Elizabeth Oldfield: Hello and welcome to The Sacred, a podcast from the think tank Theos, shared in partnership with Comment magazine. I’m Elizabeth Oldfield, and I’m going to ask you to imagine a comedian. Stand-up comic, someone who deals in current affairs, political-type satire. Okay, what came into your head? For me, if I’m honest, it’s often someone who’s quite—and loud and confident, right? Full of wisecracks, also maybe slightly mean, potentially carrying some darkness underneath all that joking, and honestly, usually a man. That’s why I was so delighted to speak today to Rachel Parris, who punctured and complicated almost every single one of those associations.
Rachel Parris: That feminist streak ran through a lot of the pieces that I wrote and performed on The Mash Report, but this one was the one that I was most proud of. It was about women being—literally being killed. Women being killed and hurt, and the government just totally failing to respond to that and saying, “Well, we’ll have an app that tracks women. That’s the way to deal with it.” I remember saying to the producer, “I know you have to cut my bit down, but”—I said, “I’m begging you. For the sake of everything, all the content in this, please just let it be eight minutes.” And he did.
Elizabeth Oldfield: We spoke about anxiety, the challenges of being a woman in television, and the pain and power of creative work. I really, really enjoyed it. I hope you do too. There’s some reflections from both me and from Rachel at the end.
Rachel Parris, nice chit-chatty question for you: what is sacred?
Rachel Parris: We’re getting into it. Straight in.
Elizabeth Oldfield: Straight in. No warm-up.
Rachel Parris: I gave this a lot of thought. Thank you. And I enjoyed thinking about it. And I thought of three things. And the first one is peace. And I chose that because I don’t think it is the natural—necessarily the most assumed thing for someone with the job that I do in comedy, entertainment. It’s very busy. It’s very, like, chasing a laugh, chasing an audience, touring, travel, always in the public eye a lot. But peace is so sacred to me, and it can mean a lot of different things. But some of what it means to me is what you might think it means, which is quiet, space, and solitude. I love being on my own.
Through a lot of my life, that felt very possible—like, living in rented flats, like, with one flatmate or with a boyfriend, or, like, I lived alone sometimes as well. Like, I had a very quiet upbringing. And then I think in the years of marriage and children and stepchildren and these jobs and visitors and stuff, finding alone time—it’s possible, but I value it so highly these days. So highly. And it keeps me sane. And I’ve been—times in my life, and I—and I live with the ever-present sort of awareness of anxiety. So anxiety is my—my go-to mental health problem. So there was a time when I had essentially an anxious breakdown, and since then it’s there as a possibility, and it comes and goes month by month—see how it goes—week by week. But that is so related to how much peace I have managed to get for myself, I think. So, yeah, peace I hold sacred, definitely.
Elizabeth Oldfield: And how much is the—are the conditions really just time on your own, or is there kind of other things going on—particular practices or kind of psychological approaches that help you find it?
Rachel Parris: Yeah, I think it’s definitely also headspace. So I can be on my own, but if I’ve got six different jobs happening, deadlines I haven’t met—
Elizabeth Oldfield: Yeah, yeah, yeah. Oh my God.
Rachel Parris: The phone is like—yeah, the phone takes away so much peace. Peace stealer.
Elizabeth Oldfield: Of course.
Rachel Parris: Absolute peace stealer. I would say my own putting off replying to people until I know that there are a hundred things to reply to and I haven’t done it, and I know, and it’s building up, and then I can’t remember what they are and I haven’t written them down. Peace stealer.
But then peace is not always alone, and peace is sometimes, like, a day with nothing except me, my husband, and my son going for a walk. That’s peace. And a night with, like, me and my best friend, with space to talk and time to talk that isn’t a snatched forty-five-minute catch-up. I hate a catch-up.
Elizabeth Oldfield: Oh, a catch-up. And you’re like, “Oh, we’ve done nothing.”
Rachel Parris: Headlines. Literally headlines. I’m like, “Yeah, I’m really, really anxious, and I know about this, and I’m really arguing about this.” And she’s like, “Me too, me too. Okay, I’ve got to go.” So, yeah, time to engage with a friend: peace. Time to create: peace.
And even—I mean, so when I had that anxious breakdown, which was in 2019, in the new year, the months afterwards of recovery—being on stage doing stand-up, doing what I do, that’s my job that I’m very used to—that was peace for me. That was a little break in the anxiety. And everyone said, “Oh, what does it feel like to get back on stage? You’re really nervous about that.” And actually everything else—I mean everything: going outside, eating. My family made me feel anxious, because I didn’t feel—you know how anxiety shuts down your love and your feelings? So my son was tiny, and I felt so anxious about not having the right feelings that I should be having, not feeling the love, you know, that you should feel. So that made me—everything made me anxious. But actually—and all the lead-up to getting to a gig. I got scared of the dark for that period of time. Public transport was—that was okay. Like, being on the Tube, actually, that’s quite rooting for me; it’s very familiar. But being in the green room: anxious. But on stage—as soon as I got on stage: peace. That was peace.
So it’s interesting to me where you find it. It’s in a lot of different places. But I suppose I know myself well enough to know where peace is and where it’s not. But I also believe you can’t block out the difficult things either. I think people trying to live a life that is too protected and too much like, “No, self-care, I need to—I know I won’t come and do that. I won’t come out and support you in that, because I need—I need to just have an evening of peace.” Like, I’m like, also, no, challenge yourself for the sake of others. Like, sometimes it’s a balance, isn’t it, of self-care and care for others, the people you care about. And I would—I really believe I would never have come out of that period of anxiety without challenging it and saying, “No, I think I will recover, and I think I’ll be able to do all these things again, and I think I’ll be able to feel like myself again, and I’ll be able to have those feelings of love again. I’ll be able to be as confident as I was.” And I was, and I did. And I think, yeah, peace is sacred to me and I preserve it, but not at any cost. You need enough to stay sane, but you also have to engage with the world and live your life as well. You can’t be constantly in peace without being a monk.
Elizabeth Oldfield: Yeah. How do you think that breakdown changed you? The Rachel before and the Rachel after—what shifted?
Rachel Parris: I don’t know if I’ve thought about that, really. I think I thought of myself as quite infallible, and not someone who’d—I’d had a little bit of depression before, only, and that only struck—and it was reasonably mild. It was—and it was also not clinical, but it was very much related to a breakup when I was about thirty, and a very natural feeling of “What the fuck do I do now? Like, what’s my life now? I’m single at thirty, broken up from the man I thought I was going to be with.” So that depression was totally explainable and understandable. And I always think that’s like—that’s less of a worry, do you know what I mean? That’s like, I see the cause and the root of that. So I’d had a little bit of that feeling, but I’d never had anxiety.
I think just an awareness of—there’s a word that I can’t think of, the right word for it. Yeah, an awareness of my own fragility, I suppose, which sounds quite wordy, but I think that’s what it is. Ever-present threat is a more dramatic way of seeing it. And that has dissipated, but I am just now aware, and I have harder lines, I think, that I try hard to put down in terms of protecting—protecting myself from that. Because it’s really difficult—it can be difficult to explain, I think, that, like, I am—I’m protecting these things here, I’m protecting my space here so that I can be a good mother, wife, friend to you, ongoing, so that I don’t go mad again.
I’ve always quite liberally referred to it as going mad, because you—it was whatever—I think whatever mad ever meant is exactly what I was. I was absolutely mad. I had no emotions, I couldn’t eat or breathe or go outside, I was scared of the dark, I was, like, mad—trembling, all bodily functions shutting down. Like, everything that is mad, like, was what I was. So I’ve always been like, “I went mad, and I don’t want to go mad again.” And that was—everyone says, you know, “What are you afraid of?” And the answer was being mad—this continuing—and being a mad person for the rest of my life and feeling mad. And that’s continued to be the fear, that it happens again. And every so often I get a day or a few days of it. And, as I say, the trigger, such as it is, is usually me having not managed to obtain peace for a prolonged amount of time—for a bit build up, and build and build up—and I can feel the plate spinning, and my body starts to react to it. So, yeah, I think just since then it’s just been a, like, “Oh, okay, I’m not—I’m not quite the person that I thought I was. I have—I have to look after myself in ways that I didn’t know that I had to.”
Elizabeth Oldfield: Yeah. The story of yourself shifted.
Rachel Parris: Yeah, yeah.
Elizabeth Oldfield: And what else is sacred to you?
Rachel Parris: Making stuff. Making things. So I think that’s part of my peace, is making things. And again, talking about the story of self, I’ve always thought of myself as someone who can really happily, like, veg and rot and just watch TV and sit on a sofa and just love having days off and relaxing and having a bath. And that is true nowadays—that is true for, like, one day. But that’s no longer true. I need to be making stuff.
And whether—in the large portion of my life where I had, like, jobs that were less creative—I used to work in Blackwell’s Music—because you said you were there—I used to work in Blackwell’s Music Shop in Oxford for three years. I obviously—I taught music, piano and singing, and that was creative in its own way, but I wasn’t exactly making stuff, you know? I loved teaching, but it wasn’t quite the same thing. I worked in admin. I worked in the finance department at one point—albeit of the Royal Opera House, but still the finance department. All sorts of, like, proper jobs, nine-to-five jobs. But I was still making stuff. I was writing poems. I was writing songs. And then relatively latterly, I was writing comedy.
And now, yeah, I’ve had a job where I’m probably best known for—and for musical comedy or satire—but I’m now writing books, novels. And on the side of that, I try—there’s all sorts of things I’ve never shown people yet. So many poems that I’ve never shown people.
Elizabeth Oldfield: I should have got you to bring some.
Rachel Parris: No, no. Even—I’ve tried writing, like, musical theatre songs and classical, like, choral pieces, and—
Elizabeth Oldfield: Because you’re trained in music.
Rachel Parris: Yeah. So all sorts. Like—but making things for me is—it feels really good, and it feels like me. And I know the mood I’m in—like, my God, like, especially as you get older, tracking your mood. I can track my mood so particularly to so many different factors, but one of them is definitely if I’ve had—sometimes you can even have a whole period of your life—if I’ve written a comedy show, say, and I’ve been touring it for months and I’m not creating something else, I’m just doing the thing I’ve already created, I get quite tetchy. Get quite tetchy. And again, like, after I’d finished a book, and you’re talking about it, which feels nice, and you’re pushing the selling of it and everything, but you’re not creating—I haven’t moved on to the next one.
So the new year—this new year for me, before I started writing the novel I’m writing now, I was a nightmare. I was such an arsehole. I was such a—I look back and I really was. It was a bit of January blues. It was a bit like post-Christmas: “What do I do now? What’s my life?” I didn’t have—I’m in the state where I am now, I’m like, I’ve got a tour show happening in November and I’m in the middle of writing my second novel. And—but in January I had nothing on, nothing in the prospect for the new year, really. And wasn’t creating anything yet. And obviously to write a novel, you sort of have to have an idea. And I was throwing ideas at a wall, and I was like, “That’s shit. That’s shit. There’s no point writing that.” And I got quite far into writing one, and I was like, “Shit. Burn it.” And I was so annoying. And then as soon as I settled on a book to write and I started writing it—literally, like, “Oh, I’m a nice person again.” My mood, like, elevated.
So that is—that is so vital to me. No matter what I ended up doing for money, as long as there was time to create something—whether it’s music, poetry, writing stories, or just performing. Because even if you’re performing other people’s stuff, like cabaret, you’re still creating something with the audience when you’re performing. So, yeah, making stuff is my sacred one.
Elizabeth Oldfield: What’s your third one?
Rachel Parris: My third one is nature.
Elizabeth Oldfield: Gorgeous.
Rachel Parris: So I didn’t grow up, like, a woodland nymph in the countryside or anything like that. I grew up in a suburb of Leicester, just outside Leicester town, in a place called Syston. And the local school was in the countryside, though. And so I feel like—and my parents, my mum and dad, brought me up with a love of nature. We were very lucky. I grew up in a small house, but with a big garden. Like, really, oddly, but disproportionately big garden. And they loved gardening. Absolutely loved gardening. Right up into—so, like, it was—commitment to it was absurd. So my dad died last year, and until he was ninety—until he was, like, eighty-eight, until the very last bit of his life—he was literally, like, chopping down trees, like hard manual labour in the garden. But they loved it. And my mum’s still, like, really into gardening.
So that’s gardens, but also hiking. So they went to, like, Mount Everest base camp. And, like, they took me to Scotland and the Lake District for holidays when I was growing up, hiking. I did, like, Helvellyn when I was six with my dad. And the outdoors, mountains, forests—there’s a beautiful bit of countryside called Bradgate Park in Leicester, which is, like, a national treasure—should be a national treasure, and it is protected. But that was a—was a, like, most-weekends walk for us to go out. It’s where Lady Jane Grey’s castle is. It’s ruins now. But it’s this huge stretch of land that was left to the people of Leicester. And it’s beautiful. It’s got, like, a river running through it. Just acres and acres and acres of beautiful land. And that looms so large in my upbringing. So I was brought up with nature in a big way. And it’s just stayed true.
And I moved to London in my mid-twenties, and obviously London—not as—harder to find. Green spots, but harder to find. But I still have always sought it out. And my favourite thing now is—I’m quite obsessed with Tooting Common. I’ve become a Friend of Tooting Common.
Elizabeth Oldfield: Which I love, just the phrase. Yeah, that’s good civic service there.
Rachel Parris: My favourite thing has been bringing up my son, who’s five, to love nature and to value it and to protect it. And so bringing up—just to notice everything. So I did it very consciously, actually, the way my parents did: to take delight from the age of zero, essentially, as soon as he could see and hear. “Look at that leaf. Look at that dandelion. What’s this on the ground? Is that a snail trail? Look at the sky.” Yeah, “Look at the acorn. Oh, that one’s come out like it’s a little cup, isn’t it?” Showing him every shape of leaf, every colour of leaf, like, to take in everything and to comment on it. And that has been, like, such a key part of bringing him up for me.
And it’s worked. My plan has worked, because he’s obsessed with it. And now we’re like, “Oh, come on, Bill.” “Oh yeah, is he looking at a leaf again?” I’m like, “What have we done?” “Yeah, we’ve got to get home.” But I’m so glad we did that. He’s such a scamperer. He’s such an adventurer. And he takes delight in it. And in London—I’m really pleased we were able to do that in London, because we love London. But I’m really glad we’re near a lovely bit of nature where we’re able to do that with him.
And when I get to proper nature—like, empty mountains, mountains and lakes, and the Peak District, the Lake District proper—like, I don’t really know the south countryside very well. I didn’t grow up—because I grew up in Leicester, we would go north. So we’d go Derbyshire, Cumbria, Scotland. We never went south. So the south is, like—
Elizabeth Oldfield: Yeah, I’m from the south, and I’ll be honest, it’s probably not as good.
Rachel Parris: I think you’re fine. I’ve watched Poldark.
Elizabeth Oldfield: Yeah, there’s nice bits in the West Country.
Rachel Parris: Yeah, yeah, down there. But I’m not really familiar with it. That’ll be for later in my life. But yeah, I still feel, like, a great—a great joy and awe. I saw—I—sounds really weird. I was listening to an old Pick of the Week on Radio 4 that I did, because I was—I was trying to find something I needed to know, that one of the programmes I remembered I did. And there was a programme about—I think it was just called Witch—that I featured. And the clip I featured, I’d forgotten about it, and it’s so interesting. And it was about awe. And it said that people who experience awe are nicer people afterwards. Like, they did research into this somehow.
Elizabeth Oldfield: It’s Dacher Keltner. We’ve had him on. Really amazing.
Rachel Parris: I loved that. And I love that so—like, scientifically they’ve proven that, like, if you experience awe and wonder, it actually makes you behave better, makes you kinder as a person. And it kind of buoys you up, and it makes you, like, connect with everything more. And I wish I could get—I sort of—a goal for my life as I get older is, like, to try and get out of the city and into nature more often. But again, that feeling of, like, you are where you are. I’m lucky to have what I have. I take every bit that I can get from all the commons around us and make trips where we can. But, like, it’s—yeah, seeking out awe in nature is sacred.
Elizabeth Oldfield: Wonderful. And you’ve given us a beautiful picture of some of the formation of your childhood. Could you say—were there any big ideas in there that have formed the person that you are?
Rachel Parris: I think big ideas sounds as though they are stated.
Elizabeth Oldfield: Implicit.
Rachel Parris: Implicit, yeah. I think they’re all the same, which sort of suggests I’ve—I’ve gained nothing as an adult. But I suppose that makes sense, doesn’t it? Because—I know this isn’t maybe true for everyone—but that the ideas that shape you as a child—because sacred feels very rooted and inherent, and, like, yeah, the things that shape who you are when you’re young maybe just stay locked in there as an adult. But nature, as I say, comes 100 per cent from my childhood, from my upbringing. And the one that I think—a big idea, but that is implicit and never stated—was stability.
And I think—so I’m now married to someone who had a really different childhood to me, like, in that—well, for one thing, there was boarding school at seven for my husband. So whenever we’re talking about our childhoods, I’m always like—because I asked him this question, like, “What do you think the big ideas were in your childhood?” And he was like, well, I don’t think there were—because if there were in the household, he wasn’t there. And I was like, “Fuck, that’s mad, isn’t it?”
So for me, I think my upbringing—to some people might think it was boring, but I didn’t know any different, what it was. I didn’t think it was boring, but I just thought it was stable. But I didn’t know it was stable until later in life, when I heard about other people’s childhoods. But peace and stability were big. So we were a family who—I still sort of like it—like, pulled the plug out of the phone in the evenings. So I suppose it’s a good look of, like, switching your phone—you know, your mobile off. Like, yeah, I think my mum more so, and my dad being okay with it. But I think my mum also was like, “No, evenings as a family, we sit.” It wasn’t—I was not like—we just watched Coronation Street and, like, A Touch of Frost. It wasn’t like we were sitting there praying and weaving. But there was something about, “No, the evening is protected, and it’s just for—we’re in the house together.” I don’t think the door would be answered if anyone knocked. The phone was pulled out, and it was like, “This is our time.”
And there weren’t many visitors to the house, in terms of—like, I think this is a—I think this is a class thing as well, that, like, there weren’t dinner parties. Because I think that’s—people are like, “Didn’t you have dinner parties?” I’m like, “I don’t know any of my friends growing up who had dinner parties.” Like, I think that’s quite a upper-class kind—you know, middle- to upper-class kind of thing. And, like, there weren’t many—and again, a class thing is the idea of having, like, visitors to stay. Like, we didn’t have a spare bedroom, so you’re not having visitors to stay over.
So it was very contained. It was very contained. I was literally born in that house. It was a home birth, so I was born in the house, which is my parents’ bedroom. They lived in that house always, and my mum still lives there, so that’s still the house I go back to to see her at. Me and my two older brothers went to the same—this local countryside primary school. And we went to church. I’m not a believer, but my mum is. And my dad—they were both very involved in the church. So I was brought up with that as a routine, in terms of routine. Sort of going to church every Sunday. Tea was at 5:30. In later years, I’d come in from school, you’d watch Byker Grove, Mum would knock on the living room wall to say tea’s ready. Come out and have tea, have a chat, bedtime. Like, there was so much routine to it. It was the same for, like, so much of my childhood. My parents were together.
And, you know, obviously things happen in life, but really it was so stable, and I feel so lucky for that. I think it had—I think it had a really good impact on me, actually. I listened to—you know, you get to know over the years, like, what other people’s childhoods would be. And, as I say, perhaps not everyone would appreciate that—would be like, “Well, you didn’t do this and you didn’t do this.” But I’m like, I don’t think I missed out. I had piano lessons from when I was six, which was, like, a great opening—
Elizabeth Oldfield: Yeah. Opportunity.
Rachel Parris: —opportunity. We did all sorts. We had holidays, we explored, we went—and, like, we did all the things. You climbed mountains, you know. But it was—it was very rooted and grounded. And, yeah, so I think—I think that was a big idea: stability.
Elizabeth Oldfield: Yeah. And it definitely goes against the kind of—I’m always interested in the sort of stories we tell about types of people. And whenever I’m prepping to interview a guest, I’m sort of working on a few biographical details. So you kind of—you know, psychologists have said we have these sort of predictive processing models of, like, our guesses about people. And part of the social script about comedians is you’re, like, carrying a deep trauma, right? There’s a darkness in you. How do you think that stability has then shown up in the range of work that you do?
Rachel Parris: I mean, one thing is I’ve so consistently been told “You don’t seem like a comedian” throughout my career, from the very first gig. Like, people have been like, “You don’t strike me as a comedian,” on and off stage. And I—
Elizabeth Oldfield: Yeah, yeah.
Rachel Parris: It’s not—it’s not very—it’s not great to hear. But I think what they mean is, like—they’ve said, “You seem really calm and sort of—” My last tour show was called Poise, and it talked about these ideas of what a comedian looks like, and I’ve been sort of accused of being poised. “You’re too poised.” And I mean, part of that is, like, if you’re doing songs at the piano, you’re sitting there with a certain posture and there’s a piano in front of you. That looks quite poised anyway. But I think I am. I think I’m quite a calm person on and off stage. So that isn’t the mould, I think, of a comedian.
But I do think the idea of comedians working through trauma is a bit—maybe it was true? But also, I think it’s quite a nice idea that people might have perpetuated because it sounds interesting.
Elizabeth Oldfield: Makes it sound rock-starry.
Rachel Parris: Yeah. I think there were enough comedians for whom that was true to make it seem like a trend. But definitely these days, now there’s, like, people from all walks of life and all different circumstances doing comedy. I don’t think that’s—I don’t think it’s a thing anymore. I think it’s just something you turn to. Like, you wouldn’t say, like, you know, a novelist—
Elizabeth Oldfield: Because there’s all different kinds of novelists.
Rachel Parris: Yeah. “We know what a novelist is like.” Yeah. Now I think about it, they say all sorts of different artists are tortured, don’t they? Like Byron and the Lake Poets and everyone. Like, I mean, they all were a bit tortured, but I think they brought it on themselves. They brought it on themselves. They were like, “Let’s go and live in the Lake District with no money or clean water and subject our wives—” And don’t get me started on the Lake District—the poets actually there.
Elizabeth Oldfield: Yeah.
Rachel Parris: Sorry.
Elizabeth Oldfield: I’d really quite like to get you started on it. But let’s just fill in a couple of gaps. So you were at girls’ school. You went to Oxford to study music.
Rachel Parris: I did.
Elizabeth Oldfield: And you, as you say, you were mainly known as a comedian and a satirist, but you’re also a writer and an actor. Can you remember a time—like, what is your origin story with that creative calling? Like, when did you go, “Okay, no, I probably am not wanting to be an admin in the Royal Opera House forever”?
Rachel Parris: Yeah.
Elizabeth Oldfield: “This is what I want to try and do with my life.”
Rachel Parris: Like, the doughnuts in the finance department were second to none, but I don’t think it was my natural calling. Yeah. I think it started really young. I think it was always there. And it was quite a surprise to my parents, I think—I can imagine—but they were both so creative.
I really—I’m really interested in, like, what opportunities—just what opportunities you have that are available to you. So my parents didn’t have the opportunities that they gave me. So, like, my mum is—she’s so creative. So she’s a brilliant seamstress. And she ended up going into hairdressing when she was, like, fourteen, and became a hairdresser and was very good at that, very creative. But her passion in later life—she chose to go and do, like, you know, City and Guilds courses in, like, quilt work and colour work and, like, design and stuff like that. She studied, like, her GCSE biology later in life. Like, she seeks out education that she didn’t have when she was young. But she’s so creative. She’s made the most beautiful quilts. And she—she’s an amazing seamstress. She made my—like, it wasn’t called prom then, but she made my prom dress, which was a—
Elizabeth Oldfield: Leavers’ ball.
Rachel Parris: Yeah. It was, like, a corseted green ball gown. You should have seen it. It was amazing. But she’s—she loves—she’s always—she’s always got some kind of interesting creative project on the go as well. It just looks different to mine. And it’s—at the moment she’s, like—she’s saved up all sorts of labels, like clothing labels, for fifty years, and she’s making an amazing, like, tapestry of them.
Elizabeth Oldfield: It looks—it makes me want to stroke it.
Rachel Parris: I know. Yes, the texture is really interesting.
Elizabeth Oldfield: Yeah.
Rachel Parris: All different shapes and sizes. Anyway—and she’s—but she’s creative. And my dad was creative as well, and he was very into words. He wrote poems all the time. He wrote, like, a poem for when he, like, retired, and he wrote a poem for my wedding, and he wrote little poems all the time. When I was at primary school, he would write little poems for me. So not for their jobs, but they were both very creative people. So I had that from when I was born.
And then I will say—so the primary school I went to was amazing, because they did a little play, often, like, a newly written play for each class. So you didn’t have to, like, wait to get the part. It wasn’t like a school thing; it was, like, each class had an opportunity for every single child to perform. And it wasn’t, like, Mary and Joseph nativity; it was a new thing. So even from five, six years old, I was into it, and I could tell. And I think I—from seven and eight years old, I then realised that not—not everyone was. Which was like, “Oh, you don’t—” Because I remember someone dropped out of the school—the Christmas play—ill. They said to me, like, “Do you want to do two parts?” And I was like, “Yeah, of course I do. I already know all her lines, definitely.” And they gave me a part where I got to do, like, three different accents. And then in, like, the—when I was ten, Christmas play, I played, like, Queen of the Fairies, and I got to do, like, a silly voice and be really over the top. And my mum said, like, loads of the parents sort of said to her, like, “Oh, Rachel, it was very good,” like, “and she seemed to really enjoy herself. She’s very confident, isn’t she?” And I think offstage I was still quite a quiet child, but onstage was, like, different—different thing, different side to me. And I just loved it. I just loved the opportunity to perform as a child.
So it was—so it started, I think, as soon as I was able to. I think it was always there, performing. And then writing and that sort of thing. Like, I always loved art as well. Me and my friend Jane at primary school, I remember, like, we would make up funny, stupid plays and stuff in the playground, and then sometimes just perform them to each other, or to, like, very put-upon teachers we could corral in.
Elizabeth Oldfield: Yeah.
Rachel Parris: Whoever we could corral in would be like—”We’ve got this funny, stupid, like, made-up play,” and do silly voices. So I think, yeah, it was always there. I think it didn’t always match. I think some people who are performers are performers all the time. They’re always on. And I think I’m not always on. I’m quite steady and sort of low-key. Quite low-key. But then I can sort of switch something on when I’m on stage, which is, like, performer mode.
Elizabeth Oldfield: Yeah. I want to ask you—you know, there’s a million comedy podcasts, and it’s very much about the craft. I’m a nerd, so I went on a deep dive this morning about theories of comedy.
Rachel Parris: Oh, tell me. I don’t think I know the theories of comedy.
Elizabeth Oldfield: Well, there is a theory that it creates a psychological relief. That’s called the relief theory. Like, that we carry all this tension, and there’s something about someone saying something a bit outrageous, or being very honest, or naming something, that there’s this, like, release moment where literally, like, cortisol comes out of your body. And then there’s something about incongruity. It’s, like, something that threatens—I wrote it down—threatens our expectations of the world, or our norms, or maybe the stories we’re telling about ourselves or other people, but in a safe way. And the contrast between a bit of threat, but we know we’re not going to get physically hurt. I can sort of feel it in my body, actually.
Rachel Parris: Yeah, that’s really—
Elizabeth Oldfield: It makes you a bit, like, giggly or tense.
Rachel Parris: Yeah.
Elizabeth Oldfield: Go ahead.
Rachel Parris: Yeah, I think the relief thing is really interesting. You know, when you see comedians, like, they look like they’re going to say something really awful—really awful—and then they sort of undercut it.
Elizabeth Oldfield: Yeah.
Rachel Parris: I saw a really—a really nice bit about the casting of Snape in the new Harry Potter with this comedian that said, like—he was American—he was like, “Listen, I don’t think Professor Snape should be Black. Okay, hear me out. Look, not that—listen.” And—but then he was like, because of the impact it has on the other characters. Because he said, so this little white boy meets him and it’s like, “There’s something about him I don’t like. I don’t trust that guy, and I—so I can’t put my finger on it.” And it’s like that idea of, like, just taking something that sounds awful—like, what are you doing? What are you doing?—and then the relief of “Oh, thank God.” I think that’s always a good key to comedy.
And I think the relatable—I think relatable comedy is in specificity. So I think that’s why people love Michael McIntyre routines, because actually—you can say, “Oh, it’s broad,” because it appeals to a lot of people. I’ve never, ever had an issue with comedy that appeals to a lot of people. Why is that a bad thing? Why—it’s appealed to a lot of people. Like, yeah, they appeal to a lot of people; you’re probably doing your job well. But, like, I—but his—the jokes he’s making, yeah, they appeal to a lot of people, but they’re specific, and that’s why they work. So, like, a routine about the different spices sitting on your spice rack talking to each other, a routine about the way that you react—the way people specifically react to bees around them—you know, that’s why it works. It’s because it’s specific.
And so I think the bits I’m doing at the moment—like, yes, they’re about—some of them, like, say, having a five-year-old child, which loads of people have, a five-year-old child. But, like, I’ve got a bit at the moment honing in on trying to get him into the local state primary school and having a meeting where the person had never heard the phrase “as the crow flies,” and said, like, “Oh, you know a lot about crows.” No. “No, it’s a phrase.” And so, like, specificity—like, don’t just joke about primary school, but joke about—honing in on tiny, tiny ideas. And even that won’t have happened to a lot of people, but people know the framing of it, of, like, what that invite—why it matters, and the stakes—the stakes of, like, trying to procure, like, the wheeling and dealing for your child, and what you’re willing to do.
I’ve never—I’ve never—I must say, some people have studied it and I haven’t. I think I’ve studied comedy less than I’ve studied a lot of other things that aren’t my job. Like, I’ve studied history a lot, because I love—I suppose that’s my hobby. I would say history is my hobby. And so I’ve ended up reading books about that, listening to podcasts about that. Like, I’m a nerd about history, and I’ve never been a nerd about comedy, and I feel like a fraud. I do feel like—
Elizabeth Oldfield: No. What I was going to say is, I think it’s because you know in your bones; you don’t need someone to backfill with theory for you. And we really don’t know how to value embodied, intuitive knowledge. There’s some gender stuff in there. But yeah, don’t discount your knowledge of comedy.
What is your—like, when you’ve done an amazing Austentatious that’s had people rolling in the aisles, or a stand-up show that’s done really well, a joke that’s really landed, or a piece of satire that’s really travelled—what’s your—how would you describe what you think has happened? Like, maybe in you and in the audience?
Rachel Parris: I don’t know. What happens in me? What has happened in me? They’re all really different circumstances, the list you just said. So I think what happens in me is really different, because after an Austentatious, there is a lot of—and there is a difference between a good show and a bad show. So, like, I think to an audience, nearly all our shows come off as good. Hopefully—let me know. Write in and slag us off if not. But I think that we have—I think our bad shows are still pretty good. But for us, we know how it felt doing it. And most of them are good. But then there’s some absolute zingers where you’re like, “Ah, we all—we were on the same page. We listened to each other. We got the audience to care about the relationship.” Laughing is a given. The comedy—we always nail the comedy, but there’s so much more than that that makes a good show. And when we come off that—you’re in a group of friends and you’ve all known each other for years. So there’s a—I would say it’s like a work away-day feeling of, like, “We did it,” like celebration. Like, it feels really good, but you celebrate it together.
The Mash Report—I haven’t done loads of TV, so that was different again, because you didn’t know its success until weeks later. Because it was The Mash Report—when I was on The Mash Report, my bits in The Mash Report, its success seemed to hinge on how viral it went in clips afterwards. So you know what you thought of the piece, and that was one thing. There was some that I was like, “I have faith in this. I know that this is a good work.” But I think that was a weird—that was a weird one, and it wasn’t—it wasn’t totally validating that work in terms of success, because there really was a team of people measuring how many views it had in the weeks after, and that was how successful it was.
And the sexual harassment clip, which was the most seen one on The Mash Report, was, like, my first—I actually was in it for four weeks before that, but in a more minor role, and I didn’t write on it before that. So the sexual harassment piece went insane. It was the most viewed clip the BBC had ever had in its history. And I was very aware that we were chasing that success, and we never achieved it, in terms of success measured only by views and clicks.
But I think the most proud I’ve ever felt was writing a piece—I’d given birth about—I’m trying to work out when it was—but six or seven weeks before. And I wrote, along with Robin Morgan, a piece about violence against women and girls. And it was in the wake of Sarah Everard being murdered—and I mean, the many murders of women that year. And the government response to it, which—do you remember?—was like, “Flag down a taxi, wave down a bus, wink at a train.” Like, it was—it was laughable. It was ludicrous. And it was—what—do you remember Dominic Raab said, “Misogyny is terrible whether it’s against women or men”? So there was a lot to work with. So I wrote an eight-minute piece. And I was so—I was so broken—
Elizabeth Oldfield: Yeah, I was going to say, that is very quick postpartum.
Rachel Parris: Yeah. So it was the writing of it the week before, and then the performing of it. And it was so hard, and it was so emotional. I’m getting emotional. I’m just thinking about it now.
Elizabeth Oldfield: I have high tolerance of big feelings.
Rachel Parris: I think there was something about womanhood. And womanhood was mentioned a lot in my first viral piece on The Mash Report, “Welcome to Womanhood.” And that feminist streak ran through a lot of the pieces that I wrote and performed on The Mash Report, but, like, this one was the one that I was most proud of. And about women being—literally being killed. Women being killed and hurt, and the government just totally failing to respond to that and saying, “Well, we’ll have an app that tracks women. That’s the way to deal with it.”
And I’d just given birth, and my body was not my own. It felt really alien. And I was—everything that went alongside it was like—it was motivating, it was also fatiguing. So the writing of it felt cathartic. It felt like me getting my mojo back after birth—like doing, creating, finding my thing again, writing and creating on something that really mattered to me, and collaborating. And it was—but it was also—I remember struggling to breastfeed, trying to find a dress to wear because my entire wardrobe obviously didn’t fit. I was, like, three sizes bigger than I was used to. My face was bigger. Like, every—just everything was different. And, yeah, my husband and my baby came to set with me. And it was COVID—and it was COVID as well, so there was nothing provided. There was no food, milk, water, like, heating. It was freezing in the green room, in the dressing room that we had. It was freezing, and I was like, “Please bring a heater. I’ve got a newborn baby here.”
It was really stressful, and it was one of the best things I’ve ever done. And it didn’t matter about the hits and the views that it got. But I felt so proud of it. It was never easy writing about subjects that are about the murder of women, and it’s comedy. But I think we did it, and I think it made the point we were trying to make. And I remember saying to the producer, “I know you’re—I know you have to cut my bit down.” Most weeks it cuts from, like—down to, like, four minutes. But I said, “I’m begging you. For the sake of everything, all the content in this, please just let it—let it be eight minutes.” And he did. And yeah, I feel—obviously—oh my God, what’s happening?
Elizabeth Oldfield: Yeah, there’s a lot of feelings in that.
Rachel Parris: Yeah.
Elizabeth Oldfield: It’s all right. Most people cry. I don’t know what it is about these questions.
Rachel Parris: Yeah. What that felt like was powerful and a big responsibility. But also the last three lines of the piece were, “Women are knackered. Please don’t make us do all the work. Women are knackered.” And I was so knackered. It’s a true thing. I was so knackered. So, yeah, in terms of how that piece felt inside of myself, that was also—yeah, that was big feelings.
Elizabeth Oldfield: Yeah. Big feelings. Yeah. And I can feel it. I mean, humans are amazing—mirror neurons and the way we’re interconnected. Like this—whether you’re making someone laugh or you’re making something really tender, the ability—sort of magic that we can do. So the psychological phrase for it is emotional contagion, which is, like, the ugliest—ugliest possible phrase.
Rachel Parris: Sounds like a disease.
Elizabeth Oldfield: Yeah. Something that is a problem. It’s not a problem.
Rachel Parris: Yeah. I also think what you said about whether you’re making someone laugh or making someone cry or making someone feel something—I think this is why I’ve never read the theory of comedy, is I don’t think it matters. I don’t think any of it matters. I don’t believe in these categories of, like, comedy and drama. And it’s a machine or a switch you can pull—
Elizabeth Oldfield: Yeah.
Rachel Parris: “Is this a comedy show? Is this a drama show?”
Elizabeth Oldfield: Yeah.
Rachel Parris: “Is this a sad film, or is it a funny film?”
Elizabeth Oldfield: Yeah.
Rachel Parris: Because I think all my favourite things do all of those things. And I don’t think there’s a big—the best comedy makes you feel emotional, and the best dramas are funny in part. And, yeah, I think the variety—making you feel something is what—is what good performance and good art is to me.
Elizabeth Oldfield: I want to try and talk to you about something that I—there’s, like, multiple meta levels about why it’s hard to talk about. Not in a—this makes it sound much worse than this is going to be. But it’s picking—I had written down, you did a sort of funny thing about the Girls’ Guide to TV. And, you know, when you got here, we were comparing under-eye concealer. And one of the things about going on six weeks postpartum is nothing fits right, in a way that just is very particular to—or more particular to—the experience of females in the public eye.
And one thing I was—I may be projecting—what I was noticing, like, reading about your shows and reading the reviews of your shows: people call you whip-smart a lot. And I think what it’s code for is “smarter than I expect, given that she’s blonde and beautiful.” Like, how are you thinking and experiencing and talking to other women in the industry about that element of your work, and what wisdom looks like as you try and navigate it? I thought you might have thoughts.
Rachel Parris: Yeah. I mean, I found that so much, like, through—and not just comedy, in all sorts of walks of life. When I used to work in the music shop in Oxford—I mean, everyone there, the—so I was on, like, minimum wage. Everyone—every single member of staff had minimum—I had—I was the least qualified. I’d just finished a degree in music from Oxford, and I was the least qualified member of staff in that shop. Most of them had PhDs—music, musicology, anthropology, that sort of thing—plus years of experience. And I learned a hell of a lot—a hell of a lot more about classical music and the recordings of it and the conductors and everything, working there for three years, than I did during my degree. It was so educational.
But customers coming in, seeing, like, a twenty-one-year-old blonde, blue-eyed girl, would so often be like, “I’m—I’m looking for—have you got—is your colleague available?” Literally had them say, “Is your colleague available?” And I’d be like, “I think I can help you.” And they’d be like, “I don’t think so.”
Elizabeth Oldfield: “There’s this instrument called an oboe.”
Rachel Parris: Yeah. I remember a particular thing that I used to do stand-up about, because it was this funny. It was—we would choose what music to play. And I chose, like—you know, Glenn Gould played Bach, mostly. And David Helfgott played Rachmaninoff, famously, in Shine. And I had some Rachmaninoff playing that I’d chosen, and you would—it was CDs back then, so you’d put the CD in the “now playing” little plastic Perspex slot there. And this customer came up and he went, “Who’s this playing?” And I said, “It’s David Helfgott playing Rachmaninoff.” And he said, “I think it’s Glenn Gould.” I said, “Oh, it’s not Glenn Gould. It’s—look, here’s the CD. It’s this. It’s Rachmaninoff, played by David Helfgott.” And he said, “Pretty sure it’s Glenn Gould.” Do you want to look at the CD? I put it on. I put it on. And also, can you hear how it’s really romantic, rich, orchestral music, as opposed to solo piano, Baroque music? And he’s like, “Pretty sure it’s Glenn Gould,” and then left before I could answer that.
But anyway, the point is, yes, I do feel that—looking a certain way, including not just people thinking that you’re not smart because of a certain appearance, but also people thinking you’re not fierce or strong because of how you look. I do think I’ve been treated—I’ve certainly worked on jobs where I’ve had to put up with bullshit that I think wouldn’t have been thrown my way if I’d looked a different way. I think they were like, “Yeah, she’ll do it that way. I’ll tell her. I’ll handle her.” I don’t like being handled. And I’ve been certainly handled and cajoled in ways that I think are partly to do with how I’ve come across.
And then it’s difficult, because then when you have to fight your corner—I’ve had to fight my corner literally to say, “I don’t want to say that, because it’s me saying it, and people will think I’m saying that, and I have to choose what I say.” Do you see what I mean? Because I get the trolls. Because I get the trolls, yeah. So, like, that battle, and the battle to say my jokes in my way. Now that—to be fair, again, you have to be fair—TV is a minefield. There is a lot of legal issues, and also you are—all comedy shows, you’re part of a team, and it is a group humour. It can’t just be completely what you want. But I had to fight so hard, in a way that some of my colleagues didn’t, for the freedom to tell my own jokes. And I do think that is in part being a woman, being a blonde woman. I mean, I’m not especially petite, although I was at the time. I was the skinniest I’ve ever been at that time. So I do think, yeah, there were impressions formed that I could be handled. And I think I was more difficult to handle than expected.
Elizabeth Oldfield: The very first guest on this podcast was Pippa Evans.
Rachel Parris: I love Pippa. I’ve known Pippa for years. Also an amazing improviser—Austentatious. She does Showstopper.
Elizabeth Oldfield: But for a long time, she had this sheet of long blonde hair, and at one point she, like, pixie-cropped it. And I said, “What made you do that?” And she was like—she was basically like, the industry—like, “I was carrying that hair around, signalling some things—”
Rachel Parris: Yeah.
Elizabeth Oldfield: “—that I was like, what happens if I don’t signal those?” And she experimented with it. Did you ever have a, like, “I’m just going to, like, buzz-cut, or not put makeup on for this gig, or not perform the expectations that I need to be both funny and clever and glamorous”? Or is that—
Rachel Parris: Yeah. Yeah. I don’t think I’ve ever done it. I think about it all the time. I think about it all the time when I’m—I mean, one factor in that is that I really love makeup. I’m interested in it. I’m a nerd about it. I love putting it on most of the time, unless it’s, like, “Oh, bloody hell.” But if I’ve got time, I enjoy the process of choosing the different colours that day. What products will I use? I love makeup. So that is a factor in it. It’s actually a process I enjoy. But that said, especially in the last five years, I’ve had loads of times where I’ve thought, “What if I wear no makeup? Or very different makeup? Masculine makeup?”
Elizabeth Oldfield: Bowie makeup.
Rachel Parris: Bowie makeup. Like, just nothing—white, no eyebrows, but a strong lip. Like, something—like, what if I mix it up? And I don’t think I’ve done it yet. I’ve never done the equivalent of the Pippa pixie cut, but I’ve thought about it a lot. Who knows? Maybe that’s in my future.
Elizabeth Oldfield: Yeah. Isn’t it annoying? Isn’t it annoying? But these are our options.
You wrote Introducing Mrs Collins, which was a lovely read I read earlier this year, to tell the story of Charlotte Collins, having done all these amazing improvised shows inspired by Jane Austen. The theme that I’ve seen in your work and your comedy show, about having been this young, free, and single party girl and expecting that to carry on, and then finding yourself married with a baby and being like, “This is a story I don’t know how to tell well.” And the way that shows up in comedy, actually—the stories of ourselves. What was it about Charlotte Collins’s story that you wanted to tell, and how much were you working out something about yourself in it?
Rachel Parris: I think the fact that I chose Charlotte Lucas wasn’t a coincidence.
Elizabeth Oldfield: Yes, more commonly known as Charlotte Lucas.
Rachel Parris: Charlotte Lucas, yeah.
Elizabeth Oldfield: It shows how much your book’s in my head now. From Pride and Prejudice, the Jane Austen book, for those of you not steeped in the lore.
Rachel Parris: Yeah, Charlotte Lucas, the plain best friend. I think I chose Charlotte Lucas because I liked her. And I think—I don’t know if I identified specifically with Charlotte Lucas, but I certainly identify with the Jane Austen characters and heroines who are more quiet and gentle and studious, and who some people think are boring, and I never have. So I think my favourite is Anne Elliot and—
Elizabeth Oldfield: And Elinor.
Rachel Parris: And Elinor, as opposed to Marianne.
Elizabeth Oldfield: Oh yeah, that’s the way.
Rachel Parris: Yeah. Yeah, I always—I feel like Lizzie Bennet has occupied such an international space of love, of, like, the sparky—sparky ones. And Emma—sparky, sparky, funny, outgoing, confident. And something draws me to the quieter, overlooked characters, which is exactly what Charlotte is. She’s so overlooked. And she’s overlooked, as I explore in the book—she’s overlooked by Lizzie Bennet, who—Elizabeth’s reaction to her best friend getting engaged to this unworthy man is, “Oh, why? I cannot understand it. I’m speechless.” She stops talking to her. She’s outraged. She’s surprised.
And as I continue that conversation between them in the story I tell, where Charlotte says to her, “Have you not considered my life? What am I going to do?” Like, “Haven’t you thought—” Like, Charlotte says, “I’ve thought about your future. I’ve thought about your prospects, about who you might marry and what kind of life you might have, because you’re my friend and I love you. And haven’t you thought about that for me? Like, what am I going to do? I’ve got no offers of marriage beyond this. And I’m an old maid, and everyone’s worried about me. And I’m going to be living with my parents, which is going to be crap. And my brothers want me to get married. This is the economic option for a woman. This is the best economic option, and I’m going to have a house of my own, and I’m going to have a household, and I might be able to have children. Haven’t you thought about that for me?”
She’s overlooked romantically by everyone else in the novel, obviously, and arguably overlooked romantically by Mr Collins until he is rejected by the more obvious people. So that’s what I think—finding Charlotte, getting people to pay attention to Charlotte and to value her, was very appealing to me. And also I am a bit of an old romantic, and I wanted her to have a romance, because I thought she could. And I don’t really buy when she says “I’m not romantic” to Lizzie in Pride and Prejudice. I thought there’s all sorts of things that would lead someone to say that. And I know there’s all sorts of different interpretations, and some people would say maybe she is completely aromantic, maybe she’s asexual, maybe she’s gay. There might be all sorts going on there. But I think very possible is that you protect yourself.
So that’s the version I wrote: is that it flashes back to her coming-out ball and not being asked to dance very much, and not twice. And then not getting the attentions that her mother expected, and her mother’s heart breaks for her as well, her oldest daughter. And that she wears an armour. And even the advice she gives out in Pride and Prejudice of how to court a man—how you have to show more feeling to secure him—she positions herself as a truth-teller about courting, with no experience of it, as a sort of defence mechanism, because she’s really conscious of it. She’s really conscious of it, and quite sad about it. And so I think you would say, “I’m not romantic, so don’t worry about me. I’m not—” You know, I think that is a thing you would say. But also, maybe she’s not romantic because she hasn’t met the right person. And then she does. Then she does. And you’ll have to read it to find out who.
Elizabeth Oldfield: Rachel Parris, thank you so much for showing up and bearing with my random questions and being with us. It’s been a total pleasure.
Rachel Parris: Thank you.
I’d say that felt like a really hearty meal conversation. It was quite cathartic. It’s always nice to have a cry. And it was like having a deep and meaningful with a friend. Like, you feel like you’ve offloaded.
Elizabeth Oldfield: I don’t know if it’s the nature of, like, a reflective conversation, that people show up as their best selves, or—the thing I want to believe is everyone is just more lovely than you expect when you dig a bit. I know I say this about everyone: what a lovely person.
Rachel Parris: As a comedian, as a creator, as a writer, you have to wait until you feel like you have something to give, whether that’s jokes or a play or a book. So it’s not always there. You don’t always feel like you have the idea. And I think that’s why I have kept changing it up, I think, in my careers, because I’m always like, “Well, what if I do something different?”
Elizabeth Oldfield: It’s sort of encouraging that you don’t have to be one particular type of person to be a creative in general. You don’t necessarily have to be tortured. You don’t necessarily have to be sharp-elbowed.
Rachel Parris: I think just—in between the main events of your life is where the best conversation is. Especially—you reach an age. I feel like that wouldn’t have been true in my twenties. I was like, “I want to talk about comedy. I want to talk about this. I want to talk about—” And I think you come to value the in-between times, of a quiet time to be. And that’s what I like about this.
