Hannah Gadsby Biography

After ten years of a successful run on Australia’s festival circuit, comedian Hannah Gadsby “quit” comedy with Nanette, a 2018 tour and comedy special that made her an international star.

A student of art history (a 2003 graduate of Australian National University), Gadsby won a comedy contest on her first effort. She then built a career on self-deprecating humor and personal stories of growing up gay in rural Tasmania, where homosexuality was a crime until 1997. Gadsby won several awards as a regular on the festival circuit.

With Nanette, however, Gadsby announced she was quitting comedy — or at least that kind of comedy — explaining that reinforcing negative stereotypes on stage for laughs was making her bitter and angry off stage. Instead, Gadsby used comedy to deconstruct jokes that perpetuated unjust cultural biases.

Gadsby’s TV special came at a time when audiences where confronting their own attitudes toward popular comedians — Bill Cosby, Louis C.K., Woody Allen, et al — whose vile behavior toward women was in the headlines.