Australian comic Claudia O’Doherty lives the American dream in Killing It (2024)

KILLING IT

New series

Streaming, Friday, Stan

The female lead in Killing It – the new narrative comedy series from the creators of Brooklyn Nine-Nine, co-starring that sitcom’s Craig Robinson as a bank security guard down on his luck – wasn’t meant to be Australian. But Claudia O’Doherty from Netflix comedy Love beat several prominent American comedians (who she won’t name) to win the role of Jillian G, an unhinged side-hustler who bludgeons feral Burmese pythons to death for government cash incentives.

“When I saw the scripts I was very excited ’cause it was actually funny,” O’Doherty says. “I do read a lot [of scripts] and then opt not to audition for ones that don’t make me laugh. It’s rare to read a television script, especially for a pilot, where it’s all happening. This felt like a very established world, and all the characters are funny in their own ways.”

O’Doherty, the daughter of Mental As Anything founder and Mambo artist Reg Mombassa who could “never get work in Australia”, saw immediately the Crocodile Dundee appeal of an Australian snake handler, having written a sketch for Inside Amy Schumer in which she plays an incompetent, lustful snake doctor.

“When I auditioned, I told them I’m comfortable with snakes. Well, not to a crazy degree, but I’m just really scared of rats, so if something is an enemy of a rat, I’m excited … I do think it’s kind of ridiculous, the [American] connection of Australians to reptiles. It makes me laugh, it’s so stupid. But it is true, I am comfortable around snakes.”

Killing It is about more than snakes. Chaotic providence unites Jillian and Robinson’s character, Craig, in an escalating chase of the American Dream. Race, class, poverty and capitalism are cornerstones of the humour.

“I think comedy has been poking fun at [the American Dream] forever, because it’s such a huge part of their existence, but I do think it’s reached a hypnotic fever pitch at the moment, and I think it’s the right time to take a good look at it.”

In Jillian, O’Doherty recognised elements of her former stand-up persona.

“I really like nice idiots over mean idiots, and Jillian is a nice idiot. I also think liars are really funny, and as the show goes on, you’ll see Jillian constantly lies. She’s pretty bad at lying, but she’s also not afraid to lie. Those are all things that I put in my comedy festival shows, so it’s very fortuitous that this character is similar to the stuff I used to do.”

Florida, where the Burmese python pest problem is very real thanks to the exotic pet industry, was substituted for the swamps of New Orleans. Hurricane Ida in September 2021 delayed filming for a month, meaning O’Doherty had to freeze her way through plunging temperatures for the final episodes.

“All of my costumes are shorts, and I just hate being cold. I had to re-record some audio because my teeth were chattering for some of the last scenes.”

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Having landed her first lead in an American series, O’Doherty is now writing, with New Zealand actress Emily Barclay, a pilot for a “scary” series for Amazon. She also appears in HBO period comedy Our Flag means Death and has written for Schumer’s new series Life & Beth. She thinks the Oscars co-host brilliantly handled the Will Smith slap.

“It broke the tension in such a funny way … It was a very bizarre moment, but I doubt it’s going to have that many cultural repercussions.”

With her star on a meteoric rise in the US, O’Doherty finds strangers’ reactions to her in her home country strangely bemusing.

“I went to a restaurant in Australia recently and the waitress was like, ‘Did we used to live together? Did you live with Max?’ And I was like, ‘I don’t know who that is.’ And she’s like, ‘But we know each other.’ And I was like, ‘I don’t think we do.’ ”

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