Hi Felicity, are you excited about The Office Australia finally landing on Prime Video today?
Yeah, I’m pumped, I’m so excited. We finished it like a year ago, so I’ve sort of got over the anxiety of ‘what’s it going to be like when it’s come out?’. Now I’m like, ‘let’s just push it out’.
You’ve done some acting before in the likes of Time Bandits and The Inbetweeners 2, but you’re primarily known for your stand-up comedy. How did you end up landing the lead role in The Office Australia?
I auditioned, mate. I was just like any other acting job when it came through, I was like, ‘Yeah, I’ll do a self tape for that’. I sent it off and then it was a very long process of auditioning and then doing a chemistry test and doing a call-back, and then you wait for a while, and then you get a call while you’re in New Zealand saying that you’ve got the lead in the Australian Office. And now here we are.
Apparently, The Office Australia is the 13th international iteration of Ricky Gervais and Stephen Merchant’s original British hit - and you, as Hannah Howard, are the franchise’s first ever female lead. Why has it taken so long for a woman-led version of the show to appear?
I’ve got no idea. But look, I I think that after all this time, if you are going to remake it, something has to be drastically different, you know? Like, why else are you making something 20 years later, if not to present something completely different?
I think that the strength of this show is that it’s incidental that Hannah Howard is a woman. There’s nothing particular about her. If anything, I think Hannah is bad for feminism.
And I think that is like a mark of how far we have come. It’s like Liz Truss - she was a perfect example of how we’ve come so far that women in positions of power can be terrible at their jobs too. And that’s what Hannah Howard is - she’s incompetent. She’s bad at her job. You don’t know how she got the job. You don’t know why she still has the job, and we have all worked for someone like that.
Hannah Howard is incompetent. She’s bad at her job. You don’t know how she got the job. You don’t know why she still has the job, and we have all worked for someone like that
— Felicity Ward
How did you go about creating Hannah’s character? Did she spring fully-formed from the page, or did you did you base bits of her on bosses from your past, or people you know?
She was fully formed on the page, and every annoying personality trait is one I already have. Julie De Fina is the head writer and I don’t know if she had watched, like, interviews with me, or my stand-up or if it was just coincidental, but I was like, ‘I don’t have to do any preparation for this character, because I’ve been preparing for her my entire life’.
Everything that’s annoying about me was in the script already, so we just built on that. Because Julie wrote such a rounded character, improvising and ad-libbing was so easy because I just knew Hannah. I knew her because I am her.
So there was still room for improvisation, then?
We had three different directors and they all had slightly different approaches, but there was ad-libbing with all of them at different points. Also, once you get to episode eight and you’re seven weeks into improvising, the creativity doesn’t flow so naturally.
In the first week, I was like, ‘What about this?! What about that?! Let’s try this!’. And then, you know, seven weeks in after shooting six days a week for up to 10 hours a day, you’re more like, ‘Let’s just do it, guys’.
The Office is an ensemble series. How did you find adjusting to such a different comedy environment after doing solo stand-up for so long?
It has its ups and downs. The ups are that you get to work with wonderful people every day. But the downside is, with stand-up, you tell a joke and people laugh or they don’t. In The Office, [the rest of the cast] are literally being directed to not laugh and to look exasperated, because that’s their job as actors, right?
The first scene I did with anyone else was a meeting room scene, and it took us two hours. I’m basically monologuing at 17 people who f***ing hate me, and I found myself scrambling like I would on stage if I was getting that little [of a reaction].
Let me tell you, David, it was an absolutely soul-crushing experience. And I’m like, ‘Oh great, nine more weeks of this - are you kidding?!’. Luckily, off camera, we got to make each other laugh every day.
But honestly, this was my dream job. Every single day it was a delight to turn up and be funny for 10 hours. So if I could do this again for a second season, I’d love it.
Do you think Hannah Howard has a stand-up set in her?
If we get season two, mate, I’m going to pitch that to Julie. That’s perfect. Of course Hannah would think she has a stand up set in her. Of course she would - just like David Brent when he brings his guitar to the office. That’s going to be really brilliantly awful.
Hannah’s desperation to be loved by her co-workers is reminiscent of Steve Carell’s Michael Scott from the American Office, although she’s perhaps even more annoying. As the series continues, will we start to warm to her a bit more?
The wonderful thing about all the leads in The Office is you somehow find yourself rooting for a loser, and the only time you are rooting for them is when they’re not rooting for themselves.
Because they’re so delusional, you feel comfortable that you can not like them, you can dislike what they do, and you can find them annoying - but the second they find themselves annoying or sad or they’re not confident, then as an audience, you want them to get back to annoying.
That happens with Michael Scott, that happens with David Brent and it happens with Hannah as well, where you’re like, ‘well, I don’t want her to be sad. I don’t like her, but I don’t want her to be sad’. It’s a really interesting dynamic.
Will you be bringing your stand-up tour to Ireland any time soon?
I’m actually doing a UK tour at the moment, but we’ll see how The Office goes: if it goes alright, then I’ll add dates and I’ll come over to Ireland too.
I’m actually from Belfast blood - my grandpa was from Belfast. He came over in the British Navy and then he worked in the Australian Navy. My grandma’s from the Isle of Wight, which is where my mum’s from, and my great-grandma is Scottish.
So I’m actually British, Irish and Scottish as well. I’ve got the British passport, but I’ve got to get the Irish one, mate. That’s where the money is.
The Office Australia is available on Prime Video now
