21
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Matt Berry on comedy, career and "What We Do In the Shadows" [2021]
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- Title
- Matt Berry Has a Type
- Authors
- Kathryn VanArendonk
- Published
- Oct 25 2021
- Word count
- 2064 words
lmao
In all seriousness, I'd heard the quote from this article about Berry's perspective on the infamously transphobic joke in The IT Crowd before, and it's reassuring that he's willing to disavow that as explicitly as he does. So much of being a fan of UK celebrities is bracing oneself for the potential blow when they end up saying something that reveals they're actually super transphobic, and it's so reassuring when you get the opposite experience. He seems like a lovely person.
I respect his reasons for not doing the panel show circuit but selfishly I'd thoroughly enjoy him on them if he ever did. He's hilarious.
Wild that G.L. thought it worth his time to respond amid (re)tweeting a nearly non-stop barrage of transphobic posts daily. He does find time to call Palestinians "rabid animals" too so I guess he can multitask.
I did think it was funny that Berry's US success was tied to his lack of panel show participation. I hate to tell you vulture but I watch panel shows and still don't know half the people on the new season of Taskmaster. And most of the US doesn't know the regulars on panel shows.
Doing the circuit would be fun for us to watch but if he'd hate it, I'd hate for him to be there, ya know
I wonder if he was "protecting women's spaces" when he posed as someone else to send dick pics to women on MumsNet.
Fwiw he's alleged to have done this in multiple avenues, including joining a dating app just to post trans profiles and send similar pics but I have also seen claims (not from him) that those are fake allegations. I don't know if it's true, and I'm not in the UK so he can't make me apologize for it, but he's shitty enough regardless.
I'm convinced all he does all day is google his own name and whine when people call him a transphobe.
He absolutely has an immediate notification Google news alert too.
I mean it's still quite possible that it helps – it can put you in touch with other people in media, at least some people do watch panel shows which helps you build some kind of name recognition, etc
Oh I get it, I think indirectly it helps make you a bigger name in the UK which can make your US name bigger in the long run, but it's far from a direct link given the number of panel show people who basically mostly do panel shows (or if they do many other things, they don't make it to me, an American that likes British panel shows, Doctor Who, Derry Girls and GBBO/Glow Up sorts of things. )
I think the panel show circuit is more relevant for comedy specifically than acting in unrelated dramas. There certainly are plenty of people who made it from panel show to comedy specials. But outside of comedy it's irrelevant, so even if you're into British TV the crossover isn't the same.
Yeah it was just weird to connect it to US stardom to me! I have no idea what the panel show people do when they're not on panel shows, though comedy was a reasonable assumption
Demitriou, who plays Nadja in WWDITS, has done panel shows and that’s kind of what elevated her.
I've never seen her on panel shows or in anything else besides WWYDITS, what's she been on?
Not a panel show, but Stath Lets Flats is a fun sitcom. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xC35QUqM9qw
I saw her on 8 out of 10 Cats Does Countdown
Ahh I don't reliably watch it, so that tracks, I'll go look for it :)
I think the ironic thing about that "joke" (assuming we're thinking of the same one) is that Douglas (Matt Berry's character) gives up a relationship that is clearly great for him basically just because he can't get over his own transphobia.
Oh yeah Graham could totally have spun things in any number of ways. "I didn't intend the joke to be transphobic at the time, since the character is supposed to be a huge dickhead anyway, but in retrospect I can see how it was maybe in poor taste. I wouldn't write the same joke now." Easy. People would have totally swallowed it, even if insincere, and forgotten the drama within a month at most.
But Graham was either not socially savvy enough to think of that or was either sufficiently arrogant or already genuinely transphobic enough at the time to absolutely rule out apologizing for an old joke that honestly wasn't even a highlight of his work anyway. So he instead took this opportunity to jump down the transphobe pipeline at record-breaking speeds.
Honestly the thing that annoys me the most about that joke is that the transphobia isn't even funny. It starts with a genuine subversion of expectations -- you expect Matt Berry's character to be transphobic bc he's the opposite of politically correct in almost every respect, but he apparently isn't -- but then doubles back on it for a cliché "ew trans woman" joke at a time when they weren't even uncommon. The payoff just wasn't funny at all even if you don't care about the transphobia.
There's no denying that Linehan is virulently transphobic.
I agree that the joke isn't funny (and actually spoils the otherwise moderately entertaining joke about Jen and the internet).
I rewatched the episode recently and this was my takeaway as well. I feel like the whole episode could have been done better to not come off quite so offensive, but it also wasn't as bad as I was expecting given the recent online discourse over it.
Linehan's response to the controversy is what really upset me.
Mirror, for those hit by the paywall:
https://archive.ph/8pY1v
Snuff Box and Toast of London/Tinseltown are both fantastic; Matt is the best.