Chris Lilley: I think surprises make TV entertaining.

I was sure 'Summer Heights High' would be a cult ABC thing; I had no idea it would be such a big hit.

Chris Lilley

would-be summer ideas

I don't just want to upset people and shock people by saying something really outrageous.

Chris Lilley

upset want people

Religious humor is not really my area, so I probably wouldn't do anything about that, or politics or something.

Chris Lilley

religious-humor areas religious

I think sometimes people become quite emotional about the characters as well, and that's pretty cool that you can get that emotion out of people. And I think that's more my motivation than like, "Hey I want to be the funny guy, I want to be that famous funny guy." That doesn't sit as well with me as the idea of taking people on this ride and taking them into the illusion of the characters. That's much more exciting for me.

Chris Lilley

emotional motivation character

I just do what I think is funny and what's exciting to me.

Chris Lilley

exciting thinking

Fans feel they know me, so they want me to be on-the-spot funny, and it's hard to fulfil their expectations.

Chris Lilley

fans expectations want

People were making fun of redheads before I came along.

Chris Lilley

fun people

I was terrible student. I was capable, but I never like being told what to do, so I was always in the bottom class at school. In Australia, a lot of students study to the end of year 10, but don't go on to the final year, and I was asked to leave the school because they just thought I wasn't performing well enough. I used to sneak off to play piano, and defy the rules of the school.

Chris Lilley

study students school

I didn't do very well academically; I was always in the bottom class.

Chris Lilley

bottom wells class

You feel the pressure of going to university because you need a back-up plan, which is why I enrolled.

Chris Lilley

plans pressure needs

You can't get any better than TV on HBO, ABC and BBC3.

Chris Lilley

hbo tvs

Once I got into high school, any time I had to do a talk or a speech, I just loved being up in front of an audience, it was always a character. And then I discovered that an impersonation of the teacher was a really, really good way to get a laugh, and it would also get you good marks, because the teachers were always bored and loved to be the "teacher-parody." So that became my little trick at school, and I became known for doing that.

Chris Lilley

teacher character school

I think my parents had a hard time dealing with me.

Chris Lilley

hard-times parent thinking

I never like to think of any character as being over. I'm always thinking of different ways of bringing them back.

Chris Lilley

different character thinking

Mostly, what I watch are reality shows and documentaries.

Chris Lilley

documentaries watches reality

I guess my performance at school was doing school musicals, so I was a knight as well at the back of the stage in Camelot. It was all those kind of things. It wasn't the stuff that I wanted to do. The real funny character stuff came out when I was in control of it myself and writing it myself.

Chris Lilley

real writing school

Like, Australians definitely don't walk around dressed up in blackface going "Ha-ha."

Chris Lilley

blackface dressed-up walks

People are always nice; I never get anything mean said to me on the street.

Chris Lilley

nice mean people

People think that I'm some kind of genius who's got these statements to say, and I'm not really.

Chris Lilley

genius people thinking

I started doing comedy just as myself, because I thought, "This is what's expected, you're meant to tell stories and do observations." And then I started to realize that I wanted to mix it up a bit, so I started to doing songs, and I had a little keyboard onstage and would bring in little props. Then I thought about the idea of talking about a character and becoming the character onstage. So, it sort of morphed into being stand-up that was more character based, and I found that's the stuff I got the better reaction from and was more exciting for me.

Chris Lilley

comedy song character