Luke McGregor is in a flap.
“I’m so sorry,” he pants down the phone. “I can be there in 30 minutes and I’ll buy you guys lunch or something … Oh, and I’ve got vomit on me.”
McGregor has slept in and forgotten our interview, which he arrives at, frantic with apology. “I’ve kept you waiting for an hour!” he says, horrified, as he power walks towards us at Merewether Ocean Baths.
But he has about the best excuse possible.
McGregor’s wife gave birth to the couple’s first child just five weeks ago. They are still in the riptide churn of the early weeks. “I’m just not used to having that little sleep,” he says.
We meet at the baths, in Newcastle, where the comedian moved from Melbourne two years ago. “So, I moved for lurve …” he says, pulling a sheepish face.
The anxiety of keeping the photographer and I waiting has him talking at a fast clip for the first 15 minutes, as we set off from the baths along the concourse that runs parallel to the beach.
He alternates between continual apologies, offers to make it up by buying me a fancy drink – “there’s a cafe up here that does one of those things, I can’t remember what they’re called, but it’s some sort of drink” – stories about the family and jokes.
“I bought binoculars the other day to look at the whales,” he says, miming looking through binoculars over the ocean baths, which are full of swimmers – “but I’m worried I’ll look like a pervert”.
This is the McGregor I was expecting to meet. A bit awkward, a little bumbling; the ends of his sentences running away from him, disappearing into an embarrassed laugh.
It’s the particular brand of awkward, clever, squirmy comedy that has endeared McGregor to audiences for more than decade, since he got his break on Utopia, then created and starred in Rosehaven, a gentle Tasmanian buddy comedy, with his best friend Celia Pacquola for five seasons. He has continued his run with regular spots on Taskmaster, The Weekly, and Would I Lie To You?
Most recently McGregor had an ill-fated run on Amazing Race Celebrity, in Argentina, which he participated in with his mother. They were the first pair eliminated.
McGregor and his mum’s undoing was their choice of challenge, picking “national dance” over “national sandwich”.
“We chose really badly,” he says. “We thought the other challenge would be doing something gross but it was a delicious local dish, you just had to cook a lot of them … And then we had to do some sort of sexy dance that mum and I didn’t want to do, plus mum’s got a bad hip and I’m not strong enough to lift mum. It was a disaster.”
By this point, having bought us both juice from a local cafe and having shaken off the frazzle of the morning’s rushed start, the anxious, awkward McGregor – Rosehaven McGregor – fades into the background and someone much calmer and more sure emerges.
He is, for instance, completely unfazed by me telling him that I spent the train ride to Newcastle watching old episodes of Luke Warm Sex – the documentary series he made about his attempts to address his sexual insecurities – repeatedly needing to angle the phone out of the eyeline of the high school boys sitting near me to keep them from seeing McGregor passionately kissing a tomato, or visiting the home of friendly and fully naked nudists.
“Because of my job, I feel like it gives me the freedom to, you know, kiss a tomato on TV,” he says unabashed. “As a comedian, I’m not someone you have to trust with your, I don’t know, the sale of your house or something. There is no risk to reputation.”
In the new year, McGregor will return to touring, with a new standup show he will be taking around the country. It’s the first time he has toured a standup show for six years.
“So much [has] happened, I got married, had a baby, had kids, and I just started writing again and it made me want to get back on the microphone.”
He hasn’t always enjoyed performing as much as he does now. Early in his career – he started standup at 25 – McGregor would have panic attacks onstage, mid-performance.
“I’d start to hyperventilate and you might not notice it, although my timing would start to go a bit off, but I’d start to get pins and needles in my arms and legs,” he says. “It wasn’t pleasant.”
These attacks started as his career was taking off and persisted for more than a year.
“I felt like I was progressing too fast,” he says. “I didn’t think I was worthy of the audience I was building and so, rather than enjoy the growth, I was fearing I was an impostor and I was going to lose it. Whereas now, when I get up, it’s more fun.”
How does one write a new comedy show? I ask. Do you just walk around constantly taking mental notes of what you see?
He pulls his phone from his pocket, opening up a notes app and scrolling through pages and pages of text. “I just have ideas and thoughts, or an interaction will happen,” he says before launching into a story about being on an airport shuttle bus. The driver wouldn’t let anyone off until each passenger gave him a smile. One guy refused and a standoff ensued. “And I’m like, ‘OK, well someone’s got to write about this’.”
Throughout the walk, there are glimpses of this comic’s way of seeing the world. At one point, McGregor stops mid-sentence to point at a teaspoon on the footpath – “free spoon!” – before resuming his answer. At another, he stops walking to take a photograph of a seagull standing almost directly on a sign reading “don’t feed the birds”.
“Perfect placement,” he says. I hadn’t even noticed it.
***
A lot of the material for the new show has emerged from his family life. McGregor met Dr Amy Thunig, an academic and author, over Instagram. “I followed them [Thunig uses they/them pronouns], and they sent me a message saying they enjoyed Rosehaven and then we just kept back and forthing until eventually we met up in Sydney.” They married last year.
Thunig has two children from a previous relationship, aged nine and 14, and McGregor is relishing his role as parent to them, as well as his five-week-old.
“I already feel like a dad because of my two other children” he says.
“It was good because it made me realise kids are a lot of fun,” he says of starting his parenting journey with the two older kids. “So now I’m really excited for our baby to get to that stage. Whereas, I think if I just started with a baby, I’d be like, ‘Oh my God, it just poos and wees!’”
And he credits his family with giving him material – and something of a writers’ room – for the new standup material.
“It’s been a fun thing, writing a joke about them, but making sure that they’re OK with it. I didn’t want to write any jokes where it was like ‘the kids are annoying’. I wanted to write jokes that kind of celebrated the new season.
“I mean, the show could be terrible, who knows? … but it’s been fun to write.”
As well as learning how to be a parent, McGregor has spent the past few years learning a lot about how he exists as a white person in Australia. Thunig is Gomeroi/Kamilaroi and a passionate advocate for Indigenous people.
“Amy’s light-skinned so could pass for white in certain circumstances. But just seeing how they get treated at the hospital once they are known as ‘Indigenous’. Like Amy went in … [and] got out their headphone case, and the doctor said ‘is that drugs?’ Like I knew racism was real but [seeing them treated as a drug user was] the first time I’ve seen it happen right in front of me to someone I love.
“Or little things like if the house was messy I’d be like ‘that doesn’t matter’. But Amy’s like ‘no, no, no, it’s always got to be clean just in case child services ever comes around. We want to make sure we’re presenting well so they don’t try and take the kids.’ It’s that sort of stuff. Just all this privilege I had that I didn’t think about … And then feeling guilty that I didn’t educate myself on this before, just as a white person in general. It took me having to marry an Indigenous person to be educated.”
We start the ascent of the headland to the north of the beach, which turns out to be a steeper climb than either of us have anticipated – “I’m regretting the black jeans,” he says. The day, which began overcast and threatening rain, has turned overcast and muggy. We turn a corner to a grassy stretch – “ooh, bubblers, yes please,” he says, making a beeline for them. One final climb and we reach the lookout. “Oh we did it,” McGregor says. “I’ve actually never got to this bit before.”
Looking out at the great stretch of ocean, McGregor talks next steps.
“I think my dream would be to get a horror film I wrote on the big screen,” he says. “I’ve been sort of dabbling away at [horror scripts] for a while, but just never put them out there. They just sit on Google Docs waiting for me to get the courage to show them to people.”
He and Pacquola are working on another project and are at the point of trying to see if it will get picked up.
“We’ll probably act in this one as well, if it goes ahead. We’ve written ourselves characters. It’s an awkward redhead, but I guess someone else could play it.”
McGregor seems at ease. Does he worry that as he achieves more professional success and settles down in his personal life, that the “awkward redhead” hat won’t always fit?
“As life changes, the subject matter does. But I still feel anxious and vulnerable. I guess I just feel more comfortable with myself, so I’m not as scared to show it any more.”
Luke McGregor’s standup show OK, Wow is touring Australia from 30 January 2025.
