When Steph Tisdell was filming the Amazon series Class of ’07, she used to drive every day to Malabar beach in Sydney’s south-east to decompress. It was the summer of 2021-22, and the show’s cast and crew were “bubbled” to mitigate Covid risk.
“I was here for 119 days, staying in a hotel room, and we weren’t really allowed to go to populated places,” Tisdell recalls. “But you’re interacting with at least 50 people a day on set. I’m a social person but I really need my own time, and so I’d always go for a drive – but I’d want to park somewhere and just sit and feel the energy of the place.”
Malabar beach, a pristine sandy crescent on a small cove enclosed by rocky headlands, was 20 minutes from her hotel – in other words, “just far enough”.
“I’ve seen dolphins here, whales here – it has this really beautiful energy to it,” she says. “I could sit in the car park, in my car, overlooking Malabar beach and watching the water, and absolutely nobody could bother me.”
We’re standing overlooking the beach on a radiant winter day in late June. Tisdell, barefoot, breaks off mid-sentence to point to a cormorant that has just resurfaced beyond the break: “You can see them fishing [here] and they go underwater for ages, they’ve got these weird wings.”
Tisdell loves birds (she has two Amazon parrots – Parky, after Michael Parkinson, and Eddie). Conversely, she doesn’t like walking (“It’s so slow. I would rather run and throw up than walk and sweat,” she says) and so we sit on a bench in the park facing the serenely empty beach – aside from a cacophonous mob of pigeons, seagulls and ibises fighting over a loaf of bread.
Based in Brisbane, she’s in Sydney filming season five of the Stan series Bump, in which she reprises her season four role as the progressive but socially inept “teal” mayor Shauna Johnson. It’s the latest in a run of screen work that started with her landing an ongoing role in season two of the ABC’s Total Control, playing a communications expert turned staunch political adviser to Deborah Mailman’s firebrand MP Alex Irving.
Before that, Tisdell had built her public profile via standup comedy and spots on shows such as The Project and ABC’s now defunct Tonightly. In some ways the career transition felt intuitive – she had loved acting in plays and musicals in high school – but it was also a necessary escape route from standup. “It would have put me in the grave. I left because I had to.”
Tisdell was, from the get-go, unusual among comedians in that she had an explicit mission: “To make a difference for my people.” Having studied law and journalism, she initially dreamed of a career in policy-writing, human rights law or as a foreign correspondent. Her segue to standup was accidental, spurred by a dare; while competing in Melbourne international comedy festival’s 2014 Deadly Funny competition for emerging Indigenous comics, she caught the bug (and won the award).
Later that year she moved to Edinburgh, where she honed her skills over two years – and began to see standup as an effective tool for social change.
Back in Australia, being an Indigenous woman in standup proved harder. She talks candidly about being a tokenistic “‘two-for’ – the [only] person of colour and the [only] woman” on lineups; the casual sexism and double standards within the industry; and playing to conservative audiences that crossed their arms and rolled their eyes as soon as she introduced herself as “a proud Aboriginal woman”.
Perhaps hardest of all was copping flak from other Aboriginal people. In 2020, a clip from her comedy special Identity Steft, in which she used a racial slur to make an anti-racist point, was edited to remove the context of the joke, and circulated on social media – provoking a backlash.
“It’s really hard to be a profiled Indigenous person speaking truths where you don’t have the space for nuance,” she reflects. “It’s really hard to try and be funny about things that are really serious, and it doesn’t matter what your intention is – comedy is a place where people can be offended really easily.
“I feel like I did a few things that weren’t quite right, and I had to deal with those lessons very publicly – and it destroyed me. Because I’m a people-pleaser and a sensitive softy.”
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Tisdell, the youngest sister to three brothers, was born in Mount Isa (where her Yidinji mum and white dad had started a successful business in the 80s) and raised in Brisbane – “quite disconnected from my culture,” she says.
“My country is far north Queensland – a small town that mum always said was racist when she was growing up – and there’s not a lot of opportunities up there. So what do you do: do you raise your kid where they can be on country as often as they want, surrounded by family? Or do you raise them in Brisbane, to have opportunities?”
In Brisbane, Tisdell got a great education and her mum started an international aid organisation. Tisdell would join her on travels to developing countries. In hindsight, that privilege was a double-edged sword.
“My parents were very successful with their work and business, and you know, there’s a sad thing that happens, if you’re privileged to have money and opportunities – it’s like you’ve revoked your blackness somewhere. Which isn’t true, but that’s what happens when people are so stereotyped.”
So for Tisdell, the online backlash reopened a wound: “It felt like the identity struggles that I’d had all my life, walking in two worlds, were up for debate by all and sundry,” she says. “Having every person in the world being able to call out whether you’re black enough – how the fuck do you survive that?”
“And so I just figured, fuck it, I don’t want to be super public-facing – or I do, but I want to have a level of distance from that.”
In acting, she found “safety, and so much community”. She’s also relished the chance to make a difference behind the scenes, in writers’ rooms (including Bump, Rosehaven and Fisk) and boardrooms. “You can make massive change that nobody ever knows about, that changes the industry, by having conversations.”
She’s discovered another medium for her message, too: this month she makes her fiction debut with The Skin I’m In, a coming-of-age tale inspired by her own life, geared towards young adult readers and dedicated to her teenage niece.
“It’s all about walking in two worlds, and how easy it is to forget that you’re part of a much bigger community that’s representative of so much when you’re just living your everyday life as a teenager and trying to fit in.”
In late July Tisdell will kick off a publicity tour for her book – but before that, she’s writing for and emceeing this year’s Naidoc awards.
I ask her how it feels being back on stage in a standup-adjacent role, and she demurs: “I would do standup all every day, if all I had to do was emcee – it’s my favourite. My mentor [Indigenous comedian] Kevin Kropinyeri always says to me, ‘You just gotta love your audience.’
“And when I’m emceeing – especially something this important – all I want is for people to feel loved.”
Tisdell says this year’s awards, which celebrate the 50th anniversary of Naidoc, feel particularly important in the wake of the voice referendum last October.
She describes grappling with her own anger over the no vote. “I had to do reconciliation week gigs [this year] and I was like, ‘What’s the point? What’s the fucking point? Nobody’s listening. Nobody’s ever listened.’ I cried every day.”
She wants this year’s Naidoc awards ceremony to be a celebration of Aboriginal excellence and resilience. “I was like, fuck it: we’re not appealing to white people … And I said ‘This year’s for us.’ This year is about saying we’re fucking still here.”
Each political movement, from Vincent Lingiari to the freedom rides, changes things, builds something for the next generation, she says. “The world’s changing, I believe that. And everyone should be watching [the Naidoc awards broadcast] to learn the names of everyone who gets the awards – people making massive changes in their communities,” she says.
“At the end of the day, nobody gives a fuck what your social media following is – it’s when you make an impact on the people around you, that’s how you have longevity and infamy. That’s how you have a legacy.”
The Naidoc Week Awards premiere on both ABC and NITV on Saturday 6 July at 7.30pm
