“I thought that my success would come from my voice, which I think in a way it has. I think it’s opened a lot of doors for me, but it took me a long time to be like, ‘Oh yeah, I’m actually funny enough that if I don’t sing in a TV show or whatever I’m doing, I’m still good enough to be there’.”
Michelle Brasier’s comedic chops have taken her all over the world. Source: Instagram / Michelle Brasier
Brasier’s “funny bones” — comedy legend Shaun Micallef’s words — have landed her countless spots on stages and screens all around the world.
But it took a significant sacrifice, loss, and a whole lot of debt for her to become the artist and woman she is now.
‘Telenovela f***ery’
“They were totally right … I really didn’t have enough life experience. I mean, I was 18 years old and I’d never lost a thing in the world,” she says.
They set me on an incredibly important path. If I had stayed there, I would be not as creative and I wouldn’t have a chip on my shoulder in the same way — and that chip has really driven me for a long time.
Michelle Brasier
Then came the news that Brasier’s family history meant she had a 97 per cent chance of developing cancer herself.
Brasier (pictured as a baby) lost her father John (second from right) and brother Paul (far right) to cancer within a few years of each other. Source: Instagram / Michelle Brasier
In many ways, she’s grateful for what she describes as the “telenovela f***ery of my twenties”.
“If my brother had maybe gotten help earlier … he might’ve been able to find it [his cancer] before it was stage four, so I’m just really aggressive with my friends who still smoke, or friends who don’t go and get that mole checked or whatever.”
After being kicked out of drama school, Brasier has built a successful career in comedy, TV, and musical theatre. Source: Supplied / Paul Jeffers
Turning grief into comedy
“When you are a storyteller of any kind, it’s not really a choice… it’s just like, ‘When am I going to tell this story and how am I going to tell this story?'” she says.
Because that’s what we do, we share our stories in order to make people feel less alone.
Michelle Brasier
Despite the serious subject matter, Average Bear is littered with laughs: from anecdotes like how a music mix-up at her father’s funeral meant Johnny Cash’s Ring of Fire was playing as his coffin was lowered into the ground, to the original songs she performs with her partner and collaborator Tim Lancaster about the “fingering shed” at her high school and how grieving people always get given so much lasagne.
Brasier (right) has collaborated with her partner Tim Lancaster (left) on several stage shows, including Average Bear. Source: Instagram / Michelle Brasier
“I think that being funny allows you access to people in a way that being serious will not. I think that we trust people who make us laugh, and that the people who make us laugh are the people we immediately grant the power to make us cry because we open our hearts to them,” she says.
It contains musings on family, sex, being a teenager in the 2000s, womanhood, her great loves — namely dogs and the Fast and the Furious franchise — and how she does things she’s afraid of because she’s more afraid she’ll die not having done them.
Dogs, especially Brasier’s black labrador Eva, are one one of her great loves. Source: Instagram / Michelle Brasier
It also offers agony aunt-style advice, such as “If you are tempted to get a boyfriend, first try rescuing a large dog and see how the dog hair on the couch makes you feel”, as well as playlists to listen to in very specific situations, including “a rainy day on a train where you feel lonely in a good way, like you’re the lead in a movie”.
“The fact that it means something to people is really, really wonderful. People that I’ve never met, people that have never seen me in a show, people that I’ve never physically been in the same space with, and I think that’s really special.”
Doing good and (camp musical villain) evil
“You know how people talk about using your platform for good, I felt like I’d actually done something — and then there was part of me that was incredibly delusional and was like, ‘Sorry, am I going to grow up and be a politician? Am I going to save the world?’. I got very carried away very fast,” she says.
I just hope that the government sticks to their guns and they don’t back down. That’s my fear.
Michelle Brasier
Her next appearance will be on stage in Hayes Theatre Co and Griffin Theatre Company’s co-production of Flat Earthers: The Musical — “a big gay conspiracy theory love story set on the internet” — which opens in Sydney this month.
Brasier (right) is in rehearsals for her next project, Flat Earthers: The Musical. Source: Supplied / Griffin Theatre Company
The character she plays is “very Disney villain camp,” she says, adding “it’s essentially like Lady Gaga, but she’s an evil supervillain”.