Australian comedian Hannah Gadsby stopped by The Late Show With Stephen Colbert to talk about her new memoir, Ten Steps to Nanette.
Gadsby’s memoir, published Tuesday by Ballantine, tells the story of her life and the origin of Nanette, the 2017 comedy performance that made her a breakout star around the world. A critic for Kirkus called the book “a witty and provocatively written life story.”
Colbert noted that Gadsby’s comedy is filled with personal stories, and asked her how that was different from writing about her life in a memoir.
“[There are] more details in that,” Gadbsy said, gesturing toward her book, “On stage, you can get away with just a casual throwaway. Then I did this thing, and it comes back from the editor: ‘But how? And how did you feel? What was your emotional landscape?’ I don’t know! What is an emotional landscape?”
Gadbsy revealed that despite the book’s title, she actually started writing it before she conceived Nanette.
“I started writing the book, and as I got through it, I couldn’t work myself out,” she said. “I was like, ‘I don’t actually make any sense.’ I had these funny stories, and I interrogated my emotional landscape, and thought, ‘Oh, that’s not happiness.’ So writing this is what ended up pushing me toward writing Nanette.…And so once I did Nanette, I was able to finish the book. So they had a symbiotic relationship.”
Michael Schaub is a Texas-based journalist and regular contributor to NPR.
