Can You Unretire From Stand-Up Comedy? Hannah Gadsby Tests That Theory With ‘Douglas’

Perhaps the easiest, most powerful way to disparage any aspiring performer — even more effective, perhaps, than booing — is a five-word cutdown: “Don’t quit your day job.”

But once you’ve made it in comedy, how do you quit your night job when it’s eventually time to call it a night? And once you have quit comedy, can you ever un-retire?

Here’s looking at you, Hannah Gadsby. Although did she ever really quit? We know there’s no crying in baseball (thank you Tom Hanks from A League of Their Own), but is there no quitting in comedy?

So here’s looking at you, Eddie Murphy! How many times can a comedy superstar claim to be mounting a comeback to stand-up without every following through? Outside of his acceptance of the Mark Twain Prize in 2015 and his monologue hosting Saturday Night Live in 2019, Murphy hasn’t done a full stand-up set in going on 33 years. Murphy vowed 2020 would be the year, but COVID-19 put a stop to that plan. Maybe comedians aren’t supposed to come back from retirement. Maybe they’re not supposed to retire in the first place.

A stand-up comedian isn’t merely alone onstage, but also defined that way by show business and tax purposes, a sole proprietorship. Comedians may acquire representation such as managers and agents, but the stand-up remains his or her own boss. As Nate Bargatze joked in his first hour special for Comedy Central, Full Time Magic, “There was a time I was gonna quit. I was gonna quit early on. I tried. Then there was no one to quit to, no one.”

More recently, Gary Gulman on his 2019 HBO special, The Great Depresh, made light of how his depression almost took him out of the game. “I was contemplating retiring from comedy, and then I thought about it some, and realized that retirement is a bit pretentious for what was going on. Johnny Carson retired! Michael Jordan retired! Gary Gulman: You’re giving up. Also the word retirement implies that you’ve accumulated some kind of nest egg over the years. And that was not the case. I was going to have to continue working to earn money, and one of the requirements was that it be less stressful than a job that requires no more than an hour of my day, and allows me to sleep up until about 7:30 p.m.”

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And yet Gadsby famously announced she was quitting comedy in the middle of her 2018 Netflix special, Nanette, only to discover worldwide success and attention for it, hauling in the 2019 Emmy Award for variety special writing, plus a Peabody Award, as well as special recognition at the GLAAD Media Awards. Now she’s right back at it with a new Netflix special, Douglas.

Let’s revisit Gulman’s bit for a second, though. His joke, following the comedy writing rule of threes, cites two more illustrious retirements before landing the punchline on himself. Johnny Carson? Check. Carson left The Tonight Show in 1992 and rarely showed himself on camera afterward, dying in 2005. Michael Jordan? Well, millions of us just watched The Last Dance on ESPN, so we relived two of Jordan’s three retirements over 10 delicious documentary episodes. Three of four if you count MJ “quitting” minor league baseball to return to the Chicago Bulls. Regardless, we were left without any remembrances of Jordan’s final NBA years with the mediocre Washington Wizards. Because in life as in filmmaking, Jordan wanted to exit the stage while still on top.

Nanette was Gadsby hitting a game-winner at the buzzer to win the title. Couldn’t script a career ending any better. And yet.

She never left. The attention, the accolades, even the backlash from other comedians as well as from those who just wanted to hate on Nanette, all of that fueled Gadsby to keep going.

In Douglas, she addresses some of the claims made by her haters; among them: that “in lieu of comedy” she had delivered a monologue, a “glorified TED Talk,” a one-woman show or a lecture.” Gadsby already delivered an actual TED Talk last year in the wake of Nanette‘s success, acknowledging she failed to follow through with her decision to quit the comedy business.

Gadsby said she found her purpose while writing Nanette, realizing she could heal her own trauma through the framework of a comedy show. “I did not want to make them laugh. I wanted to take their breath away to shock them so they could listen to my story. And hold my pain, as individuals. Not as a mindless, laughing mob.”

A deconstruction of comedy can still nevertheless provoke laughs. “I did not fail to do comedy. I took everything I knew about comedy. All the tricks, the tools, the know-how. I took all that, and with it, I broke comedy!” Gadsby said in her TED Talk. “The point was to break comedy so I could rebuild it and reshape it, reform it into something that could better hold everything I needed to share. And that it is what I meant when I said I quit comedy.”

So what is she up to now with Douglas?

Gadsby knows you’re expecting great things, and she upends your expectations at the start by outlining everything she’ll say in the coming hour. If comedy is ultimately about surprising you with misdirection, then Gadsby will disabuse her audiences of that right quick.

To what end, though?

She seems to want to remain a walking, talking contradiction, undefined as a performer despite telling audiences in advance exactly what kind of performance she’ll deliver. Which results in a potluck collection of artistic expressions. A dish about how foreigners get easily amused by Americanized English arrives without sizzle. A rant about the “Where’s Waldo?” (or “Where’s Wally?” for the British Commonwealth readers) screeches to its conclusion.

About 48 minutes into Douglas, however, there’s a delightful turn in which Gadsby gives her haters what they want: A lecture. But it’s about art, which as anyone who watched Nanette knows, was her major when studying in Australia. So she launches into a deep-dive of Renaissance paintings, humorously critiquing them as they’re displayed on a giant screen above the stage. Before Nanette made her famous, Gadsby actually presented comedy art tours with the National Gallery of Victoria in Australia, as well as presenting two art-related specials for Australian television and a radio series for the BBC.

I would’ve enjoyed a full hour of Gadsby roasting the Renaissance. Since it seems Gadsby isn’t going anywhere, maybe next time?

Sean L. McCarthy works the comedy beat for his own digital newspaper, The Comic’s Comic; before that, for actual newspapers. Based in NYC but will travel anywhere for the scoop: Ice cream or news. He also tweets @thecomicscomic and podcasts half-hour episodes with comedians revealing origin stories: The Comic’s Comic Presents Last Things First.

Stream Hannah Gadsby: Douglas on Netflix