Russell Kane: Cancel culture means 'we live in a world where nothing has meaning'

Russell Kane speaks with Yahoo UK about his comedy beginnings and why he's facing cancel culture with tongue-in-cheek mockery.

Video transcript

RUSSELL KANE: We live in a world where nothing has meaning and everything has nuance. And yet, black, white, canceled, gone overnight. Those two things are opposite, toxic, and they are our world.

[MUSIC PLAYING]

ROXY SIMONS: How did your love of history first begin? But also, what made you want to look back at famous figures and their legacy with hindsight?

RUSSELL KANE: So I like people and stories. That's what I've got. I was already into that. And when I started doing Evil Genius, it was just a case of learning each individual person week on week, which was a pleasure. I would just pick up a Gandhi biography, watch a Richard Attenborough movie, and just, it was a pleasure.

So it's stories about people that I love. It doesn't matter whether it's Boudicca or Diego Maradona, two subjects, both have been done for the Radio Four series. That's where the passion comes from.

ROXY SIMONS: Yeah. I mean, I was going to ask about, you know, transferring this story from the radio to TV. Like, how-- could you talk me through the process of adapting it and changing it and making it unique?

RUSSELL KANE: It was just-- it made it easier, to be honest. I mean, it just does. It's already a pleasure to do on Radio Four. But once you say, OK, now people can see what you're saying and we give you permission to use archive, historical, you know, pathé footage, it just makes my life so much easier.

ROXY SIMONS: You obviously approached each figure with the intention of deciding whether they're evil or they're genius. And I wonder, why did you want to pick such extreme conclusions to draw from?

RUSSELL KANE: There's a relationship between the type of thing we're consuming and the evil acts the person have done. And there's obviously a cutoff where we go canceled. And then I thought, well, because the main thing people often say is, well, how can someone just be evil or genius? Everyone's a mixture of both.

Of course. That's why the show's one hour long and not one minute long. We get that richness of debate mixed in with belly laughs. People going back and forth, people feeling uncomfortable. With the audience like, oh god, just shut up, Russell. You're going to get taken off air. All of that, we get all of that. But at the end, we get it reduced to a simplistic idiotic binary-- evil or genius. Why? Well I suggest you switch on Twitter and learn about the 2023 you're living in, if you think that's not how we live.

We live in a world where nothing has meaning and everything has nuance. And yet, black, white, canceled, gone overnight. Those two things are opposite, toxic, and they are our world. But as a commercially viable format, it's [BLEEPS] gold. So that's what we're doing. (LAUGHS)

[MUSIC PLAYING]

ROXY SIMONS: When did you first realize comedy was your calling?

RUSSELL KANE: Where I grew up in a council, it's like you weren't, like, exposed to theater and books. And I wonder if Russell would be good at violin. Or maybe he's a theater kid. You just went to school then finished school, then got a job. Had my dad been into comedy that was-- actually made me laugh, maybe I would have discovered it earlier. But my dad liked-- I did like-- actually, that's not fair. Because Laurel and Hardy and three stooges make me laugh.

But I can't do slapstick. I managed to get all the way up to 18 without even realizing standup comedy was a thing. Some of my friends got tapes of Eddie Murphy and told me about it. I just never got around to watching them. So I just-- and then I got to uni and went to the one uni in England that didn't have a standup night. So I got all the way to graduation without ever having watched, seen, or really been aware of comedy.

Was I the funniest person in my group, always making people [BLEEPS] themselves laughing? Yes. But so what? Everyone's got someone like that in their group. Started at the ad agency in a middle class environment. And comedy night was one of the things they did. I was like, oh my god. I'm 25 at this point.

I phoned up the local comedy club and went, can I go on and perform for free just to see what it feels like? Yeah, OK. There's loads of space in August, because the comedians are in Edinburgh. What's Edinburgh? Had never in-- I thought that was ballet and opera. I had no idea the Edinburgh Fringe. I'd literally-- I promise you, I had never heard of it.

Went on, did this set. And it was like, oh [BLEEPS], I'm wearing the wrong shoes my whole life. These are so-- this is-- these are the shoes I'm-- I couldn't believe it. Then of course, it was just so quick. I won all the competitions. And by the time I was 30, I was looking at giving up the dream career. I'm a kid from a council estate working as a copywriter in an ad agency. I'm like, I'm going to give up the dream career and I'm going to go for it.

Then I won the biggest award you can win at Edinburgh. The Perrier Award, it used to be called. Edinburgh Comedy Award. Flew to Australia. Won their biggest one same year. Never been done in history. And then that's it. My career was born. Obviously my career is like that, like everyone's. One minute you're hot, one minute you're not. One minute you're too busy, one minute you're not busy enough. But I've always had an amazing life from that point.

[MUSIC PLAYING]

ROXY SIMONS: What were the movies that you loved growing up? And do you remember your first cinema trip?

RUSSELL KANE: First cinema trip would be one of the Star Wars ones. Maybe the last one, Return of the Jedi. I was a bit young for the first couple. And I was just able to be taken slightly under age for the third one. Going with my great grandma. Very, very strong memory. I've got good memory. I remember, I can remember being in the cot and stuff. My memory goes quite far back to about 18 months old, two years.

And we'd made a deal on the bus there that we'd both pretend to be American and see how many people we could fool. And I remember the meal afterwards, I can remember the cafe, I remember the feeling of watching the film. I remember everything about it. It was amazing.

And then once I'd got to about 14 or 15 and we got hold of an illicit copy, and it's still my favorite film, Alien, the first one. Obviously by then, the film was old. And I was 10, 15 years old. But I just, I loved it. I just think it's the best horror film ever made. Better than The Exorcist. Everything's in there about human existential fear. The sci-fi holds up. It hasn't aged. The acting, I just love it. I love it.

[MUSIC PLAYING]

ROXY SIMONS: There anyone in your life or career that you would say had a defining influence on you or any mentors that you had in your life?

RUSSELL KANE: It's got to be my dad, really, in my personal life who taught me how to do everything opposite to him. I don't know if that was meant to be his lesson. But hypermasculine, knuckle-dragging, right wing down the gym, 3% body fat, weightlifting, bouncer, lifeguard, scuba qualified metal worker. And there's me reading and dancing. It gave me something to react to.

But he's the-- I don't know a child that felt more protected than me. That I just felt like no one could get in our house, no one could hurt me. My dad would kill them. He was so strong and he worked so hard and he taught me about making money. Like you put me in a desert, I will start making money from selling sand. I've always been the one in the group making money based on what my dad taught me. I don't rely on anyone.

In comedy, my mom-- I suppose my first mentor when I was still doing the day job was Lee Mack. So my first manager said, look, you can carry on working your day job. But I need you to take a sabbatical and support Lee Mack on tour. And if you-- I don't know what you know about comedy, but going out as a support act when all the audience have put their hands in their pockets to see Lee Mack, it's an unforgiving 20 minutes. And they've got to wait-- they've got to sit through you. And then they've got to have an interval.

So if it's an 8:00 PM show, they ain't seeing Lee Mack till 8:45 PM. So some people are going to be pissed off and disappointed. They've never heard of you. I look much younger than my age now. You can imagine what I look like when I was 28. And no one wants to hear thoughts about the world from a boy. They just won't take it.

So it really taught me to raise my game. And watching Lee over and over again for those three months, something switched in me about how to do standup. He never sat down and talked me through or guided me. But just being on that tour, sitting in the car with him, talking about the shows, watching him for-- I never ever went back to the hotel. I watched the show every minute every night, watch him do the same [BLEEPS]. Same beat for beat to different audiences. Watching how he changed it and just-- it was the final bit I needed to bring my skill level where I could leave work in 2006 forever.

I mean, what a thing to be able to say. I haven't worked since 2006. This is not work. I'm doing my hobby.