 1 (23:40):
But yeah, I love that answer. That's so gosh how
different my life would have been had I not known
what shame was, because.
Speaker 3 (23:50):
It's only once it's introduced to you that you can
feel shame about, because otherwise you're just a little bumbling
teenager just hanging out.
Speaker 1 (23:59):
Yeah, trying to figure out the world as it is.
Speaker 3 (24:02):
Sometimes other people introduce that shame, like teachers, peers, but
for me it was my parents. But now, my school
had had a lot of issues, honestly, like they would
keep doing bullshit like trying and make the kabaka practices
as short as possible and make it as little as
possible because to them, capuker was just a performance and
(24:24):
it was just a hobby. They didn't understand what it
meant for that to be aligned to your culture. Because
I love kabaka because because it was my culture and
that was where I felt cool and chill and happy.
But yeah, I don't know. They'd go, oh, my God,
could have our favorite little gold star student. But then
(24:45):
in the same breath they'd say, and we're going to
shorten kabaka because you guys need to be better at academics,
even though I don't know, we were great.
Speaker 1 (24:55):
Yeah in my eyes, Yeah, that's exactly what my master's
was about. What the research says. I read an interview
of yours where you mentioned obviously you have a more
cohi and you mentioned feeling like you had to act
or speak a certain way after you received your mocal Coi.
(25:18):
I would have kind of speak to the experience of
receiving it, but then also that journey you've kind of
been on since, like what does it mean to you,
like now act and speak.
Speaker 3 (25:26):
And yeah, I got my macal Coi when I turned
twenty one. I got it with my mum and three
of my toa on the same day. It was actually
the first Moco Papa that my mother I had ever
held in the ducking wow, mainly because el mud I
Well the funding way specifically is I knew well new
(25:47):
as in it was built in twenty ten, and so
they had never had a morechal Papa on it before,
and so that was a real privilege to be part
of that sort of occasion. It was interesting because the
night before I got my more cork, I was telling
my cousin just the other day that I just had
so much anxiety over it. I didn't know if I
(26:07):
was making the right decision. I was feeling the permanence
of the decision and I couldn't sleep. And then on
the day of my marco, we pulled up to Durpaki,
I saw my monga tameathel borke Fenua and I immediately
felt calm. And it was like a calmness that I'd
(26:28):
never felt before. It was like my whole body and
every cell in my body it was just po and
I in that moment just knew this is the right decision.
I am exactly where I need to be. And so
ever since that feeling, which was even before I actually
(26:48):
had the mochal COI I knew, oh, yes, this is
who I am, this is what's meant to happen right now.
And I think ever since having my morcal COI, I've
just become stronger and stronger as not just as a
mildy person, but as a person in general. Having my
(27:13):
morcl Coio its like I wake up and I have
my best friend with me every day. There's never been
a single day where I've regretted having my macho, And
every day that I have my Macho and I see it,
I feel ready for the world. It's something That's helped
(27:35):
me a lot because I've been working on getting my
deal back up to scratch and getting more intentional about
my mildy tongue and my two and I feel like
every step of the way, I have my mate to
(27:57):
thank for holding me. It's just quite interesting because I've
never actually thought about it like that before until I'm
saying it right now.
Speaker 1 (28:05):
Yeah, it's so beautiful.
Speaker 2 (28:07):
What a beautiful description of that experience.
Speaker 1 (28:10):
I'm always getting emotional. Yeah, that's so put the tears
out of the eyes. Are there certain expectations put on
people with Michael.
Speaker 3 (28:23):
I There are people who will put expectations on you
regardless of what you present. There are people who will
say that I shouldn't sweet, shouldn't say certain things because
I'm a woman, and so of course there's going to
be people who say it because I have a morchal
COI because everyone has different understandings of what is and
(28:44):
what the tekonga is, and I think that I don't
wish to villainize those people or even necessarily to disagree
with them, because what is true to me can be
equally true to someone else. There are lots of people
who say you shouldn't drink alcohol, you shouldn't smoke, you
(29:06):
shouldn't swear, you shouldn't talk about sex. But for me,
that's just not a thing because in my upbringing more
has been a very casual thing. It's just a part
of life, and it's a part of our beauty as well.
(29:27):
And I think that the way I've always had it
around me is it's just it's just as natural as
your lips, you know, just as natural as having a
chin like it. It's quite neutral to me, even though
I just said that all that stuff about here's my
best friend, It's just it's not something that I revere
(29:47):
or feel afraid of, or that I feel others should expect. Well,
you know, the thing is that I will hold myself
to this ended that I think I should be at
regardless of my co I just as a woman, as
a mildy woman, it's important to me that I hold
(30:11):
my head up high and that I don't speak down
on myself, and that I don't allow myself to do
what the world would love to do to me. But
that would be true regardless of my Marchel.
Speaker 1 (30:26):
Period him. Oh my gosh, wow, wow, wow, wow. I
was telling you before I just received my mudel, and
I feel like within someone culture there are some really
(30:47):
high expectations of people who wear their muddel or like
have had their muddel revealed. And to hear you say,
like speak of your Michael co I, it's like this
neutral thing but also something that like when you look
at and the morning you feel ready for the world.
That's exactly how I feel about my cell and this
(31:09):
kind of sense of like I have everyone in my
life and all my ancestors like backing me so hard,
like unconditionally, but it's also like not anyone else's business
what I not necessarily what I do, but like how
I move through the world as someone who wears a
(31:32):
malul Like I think that's so what you've said is
so profound and like important. Yeah, yeah, I feel like
I need to take like five minutes. Couldn't we want
to jam a rapid fire? I came with you.
Speaker 2 (31:47):
But before we do that, I have one more, last,
one last question for you. So we'd love to hear
more about your writing works. So you've mentioned the performance
side of comedy, but then there's also that side of
writing and scripting shows like Only An tell us about
the experience, because we've seen clips of it.
Speaker 1 (32:05):
Did you see a moment? Hilarious?
Speaker 2 (32:11):
That whole show actually, like the whole previous of the
show is just so smart and intelligent. But tell us
about your experience writing for shows like that.
Speaker 3 (32:19):
Yeah, Only An al Theodore is the only skeitch comedy
show I've written on. But writing skitch comedy, I feel
like it's like a comedian dream. I got their job.
I think it was off the back of like stand
up or something like that, Like my stand up clips
had been going around, and I think that the producer
(32:42):
was like, oh, you can do comedy, you write comedy,
And I'd previously done some week writing on Akad and
so she's like, oh, cool, you can also write Yes,
And the room was cool, like it was just all
and it was a real fun time, Like we just
(33:04):
sat literally around a table and jammed like things that
we thought were funny and things that we thought what
he should see. I'm a bit of a comedy nude,
so I it was really important to me, like structure
and set ups and punchlines and all. They're just like,
it's quite boring when you break it down into that,
but it's really important so that you can hit what
(33:26):
it is that you're trying to say. Yeah, absolutely, I've
seen it in some other somewhere. I said to someone
else that with Tikunga Police, which with the sketches that
I brought, and I was like real nerdy, and they're like, everybody,
can you please come in with a few ideas, Like
it doesn't have to be full and fleshed out, it's
just something that we can ref on. And on the
(33:48):
first day of the table, I brought and fully written
scrobs and I was I should I'm so so like
too much sometimes because everyone else in the room got
freaked out because they're like, oh, when we meant to
do that, And I.
Speaker 1 (34:03):
Was like no, no, no, no, no, I'm just like
I'm just really into this. I was really into it.
Speaker 3 (34:07):
It was like the hyper fixation thing, like but Uh.
That gef skitch was quite funny to me because that
was one that was born in the room because we
were just talking about not to name well yeah, to
name names, but because they are not a Maldi brand,
but they.
Speaker 1 (34:26):
Have a man I have heard.
Speaker 3 (34:28):
Yeah yeah, yeah, but they're young, I guess, but they
because it stands for alpha, like because sometimes in you'll
hear the which is alpha omega. So it's implying everything
in the world because it's from A to Z and
(34:51):
everything in between. Yeah, and I was like, oh my gosh,
cool Maori company, but it wasn't actually, but we were
talking about that brand in the room and how we
would We're all convinced that it was a Maldi brand
because I had a name, and so we just started
(35:11):
talking like what if we were in a world where
after the city or white tonguey Maldi came out better
than Parka. And so that whole skitch is like in
a boardroom with a Maldi company and they've got the
like token park boards. Yeah yeah, yeah. And the feel
(35:31):
thing was just a random thing that I thought was funny.
It was just funny because like we have all these
this you've got, there's all one and this whole context
and everyone's favorite particy thing.
Speaker 1 (35:46):
Like gone to ship.
Speaker 3 (35:48):
Yeah yeah, but I was happy because it's like I
wrote a joke and everyone.
Speaker 2 (35:53):
Also police that was a good sketch as well, so good.
Speaker 1 (35:57):
Yeah. I played it out on my radio show. I
was like, what I think?
Speaker 2 (36:00):
I asked people, who do you need to call the
teak or police on? And like people are calling in
and saying, oh, I.
Speaker 1 (36:05):
Got this coworker who's such as dirty ass on the.
Speaker 2 (36:13):
Well speaking of okay, we're going to go into a
rapid fire, gave and got it. Before we go, We're
gonna ask you a simple question that's divided a lot
of people. And this may open the candle rooms. But
hangy or boil up? Which one are you choosing?
Speaker 3 (36:31):
That's a really like fucked up question. Really, I'm gonna
say hungy. I feel like I eat more boil up
when I have hungy. It's like yeahey, however it has
to be good hongey.
Speaker 1 (36:50):
Yeah.
Speaker 3 (36:50):
I always used to hate hangy when I was a
kid because I was like, oh my god, it's drying, flavorless.
But then I realized I was just eating dry and flavorless,
and you're like a real hungy. I was like, shit, yeah,
this is worth the whole.
Speaker 1 (37:04):
Yeah, this is get the shout a good hangy before.
And I've had some not so good hangey.
Speaker 3 (37:12):
Yeah.
Speaker 2 (37:13):
Other times, like when the potatoes aren't cooked fully what
I like this one hungy. I ate like the potatoes
were giving apple like six ships. They were crunchy, and
I'm like, how long were you cooking this?
Speaker 1 (37:27):
Did you check this on that micro But yes, I
have to say about raw fish. I recently discovered that
I love raw fish. But it's because I've been having
ship raw fish. Yeah, and you like, oh, I don't
really like it. But I've just looked that I'm a
bit fussy with my raw fish. And I had a
really good raw fish the other day and I was like, nah,
(37:47):
this is on.
Speaker 3 (37:49):
Yeah, you just need a good one. I think boil
up is like a staple meal.
Speaker 1 (37:55):
I love boil up.
Speaker 3 (37:56):
I will never turn down boil up. But hangy is
just a special Yeah special.
Speaker 1 (38:01):
I want to say it's a special occasion.
Speaker 2 (38:03):
Yeah, because it requires a little bit more effort, just.
Speaker 3 (38:06):
Like like smoke eel when we get there and I'm like,
coming back to your buddy.
Speaker 1 (38:18):
I thank you so much for joining us. Where can
we find you on social media and whatnot?
Speaker 3 (38:24):
On Instagram?
Speaker 1 (38:26):
My, what do you call it? The iconic handle? I
was just about to say, it's period.
Speaker 3 (38:37):
Underscore chips with on Instagram, on TikTok Maybe donad me
on Facebook because I need.
Speaker 1 (38:44):
A business, yeah, one that you can like exactly.
Speaker 3 (38:50):
I don't know you.
Speaker 1 (38:53):
Instagram is fine, yes, everyone look up chips right now.
Put it a follow alrightyms. That's it.
Speaker 2 (39:00):
That's up another week, done and dusted. So make sure
you follow us. Can you please tell a friend to
telephone to go and follow us on the Instagram TikTok
at Alan ruths Auckland.
Speaker 1 (39:09):
Ways, it's that easy. We're liking the numbers, aren't we. Yeah,
they're really nice. Actually, thanks to that. Guys, that's not
about the numbers, but it is about the numbers, you know.
To us, it's not about the numbers, but I know
that to other people, they care about the numbers. We'll
put it that way. O keep following, guys, if you
want to keep listening to these two voices right here,
(39:29):
follow up. Okay, okay, we'll see you next week. Bye bye,
It's the Flavor podcast network Island Roots Auckland Ways. This
one's for the Brown brothers and sisters who want to
be one with themselves, their culture, their identity, their roots.
This is Island Roots Auckland Ways.
Speaker 2 (00:21):
Solo for love Everyone and welcome back to Island Roots
Auckland Ways. Hello Alissa, Hello Im that you're wearing right now.
Speaker 1 (00:29):
Thank you so much. It's from let's all take a guess.
Where can it possibly be? From? Ruby?
Speaker 2 (00:36):
Yeah, I'm obsessed at this point. They need to come
out with a collection and your name.
Speaker 1 (00:42):
Please or like, I don't know, I could do like
a little sponsorship Ruby. If you're listening, shout out come
on Ruby. I was actually recognizing a Ruby recently. Shout
out to Gene. She works at Ruby, and she was like,
I love your podcast, and I was like, I'm obsessed
with you. Hook it up, hook us a.
Speaker 2 (01:06):
Step up with some free clothes le weirs Ruby like
orally for Sive.
Speaker 1 (01:12):
Like, people don't even ask you what I'm wearing. Anybody
that's a nice top. I love a red pink moment.
Me too, the red pink moments.
Speaker 2 (01:21):
Yeah, it's giving like Rihanna on one side, Nicki Minaj
on the.
Speaker 1 (01:24):
Other Okay, Pink Friday, My rebel fragrance.
Speaker 2 (01:29):
Was cool, Yes, which is good, By the way, is
it really as well as our guest smelling?
Speaker 1 (01:39):
I don't know what could have smells like? Sorry, why
I've been trying to work on my seatways lately. Yeah,
mind a way, A bit of the jaw that is
literally incredible. Like I was saying to her off the mic,
she just speaks with such integral and it's so clear
(02:03):
that she's so genuine about what she's saying. Yeah, there's
no mistaking where she stands.
Speaker 2 (02:07):
Yeah something Everything she sees comes from her heart, like
she would like take these pauses before she spoke.
Speaker 1 (02:14):
They just drop the hardest value your life.
Speaker 2 (02:17):
Honestly you but just couldn't even write what she said
in an essay.
Speaker 1 (02:20):
Oh fuck you bitch.
Speaker 2 (02:24):
So here is Kudaina right now on the podcast.
Speaker 1 (02:30):
Welcome back to another episode of Island Routes, awkand Ways.
Please welcome comedian writer all around legend could sort of fat.
Welcome Kudda. How are you going today?
Speaker 3 (02:42):
All good?
Speaker 1 (02:43):
Yeah? Did you get an okay? Yeah?
Speaker 3 (02:45):
Yeah yeah yeah. I drove in and it was starting
to rain, but I was just saying before that the
studio is so soundproof, like because there's Hundi's raining before.
Speaker 1 (02:54):
You can hear a thing. Yeah magic, yeah.
Speaker 2 (02:57):
Yeah, well could have. As always, we like to show
what we love about home. So whatever home is to you,
if you think of home and you think of maybe
it's where you live or where you grew up or
where you go away, and consider home, what is home
to you and what do you love about it? We
will start off first and Alyssa, what do you love
about home this week?
Speaker 1 (03:15):
It's actually I think I've definitely shared that I love
this about home before, but it's the botanical gardens and
money they were Yes, I live in Reware, was brought
up in Rewa and the gardens is like such a
such a spot and money there was it is.
Speaker 2 (03:29):
I went there for the first time in several years
for Matadi y Yeah, and it was gorgeous.
Speaker 1 (03:37):
It's bigger than I remember. It's actually really big and
it's really nice and I recently did the mistake of
taking a boy there and so I feel like I've
had to go there a lot recently and just like
reclaim the space for myself.
Speaker 2 (03:51):
Do you like go in and just like freaking like
with holy water.
Speaker 1 (03:55):
Yeah, very much that. No, I actually did. I took
my friend Dorin there and we had like sit on
the bench right, and I was like, can we just
sit here for a moment, just reclaim this bench.
Speaker 2 (04:05):
Yes, rebuked energy that were once there.
Speaker 1 (04:09):
Yeah.
Speaker 3 (04:10):
Did the guy do something weird?
Speaker 1 (04:12):
Yeah he got he got cat put it.
Speaker 3 (04:17):
I think my cousin's also taken, dude.
Speaker 1 (04:21):
And then just been like.
Speaker 2 (04:24):
You's sorry, better fly very.
Speaker 1 (04:30):
Bad sorry dog park. Yeah.
Speaker 3 (04:33):
Okay.
Speaker 2 (04:34):
What I love about home this week is.
Speaker 1 (04:37):
I love my cooking girl.
Speaker 2 (04:40):
Okay, really because I've gone flooding and so like I've
had to rely on myself. You really have to rely
on yourself for ship. Yeah, like you need a cook
for yourself, you need a clean after yourself, like all
these things when you live with your family, like it's
a shared task. It kind of is to an extent
when you're floing, but there's more ownership that you do it,
(05:01):
like you clean up after.
Speaker 1 (05:02):
Has this been like a big culture shock for you.
Speaker 2 (05:05):
I'm just always used to like my nana's cooking or
my papa's cooking, or getting home and my mum has
cooked something. So I guess like not that I didn't
know how to cook, because I knew how to cook,
but just that I'm cooking more and I'm like learning
to romanticize at all and still seeing it as a
chore because that's what you know.
Speaker 1 (05:26):
Now it's like fun alone time.
Speaker 2 (05:28):
Yes, put the ear pods on Jammer podcasts and studying
my favorite dishes right now.
Speaker 1 (05:40):
Stir fry. Love a stir fry. You just jam hoist.
Speaker 2 (05:43):
And sauce, oyster sauce, fish sauce, yep, and then your
protein of your choice. What are my other faves?
Speaker 1 (05:51):
I love a good toasty, A nice toasty toasty.
Speaker 2 (05:57):
There's a nice m What else I love?
Speaker 1 (06:00):
I love a big brickie. You guys love big breakfasts. No,
there's too much going on? Is it too much for you? Yeah?
Similar to the similar Before we were on the mic,
I was saying, how sad which is sometimes overwhelmed my
tastebuds and my like sensation, they get like sensory overload.
Speaker 2 (06:17):
Yeah.
Speaker 1 (06:17):
I feel like sometimes a big breakfast I get sinsory overload.
Speaker 3 (06:20):
How about you could have big breakfast can be quite
hardcore for me? I reckon, I don't.
Speaker 1 (06:26):
Know, it's just what's too much about it.
Speaker 3 (06:29):
I think it's just because it's the first thing that
your body has got to deal with, true, and it's like,
oh man, I've only just woken up and you've just
like filled me with every food group, possibly because.
Speaker 1 (06:42):
It's like calves, there's meat. Another very ation.
Speaker 3 (06:47):
One that's interesting what you said before though about like
flooding and and having to rely on yourself, because that
I had the same experience because I grew up with
quite a big household, and yeah, everyone is relying on
each other, and that's kind of the be a minimum,
Like that's the base level expectation from everyone. But then
(07:08):
when you're in a flat, like when I was living
in an apartment in Uni, I was like, whoa, we
really are out here of fending for ourselves right now. Yeah,
Suddenly what you thought was the be a minimum is
actually quite a lot for real.
Speaker 2 (07:23):
Bro even like stuff like cleaning and things like that
needs to be organized. Where As like if you live
with your family, it's almost like you read each other's
minds and you're like.
Speaker 1 (07:33):
Okay, i'll do I'll do that.
Speaker 2 (07:35):
Yeah, But like it needs to be like divv up
properly in a flat situation, if you get what.
Speaker 1 (07:39):
I mean, do you have are you flitting at the moment? No? Okay?
Do you have a roster in your flat? No? Okay?
Now do you guys read each other's minds or do
you just tell someone you're going to do something? We
just tell each other.
Speaker 3 (07:51):
Oh okay, that's all. You sort of feel the simmering tension.
Just wait for the group group chat, passage prisons.
Speaker 1 (08:03):
Thankfully, I don't. Yeah, we just tell each other.
Speaker 2 (08:06):
But the whole cooking thing, we have like very like
diverse tastes and food, so we're never going to have
the same meal.
Speaker 1 (08:15):
Yeah. Nice, So I'll go home to go love, go on,
thank you? What do you love about home this week?
Speaker 3 (08:25):
What I love about home is literally just going back
home because I love with my quardor. I'm my auntie,
oh beautiful and my cousin now. But I love just
going back home and seeing what my accordor is watching
on TV. Because it's quite arranged, like he'll go from
watching the American politics. Yeah, because he hates Donald Trump.
(08:48):
So he's always he's like his number one hater, and
so he watches everything like you know, he's one of
those haters where he's well researched.
Speaker 2 (08:57):
I like he's hating his heart. I want to know,
like what you're doing because I want to hand on
the exactly.
Speaker 3 (09:04):
But he can go from that to like watching documentaries
about skin walkers and like, oh.
Speaker 1 (09:09):
My gosh, he really does have a range.
Speaker 3 (09:11):
Yeah, he's got a big range to like World War
two to like nature documentary, Like he's got it all.
He watches like we watched Breaking Bed together, I Love you, Yeah,
and he would have been like eighty nine eighty eight
or something and he was like, oh my god, these
people are terrible. Let's watch the next episode. Yeah. And
(09:32):
I just love hanging out with him and my aunty
as well, and just because when we go home, I
tend to try and switch back into the eel and
he was raised in wine Man and he speaks too
ideal and so it's like, oh yeah, I get to
go home and speak a Maldio again.
Speaker 1 (09:49):
Yeah, it's cool, cool.
Speaker 3 (09:50):
And just talk about you know, stuff that eighty nine
year olds fine cool, which is a lot oh.
Speaker 1 (09:57):
By the sounds. Yeah, I thought you were going to
be like, oh, he's watching like the Chase. Of course
that's part of the New Zealand television. There we.
Speaker 3 (10:18):
Stand up was when I was in halls at UNI,
right and they just had this like like open mic
night kind of thing and I was like, oh, I'll
do a stand up sit and I did it and
I was pretty bad. People laughed, But it's not something
that I'm like, I'm so proud of this city. Yeah,
it was pretty like what I would call heck now.
(10:41):
But ever since then, I just started signing up to
open mic, like proper open mic nights at bars and stuff,
and I just kept on going. I was, yeah, pretty
bad at the time, just like not as personal I guess, yeah,
like my style has become now. But yeah, it was
(11:04):
really just a case of I kept on signing up.
I kept on showing up to the gigs and practicing
and crafting and writing, and then stuff started happening. I
started getting put on sort of more lineup shows rather
than open mic comedy. And then I think I was
twenty one when I did my first TV stand up gig,
(11:26):
which was Peck Society's comedy mixtape, And then ever since then,
I don't even know what I've been up to really.
I think I've been doing a lot of writing, yeah,
a little bit of performing, I'd like to get back
into performing properly. Just it's a bit hard right now
because life is quite expensive and comedy is quite expensive,
(11:46):
especially because I love quite far away from the city
and all the gigs are in the city. But yeah,
I guess now most of my comedy is like written
not on purpose, but that's just how it's ended up.
Speaker 2 (12:00):
Yeah, yeah, I suppose like it was just the more
you did these open mic notes, the better you got.
Speaker 3 (12:07):
Yeah, it's interesting because for comedy, every single gig is different.
Like you can you will get better and better and
better and more comfortable and better at responding and better
at listening. But that doesn't necessarily mean that every gig
is going to get better and better a beater, like
they're quite all over the place, like it depends on
(12:30):
the crowd, It depends on the vibes of the day,
It depends on how on you are, Like, yeah, the
variable is there.
Speaker 1 (12:39):
Yeah, have you ever been on stays to be like funk,
I really need to pivot this content right now. You
had to just like completely be like, oh, I can't
keep going.
Speaker 3 (12:47):
Yeah, there's been times where's like I've just said something
I shouldn't have, Seid like there are things that I've
said on SAYD that I regretted saying, and I was like, mm, yeah,
I need to leave this. I need to turn way
to something else right now because this is not This
is either not what I thought it was gonna be,
like yeah in my head, or it's just like the
(13:09):
crowd just doesn't care for it, and I just need
to go to something that I know they will.
Speaker 1 (13:14):
Like, Yeah, do you have like some things where you're like, oh,
like every crowd loves this?
Speaker 3 (13:18):
Well, yeah, yeah, I would say that the song that
I do is one of those bits where it's I
don't think I've ever had a bad response to that.
Speaker 1 (13:31):
Yeah, yeah, I was this was gonna be the next
question anyway. But I love the way I actually saw
you perform it. I'm the why twenty five nor that
I almost yeah, so wild, but it was. I just
loved your shit so much. I've always been a fan
of you, but like actually being able to see you
in your life, I was like, this is hilarious, Like
(13:52):
this to me is like so good, and I love
the way that you have infused like comedy and music
like with that song, I wish I was gay. I
was I was getting. Yeah, first of all, how did
you come up with that song? And then also like
what at what point did you decide to infuse like
comedy and music together.
Speaker 3 (14:11):
I think I wrote that song either when I was
nineteen or twenty. I was just watching a lot of
Flight of the Concord. Oh yeah, Flight of the Concords,
because I grew up on them. I was like, I
would love to do some musical comedy, and so I
just picked up my guitar, I went and lot myself
at my bedroom and I just wrote it nice. I
don't exactly know what the inspiration was. I think it
(14:35):
was just one of those times. So sometimes you just
get a random creative boost and it's like right, right,
right right, Oh my gosh, this is actually not bad.
Speaker 1 (14:43):
Yeah.
Speaker 3 (14:44):
And then but the interesting thing is that the first
time you write it down on paper is not what
it's gonna be, like feva, Like, if I were to
read what I actually wrote, it would probably be a
completely different song.
Speaker 1 (14:57):
Yeah.
Speaker 3 (14:57):
So it's over time and over you know, because each
time you play it, depending on the room, you might
say something different to what you write. You might say
something that you feel just would be funnier on the spot,
and then that thing you thought of on the spot
becomes a locked in line in the song. Like even
(15:19):
the interesting thing about song musical comedy is that you're
actually playing with the conventions of music, because comedy is
all about subverting the expectations of the audience. And so
with musical comedy, it can't just be a song that's funny.
It has to be a song that like you actually
(15:41):
have to consider what goes into writing song, what goes
into the structure of a song, what do people Oh
my gosh.
Speaker 1 (15:46):
Hitther Yeah he works on his building. I'm sorry, oh
my gosh, speak of the devil.
Speaker 3 (15:55):
But yeah, like it's it's a lot more than just
writing the jokes, Like you actually kind of have to
like writing music and know what goes you know, what's
the bridge, what's a chorus? What are people waiting for
you to do? Yeah, because everyone kind of has a
built in ear as to what a song should be,
and so you have more to play with. Yeah, well
(16:17):
you just have a lot to play with than just
compared to Stand Up Alone. Yeah, but even stand Up Alone,
it's like a whole entire world of its own stuff.
So yeah, I think it was just like I just
like writing music and so it was fun to mooge
those loves together. Although I need to write another song,
(16:38):
we would love that and I'm just so lazy so much.
Speaker 1 (16:45):
Yeah, it does seem like a lot of if it
to be honest, do you have a gig though? That's
been like your favorite so fat m.
Speaker 3 (16:54):
I actually really enjoyed that hy twenty five gig just
because it was just a room full of young women
who were all entrepreneurs, are like thought leaders, and it's like, wow,
you people are like actually doing something around and it
was just cool to be in that space and be like,
(17:18):
let's just have a good time. Let's just chill and
relax and smile, because, especially knowing just the sort of
level of work you guys were doing, it kind of
felt like, I don't know, just a real privilege to
be able to share joy nice. That's how I see
(17:38):
comedy is making joyful space, Yeah, which is really important
to me, especially for hard workers. Yeah, it's important to
have time to just be happy.
Speaker 1 (17:48):
It's such a I love that. I'm like an in
comedy phonetic, Like I really love very much comedy that
comes out of this country period, and so like that
I'm also so on that buzz, Like I feel like
being a young woman in this world can be really
hard sometimes and like the layer of being like Speaker
or Mardy, it's not an easy world or this is
(18:11):
not an easy city to live in, and then we
have like the cost of living crisis that like making
space for joy is so important, like you actually can't
live life without pockets of joy, like we need those,
we need those moments of hope in order to make
the slave with living.
Speaker 3 (18:31):
Yeah, my mom, when I was a kid, she used
to tell me if Marty couldn't laugh, we would just
be crying all the time.
Speaker 1 (18:37):
Yeah, and you were like, you know what I want
to do. I want to make people laugh.
Speaker 3 (18:44):
Yeah. Pretty intense thing to say that, but I don't
think she was necessarily wrong.
Speaker 1 (18:54):
Yeah, well that was the next question actually, speaking to
like being Mardy and growing up Mardy, you went to
a school that was really similar to mine, and I
found being at that school very culturally challenging, and I
felt like my some oneness was like really obvious in
a way that wasn't like nice And like to me now,
(19:17):
being someone, Yes, I love that. I love being someone.
It's everything to me. I want people to know I'm Simon,
but back then it was kind of like a shameful
aspect of my identity. But the question is, were you
always like super strong in your Mardi tonguel or as
we're going to a school like we did, that it
impacts you in any way.
Speaker 3 (19:38):
I think that my whole life, I have always been
Maldy and I've never known anything else but to be Maldy.
And when I was at Burdeane, I was always confident
in my Mildy tongue I had. I actually started at
(19:58):
Tikol hunger deal or Tetsuda home, so Maldi is technically
my first language. But the thing is that afterwards I
went to mainstream schools and my Maldi got less good,
really well, it didn't get worse, it just didn't get better.
And my final like Tedyl, was always in our home,
(20:18):
but it wasn't necessarily spoken to me twenty four seven,
which is what you need to have a language relationship
with your caregiver.
Speaker 1 (20:27):
But it was never a secret.
Speaker 3 (20:29):
To me or a surprise that we were Maldy, and
I never felt uncomfortable when we, you know, would go
to different events with Fino or tonguey or those kinds
of things, which it's interesting because tonguy, I think, is
one of the biggest places where Maldy connect with their
Maldi tongue nowadays, if they're not already immersed in it.
(20:53):
But I was always pretty chill, like honestly, when I
was in school, there was no sense of shame because
it was not something I knew that you could be
ashamed about. I would go to school and it was
white Airs, and I'd feel like it was white Airs,
but I still went to Kabaka and I did Copuka
(21:14):
for like maybe twelve eleven, twelve years or something, so
it was always just a natural part of my life.
And then I'd go home and all my family are
Maldy and so there was no shame. There was no
feelings of detachment for me until my parents started saying
(21:35):
things to me, Like I remember when I was in
high school, my parents were like they said to me,
and I put it in my showhohak guy. They started
saying stuff to me like, oh, we know you're ashamed
of being Maldy and we know that you don't like
DOINGUK because of that, And that was quite random to me,
(21:59):
like and I say random really intentionally because it came
out of nowhere. Yeah, because when I was a teenager,
it was not something I really thought about. It just
was my life. And to have my parents say something
like that to me, which was quite a definitive sort
of judgment that they had come to, was like.
Speaker 1 (22:21):
Yeah.
Speaker 3 (22:21):
And it was only when they said that when suddenly
the concepts of shame and girl got introduced to me.
And I would have been like year twelve, like you're
living year twelve, and so I've gone all this way
like I'm a happy little milded girl, and I got
a couple of yeah, yeah, exactly what we binging out
and doing my homework and all that jazz. And it
(22:42):
was only when they sort of started saying stuff I
was like, oh, maybe I'm not a happy little molded girl. Yeah,
And I think that because it was so random it
was I was okay because the shock of it was like, oh,
that's so random. I don't know what you're talking about.
It's very upsetting that you've said this, but it's too
(23:02):
out of the blue for me to really fully be like,
you're right, I don't know anything, because it's just like,
what the hell are you talking about because sometimes I
could say random stuff because they're also very creative and
creative people say creative things. But yeah, it's interesting. It's
(23:23):
only gotten more complex now that I'm twenty three. Yeah,
where I look back and I'm like, huh, that's quite
interesting what was going on there? And all I can
say to that is that that was them going through
their own stuff.
Speaker 1 (23:40):
But yeah, I love that answer. That's so gosh how
different my life would have been had I not known
what shame was, because.
Speaker 3 (23:50):
It's only once it's introduced to you that you can
feel shame about, because otherwise you're just a little bumbling
teenager just hanging out.
Speaker 1 (23:59):
Yeah, trying to figure out the world as it is.
Speaker 3 (24:02):
Sometimes other people introduce that shame, like teachers, peers, but
for me it was my parents. But now, my school
had had a lot of issues, honestly, like they would
keep doing bullshit like trying and make the kabaka practices
as short as possible and make it as little as
possible because to them, capuker was just a performance and
(24:24):
it was just a hobby. They didn't understand what it
meant for that to be aligned to your culture. Because
I love kabaka because because it was my culture and
that was where I felt cool and chill and happy.
But yeah, I don't know. They'd go, oh, my God,
could have our favorite little gold star student. But then
(24:45):
in the same breath they'd say, and we're going to
shorten kabaka because you guys need to be better at academics,
even though I don't know, we were great.
Speaker 1 (24:55):
Yeah in my eyes, Yeah, that's exactly what my master's
was about. What the research says. I read an interview
of yours where you mentioned obviously you have a more
cohi and you mentioned feeling like you had to act
or speak a certain way after you received your mocal Coi.
(25:18):
I would have kind of speak to the experience of
receiving it, but then also that journey you've kind of
been on since, like what does it mean to you,
like now act and speak.
Speaker 3 (25:26):
And yeah, I got my macal Coi when I turned
twenty one. I got it with my mum and three
of my toa on the same day. It was actually
the first Moco Papa that my mother I had ever
held in the ducking wow, mainly because el mud I
Well the funding way specifically is I knew well new
(25:47):
as in it was built in twenty ten, and so
they had never had a morechal Papa on it before,
and so that was a real privilege to be part
of that sort of occasion. It was interesting because the
night before I got my more cork, I was telling
my cousin just the other day that I just had
so much anxiety over it. I didn't know if I
(26:07):
was making the right decision. I was feeling the permanence
of the decision and I couldn't sleep. And then on
the day of my marco, we pulled up to Durpaki,
I saw my monga tameathel borke Fenua and I immediately
felt calm. And it was like a calmness that I'd
(26:28):
never felt before. It was like my whole body and
every cell in my body it was just po and
I in that moment just knew this is the right decision.
I am exactly where I need to be. And so
ever since that feeling, which was even before I actually
(26:48):
had the mochal COI I knew, oh, yes, this is
who I am, this is what's meant to happen right now.
And I think ever since having my morcal COI, I've
just become stronger and stronger as not just as a
mildy person, but as a person in general. Having my
(27:13):
morcl Coio its like I wake up and I have
my best friend with me every day. There's never been
a single day where I've regretted having my macho, And
every day that I have my Macho and I see it,
I feel ready for the world. It's something That's helped
(27:35):
me a lot because I've been working on getting my
deal back up to scratch and getting more intentional about
my mildy tongue and my two and I feel like
every step of the way, I have my mate to
(27:57):
thank for holding me. It's just quite interesting because I've
never actually thought about it like that before until I'm
saying it right now.
Speaker 1 (28:05):
Yeah, it's so beautiful.
Speaker 2 (28:07):
What a beautiful description of that experience.
Speaker 1 (28:10):
I'm always getting emotional. Yeah, that's so put the tears
out of the eyes. Are there certain expectations put on
people with Michael.
Speaker 3 (28:23):
I There are people who will put expectations on you
regardless of what you present. There are people who will
say that I shouldn't sweet, shouldn't say certain things because
I'm a woman, and so of course there's going to
be people who say it because I have a morchal
COI because everyone has different understandings of what is and
(28:44):
what the tekonga is, and I think that I don't
wish to villainize those people or even necessarily to disagree
with them, because what is true to me can be
equally true to someone else. There are lots of people
who say you shouldn't drink alcohol, you shouldn't smoke, you
(29:06):
shouldn't swear, you shouldn't talk about sex. But for me,
that's just not a thing because in my upbringing more
has been a very casual thing. It's just a part
of life, and it's a part of our beauty as well.
(29:27):
And I think that the way I've always had it
around me is it's just it's just as natural as
your lips, you know, just as natural as having a
chin like it. It's quite neutral to me, even though
I just said that all that stuff about here's my
best friend, It's just it's not something that I revere
(29:47):
or feel afraid of, or that I feel others should expect. Well,
you know, the thing is that I will hold myself
to this ended that I think I should be at
regardless of my co I just as a woman, as
a mildy woman, it's important to me that I hold
(30:11):
my head up high and that I don't speak down
on myself, and that I don't allow myself to do
what the world would love to do to me. But
that would be true regardless of my Marchel.
Speaker 1 (30:26):
Period him. Oh my gosh, wow, wow, wow, wow. I
was telling you before I just received my mudel, and
I feel like within someone culture there are some really
(30:47):
high expectations of people who wear their muddel or like
have had their muddel revealed. And to hear you say,
like speak of your Michael co I, it's like this
neutral thing but also something that like when you look
at and the morning you feel ready for the world.
That's exactly how I feel about my cell and this
(31:09):
kind of sense of like I have everyone in my
life and all my ancestors like backing me so hard,
like unconditionally, but it's also like not anyone else's business
what I not necessarily what I do, but like how
I move through the world as someone who wears a
(31:32):
malul Like I think that's so what you've said is
so profound and like important. Yeah, yeah, I feel like
I need to take like five minutes. Couldn't we want
to jam a rapid fire? I came with you.
Speaker 2 (31:47):
But before we do that, I have one more, last,
one last question for you. So we'd love to hear
more about your writing works. So you've mentioned the performance
side of comedy, but then there's also that side of
writing and scripting shows like Only An tell us about
the experience, because we've seen clips of it.
Speaker 1 (32:05):
Did you see a moment? Hilarious?
Speaker 2 (32:11):
That whole show actually, like the whole previous of the
show is just so smart and intelligent. But tell us
about your experience writing for shows like that.
Speaker 3 (32:19):
Yeah, Only An al Theodore is the only skeitch comedy
show I've written on. But writing skitch comedy, I feel
like it's like a comedian dream. I got their job.
I think it was off the back of like stand
up or something like that, Like my stand up clips
had been going around, and I think that the producer
(32:42):
was like, oh, you can do comedy, you write comedy,
And I'd previously done some week writing on Akad and
so she's like, oh, cool, you can also write Yes,
And the room was cool, like it was just all
and it was a real fun time, Like we just
(33:04):
sat literally around a table and jammed like things that
we thought were funny and things that we thought what
he should see. I'm a bit of a comedy nude,
so I it was really important to me, like structure
and set ups and punchlines and all. They're just like,
it's quite boring when you break it down into that,
but it's really important so that you can hit what
(33:26):
it is that you're trying to say. Yeah, absolutely, I've
seen it in some other somewhere. I said to someone
else that with Tikunga Police, which with the sketches that
I brought, and I was like real nerdy, and they're like, everybody,
can you please come in with a few ideas, Like
it doesn't have to be full and fleshed out, it's
just something that we can ref on. And on the
(33:48):
first day of the table, I brought and fully written
scrobs and I was I should I'm so so like
too much sometimes because everyone else in the room got
freaked out because they're like, oh, when we meant to
do that, And I.
Speaker 1 (34:03):
Was like no, no, no, no, no, I'm just like
I'm just really into this. I was really into it.
Speaker 3 (34:07):
It was like the hyper fixation thing, like but Uh.
That gef skitch was quite funny to me because that
was one that was born in the room because we
were just talking about not to name well yeah, to
name names, but because they are not a Maldi brand,
but they.
Speaker 1 (34:26):
Have a man I have heard.
Speaker 3 (34:28):
Yeah yeah, yeah, but they're young, I guess, but they
because it stands for alpha, like because sometimes in you'll
hear the which is alpha omega. So it's implying everything
in the world because it's from A to Z and
(34:51):
everything in between. Yeah, and I was like, oh my gosh,
cool Maori company, but it wasn't actually, but we were
talking about that brand in the room and how we
would We're all convinced that it was a Maldi brand
because I had a name, and so we just started
(35:11):
talking like what if we were in a world where
after the city or white tonguey Maldi came out better
than Parka. And so that whole skitch is like in
a boardroom with a Maldi company and they've got the
like token park boards. Yeah yeah, yeah. And the feel
(35:31):
thing was just a random thing that I thought was funny.
It was just funny because like we have all these
this you've got, there's all one and this whole context
and everyone's favorite particy thing.
Speaker 1 (35:46):
Like gone to ship.
Speaker 3 (35:48):
Yeah yeah, but I was happy because it's like I
wrote a joke and everyone.
Speaker 2 (35:53):
Also police that was a good sketch as well, so good.
Speaker 1 (35:57):
Yeah. I played it out on my radio show. I
was like, what I think?
Speaker 2 (36:00):
I asked people, who do you need to call the
teak or police on? And like people are calling in
and saying, oh, I.
Speaker 1 (36:05):
Got this coworker who's such as dirty ass on the.
Speaker 2 (36:13):
Well speaking of okay, we're going to go into a
rapid fire, gave and got it. Before we go, We're
gonna ask you a simple question that's divided a lot
of people. And this may open the candle rooms. But
hangy or boil up? Which one are you choosing?
Speaker 3 (36:31):
That's a really like fucked up question. Really, I'm gonna
say hungy. I feel like I eat more boil up
when I have hungy. It's like yeahey, however it has
to be good hongey.
Speaker 1 (36:50):
Yeah.
Speaker 3 (36:50):
I always used to hate hangy when I was a
kid because I was like, oh my god, it's drying, flavorless.
But then I realized I was just eating dry and flavorless,
and you're like a real hungy. I was like, shit, yeah,
this is worth the whole.
Speaker 1 (37:04):
Yeah, this is get the shout a good hangy before.
And I've had some not so good hangey.
Speaker 3 (37:12):
Yeah.
Speaker 2 (37:13):
Other times, like when the potatoes aren't cooked fully what
I like this one hungy. I ate like the potatoes
were giving apple like six ships. They were crunchy, and
I'm like, how long were you cooking this?
Speaker 1 (37:27):
Did you check this on that micro But yes, I
have to say about raw fish. I recently discovered that
I love raw fish. But it's because I've been having
ship raw fish. Yeah, and you like, oh, I don't
really like it. But I've just looked that I'm a
bit fussy with my raw fish. And I had a
really good raw fish the other day and I was like, nah,
(37:47):
this is on.
Speaker 3 (37:49):
Yeah, you just need a good one. I think boil
up is like a staple meal.
Speaker 1 (37:55):
I love boil up.
Speaker 3 (37:56):
I will never turn down boil up. But hangy is
just a special Yeah special.
Speaker 1 (38:01):
I want to say it's a special occasion.
Speaker 2 (38:03):
Yeah, because it requires a little bit more effort, just.
Speaker 3 (38:06):
Like like smoke eel when we get there and I'm like,
coming back to your buddy.
Speaker 1 (38:18):
I thank you so much for joining us. Where can
we find you on social media and whatnot?
Speaker 3 (38:24):
On Instagram?
Speaker 1 (38:26):
My, what do you call it? The iconic handle? I
was just about to say, it's period.
Speaker 3 (38:37):
Underscore chips with on Instagram, on TikTok Maybe donad me
on Facebook because I need.
Speaker 1 (38:44):
A business, yeah, one that you can like exactly.
Speaker 3 (38:50):
I don't know you.
Speaker 1 (38:53):
Instagram is fine, yes, everyone look up chips right now.
Put it a follow alrightyms. That's it.
Speaker 2 (39:00):
That's up another week, done and dusted. So make sure
you follow us. Can you please tell a friend to
telephone to go and follow us on the Instagram TikTok
at Alan ruths Auckland.
Speaker 1 (39:09):
Ways, it's that easy. We're liking the numbers, aren't we. Yeah,
they're really nice. Actually, thanks to that. Guys, that's not
about the numbers, but it is about the numbers, you know.
To us, it's not about the numbers, but I know
that to other people, they care about the numbers. We'll
put it that way. O keep following, guys, if you
want to keep listening to these two voices right here,
(39:29):
follow up. Okay, okay, we'll see you next week. Bye bye,
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