With her debut performance at this year’s Festival, Schaefer can add another experience to her already-impressive career. She’s hosted a successful talk show (Nikki & Sara Live), created a podcast series (You Had To Be There), interviewed countless musicians and comedians for an online video series (The DL) and even won two consecutive Emmy Awards for her work as Head Blogger on Late Night with Jimmy Fallon. Long story short – she’s earned a plethora of skills.
“I basically moved to New York in 2001 and I wanted to be a comedian, but I didn’t know how or what… I knew nothing,” Schaefer reflects. “I just went there with stars in my eyes and had no idea how long it was going to take, but I stuck with it. When I was a little girl, the internet didn’t really exist yet. As I went along in New York, I would get auditions for things, or get opportunities for things, and it was all in the medium of internet and podcasting, and I would just kind of go forward and say yes to any and every way to be creative. By being very open, it allowed me to experience all these different types of jobs and they really made me very well-rounded. Now, I’m more focused on my stand-up comedy and my writing, but all of those things have helped me get to where I am now.”
Despite the diversity of her expertise, however, stand-up still holds a huge place in Schaefer’s heart. “Doing television, ultimately, is probably what I want to do the most, but stand-up has this purity, and it will always be there,” she says. “It will always call me back, where it’s just me, a microphone and an audience. There’s just something really magical about that that I’ll never walk away from. A really great show and a really great audience, when the comedian is on top of their game and the audience is really there – there’s really nothing like that. That’s just unbeatable in terms of experience and the adrenaline you feel, and the high you feel.”
Schaefer will be performing with Headliners – a pool of great American comedians binding together for what promises to be a hilariously-eclectic series of nights. Schaefer’s looking forward to it. “The people coming are all really amazing, so I’m very excited to be able to feed off their energy and vice-versa,” she says. “And learn something new, because you always learn something new whenever you watch another comedian perform.”
Despite all of the positive vibes surrounding her visit, Schaefer still issues a warning through anecdote: you’re never safe. Do comedy for a long, and you’ll soon realise that not every crowd is as receptive as you hope.
“I was doing this club in Indiana, in the States, and the shows weren’t good,” Schaefer recalls. “I was doing six shows and they were just bad. The audience didn’t like me, and I didn’t like them. There was this one show that was just so bad, I was bombing really badly, not getting any laughs. I was opening for this other guy, and I get off stage, and I’m watching him from the back. I wasn’t upset – I wasn’t happy with the show, but I wasn’t in the back crying or anything like that – but then this woman comes up to me. I thought she was about to say, ‘I’m so sorry, I thought you were funny.’ She had that kind of look on her face, like she wanted to connect to me, and make me feel better. She reached out to me and she said, ‘I just wanted to let you know – I wasn’t laughing because I didn’t think you were funny.'”
Schaefer takes it all in her stride, however. “It’s funny to me. As a comedian you just have to let that stuff roll off your back. I think people always say, ‘comedians are supposed to have a thick skin’, but I actually think that comedians are incredibly sensitive people. Otherwise, you wouldn’t be able to comment, and feel, and be upset about the world. So, I don’t think with ‘thick skin’, I just think that you have to process rejection and pain very quickly. You just have to move through it quickly. You feel it – you feel it deep – but you’ve just got to move on.”
It’s a good thing Australians are all so nice.
BY JACOB COLLIVER
