‘What the hell have I done?’: The crisis that inspired Nazeem Hussain’s new comedy

Detailed summary

He is one of Australia’s most fearless comedians, but this new ABC series hits very close to home.

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Nazeem Hussain is nervous – and not just because there’s a random white lady standing in what’s usually the men’s section of the prayer hall inside the Albanian Mosque in Melbourne’s inner north. “Oh no, a journalist in the mosque!” he jokes when I meet him during the filming of his new ABC series Separated at Birth. “You’re going to scare all the readers.”

“We’re used to journalists coming in undercover,” he tells me later, laughing. “So the fact that you advertised that you were a journalist is brave.”

In truth, the comedian is nervous because he’s not used to being earnest. And though his new show – and his first time writing a full, scripted narrative series – is a comedy, it’s also a sincere exploration of new parenthood, “dysfunctional” families and the broader community that supports them.

“I’ve been outside my comfort zone since day one on this,” he says of the story, which is based on his life.

“In stand-up and sketch comedy, like Legally Brown and Orange is in New Brown … everything ends in a joke. You’re only sitting in an awkward moment with the intention of breaking it and popping that bubble. But here, there’s no tension to break. You just sit in the sad or the happy [moment].

“This is the hardest thing I’ve ever done: telling a story that is worth telling and worth listening to and investing in.”

That didn’t stop him from breaking the tension on set. As we watch director Nina Buxton (Heartbreak High, Dog Park) diligently set up a scene without him, Hussain mischievously whispers about messing with the “serious actors” where he can. In one scene, where his character shares a picture of his new baby on a phone, he’s been subbing out the image to throw off his co-stars.

“Every take, it would be someone else: Jeffrey Epstein, Bill Cosby, possibly Donald Trump,” Hussain says.

Opening of the article, excerpted from The Age. To read the rest, open the article on the publisher's site.