Steph Tisdell wanted to be a lawyer. But being a comedian, actor and author lets her make more change (2024)

Overnight success takes years, but Ydinji comedian-turned-actor Steph Tisdell can almost pinpoint the moment everything changed for her.

It was 2019 and Rachel Griffiths (Total Control, Muriel's Wedding) had just shared a clip of Tisdell's viral Melbourne International Comedy Festival performance.

"I was like, 'Did the real Rachel Griffiths just share my stuff?' And so I messaged her on Instagram [to thank her] … and she replied saying: 'I just have a feeling that you and I are going to be besties'," Tisdell tells RN's Awaye!.

Griffiths encouraged the then-comedian to consider acting, even going as far as to introduce her to her own agent.

Unbeknownst to Tisdell, Griffiths had also already told the writers working on the second season of Total Control (of which she is a creator and the executive producer) that she wanted Tisdell cast as a new character in the show.

"And there was a room full of people looking at my life, looking at all of my stuff, and going, 'A character based on this is what we need'. And she wrote me into the show," Tisdell says.

That role led directly to Tisdell being invited to audition for Prime Video's post-apocalyptic comedy Class of '07.

"And I got that out of 1,500 people who auditioned for 10 roles. And then it's kind of just been [non-stop] ever since," she says.

In the resulting five years, Tisdell has continued to rack up screen credits in shows like Bump and Cooked, as well as films like Love Is in the Air and The Nut Farm.

Now, she's taken on a new creative challenge: writing a young adult novel.

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When you can't help but create

Tisdell didn't initially set out to have a career in the arts. She studied journalism and law at university in the hopes of becoming a social justice advocate.

"I wanted to do politics and policy reform … and I hated it because law is not about justice, it's about law and money," she says.

After "accidentally" falling into comedy, Tisdell realised she could use storytelling to speak truth to power and create social change.

Tisdell won the Deadly Funny National Grand Final in 2014, and began collecting accolades wherever she went — including in Scotland, where she sharpened her comedic style.

"I have something in me that makes me feel compelled to speak in arenas that other people don't feel comfortable to speak in, and it would feel like it was wrong not to use those platforms or that space that I've been lucky enough to be in," Tisdell says.

That doesn't mean it's always been a smooth ride.

Steph Tisdell wanted to be a lawyer. But being a comedian, actor and author lets her make more change (1)

As well as being "a bindi in [her] own foot", the burden of representation and of being herself on stage has taken a real toll on Tisdell.

"There is no harder place to be as a sensitive people pleaser than in a space where everybody is able to have an opinion on everything that you do and say," she explains.

While working on Love Is in the Air, Tisdell took the opportunity to ask co-star Deltra Goodrem for advice on handling the pressures that come with performing.

"She was like: 'If you weren't doing this as your career, would you still be writing, painting, looking for opportunities to make people laugh? Like, wouldn't you still dream of this? … It was the same with me with music. Whether or not I had a career in music, I would be writing music, playing music and singing every day of my life. That is who we are'," Tisdell says.

It was a conversation that allowed Tisdell to re-centre her creativity.

"The rest of it is just people who don't know you, responding with emotion because you've been able to elicit emotion from them. And that's all that you can ever do," she says.

Finding nuance within diversity

Although Tisdell has taken a break from comedy, she's still driven to tell stories. And it was her reputation as a storyteller that led publishing house Pan Macmillan Australia to approach her about writing a book.

The personal essay Tisdell produced as a writing sample became the basis for The Skin I'm In. It's a warm, funny and feisty novel that follows Layla Pinder — a 17-year-old Aboriginal girl whose life (and final year of high school) is disrupted when her cousin Marley comes to stay.

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The decision to write a novel aimed at teenagers came from Tisdell's publisher.

"I am so glad because I think we undermine or overlook teenagers … And there's a lot of self obsession, self absorption and self indulgence we have as teenagers that we grow out of," Tisdell says.

"Sitting in that and interrogating my brain as though it was a teenager who didn't have the wisdom was incredible."

And by working in fiction, Tisdell was able to take the heat out of exploring themes of identity.

Layla is being raised off-Country and, as a result, struggles with feelings of disconnection from her culture and mob. By comparison, Layla's cousin Marley has been living on Country until he moves in with her family, and hasn't had access to the same kinds of opportunities as Layla.

"I wanted Layla to be confronted with coming across somebody who has everything that she wants in every way. And then she has everything he wants in other ways. And to sort of make them confront that and realise this is not simple. This is super complex. And whatever story we've been telling has been half-arse," Tisdell says.

It's a kind of "diversity within diversity" that Tisdell has increasingly advocated to see recognised and normalised.

"Nuance is the most important part of anything in life. That's how you build empathy. And so when we try to simplify experiences or existence … we actually undermine so much about what it means to be human," she says.

"There are a million different ways to be Black, and none of them are right or wrong, better or worse than any other.

"But to tell people, there's kind of one or two versions of that, and that that's all that it is, is very, very disempowering, and continues to marginalise marginalised people."

By contrast, Tisdell admits the villains of The Skin I'm In are so lacking in nuance that they're "nebulous little blobs that are purely there to attach different themes".

There's Amy, the silently complicit friend; Layla's teacher, Miss Marks, whose pride outweighs her desire to learn; and Jess, an overtly racist classmate.

"The only reason I tell you that is I have a feeling it's quite confronting just how close to home the villains feel," she explains.

"And that's kind of the main message. It's really easy to see what goes wrong. And I'm really begging the reader, if they're a Blackfulla, to recognise that they are OK, and they're seen, and they're not the only one.

"And I'm imploring white people, or non-Indigenous people, to question their own privilege and recognise how complex issues are, and to have the empathy to dig a bit deeper."

Steph Tisdell wanted to be a lawyer. But being a comedian, actor and author lets her make more change (2)

Trusting her process

Tisdell says the experience of writing has taught her to trust herself and her creative process. It's something she wants to take into other areas of her creative life.

"I've always been quite harsh on myself and I've often felt like I should be doing something different … I'm not very good at structure. I'm not very good at organisation ... I really struggle with those things. But I have ideas and concepts and I can fall into spaces that I can happily articulate and recreate for somebody else," Tisdell says.

When it came to The Skin I'm In, a turning point was the now-deleted chapter in which Layla catches a bus and makes judgements about the people around her.

"I fought for so long to keep this chapter in, but it didn't match the pacing. It didn't match anything … And [eventually] it was like 'oh wait a second. That was for me' …That's when I found Layla as a separate entity. That was when I was able to fully distinguish me from Layla," Tisdell says.

Although the scene wasn't necessarily good for the story, it allowed Tisdell to "freefall" into stream-of-consciousness writing.

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"Weirdly enough, that's actually what I do when it comes to acting and auditioning. I'll often imagine my character doing a TikTok trend or a social media quiz or something so that I can find them," she explains.

Having given herself permission to work in ways that felt comfortable, Tisdell not only wrote faster, but better.

"Knowing that that works for me, and [proving] that I can still finish something, even if I do it in my own weird way, was really good. It was really affirming to my creative process," Tisdell says.

"It was a really big kind of pat on the back for myself to be like, 'It's OK that you're not doing things in a standard way that other people do it'."

The Skin I'm In by Steph Tisdell is out now.

Steph Tisdell wanted to be a lawyer. But being a comedian, actor and author lets her make more change (2024)
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