Chris Lilley Is Under Fire For What Looks Like Blackface In His New Show
Lilley is being criticised for playing a South African pet therapist named Jana.
Lunatics, the new Netflix show from Australian Chris Lilley, feels almost like a checklist of the comedian’s preoccupations.
But it also appears to feature a continuing theme in the comedian’s work: blackface.
Since the trailer for Lunatics dropped this morning, Lilley is under fire for one of the characters, Jana. Although limited details are known about Jana or her story arc, according to the press release she is a South African lesbian and a pet psychic.
In promo materials for the show, it also looks like Lilley is playing the character using blackface. This fits with rumours that have swirled around the production of Lunatics since last year. Back then, insiders on the project suggested that Lilley would be portraying a Rachel Dolezal-type character. Dolezal is an American woman who was revealed to be darkening her skin in order to claim that she was of African-American heritage.
It’s not clear if Jana is that same Dolezal-type character, or if Lilley has modified the performance since that outrage first broke.
What’s worse: the election or Chris Lilley doing blackface again??
CW: racism, blackface pic.twitter.com/Z2KUei0DMd
— Joshua Badge (@joshuabadge) April 10, 2019
Chris Lilley will forever remind me of those years in high school where I thought everything he did was racist but everyone else on my white private all girls school loved summer heights high so I almost convinced myself he wasn’t racist, fuck him
— Yen-Rong Wong | 黃彥蓉 (@inexorablist) April 10, 2019
Chris Lilley is … being given money to make bad racist shows???? Still???? In 2019?!?!?!
— maddy (@maddydell) April 10, 2019
. @chrislilley stop doing blackface / cultural appropriation challenge
— ｂｏｙ ｆｒｏｍ ｓｃｈｏｏｌ (@boy_from_school) April 10, 2019
This c.nt is at it again. 🙄 https://t.co/DJy6JIW0k7
— flashblak (@flashblak) April 10, 2019
Did…. Did Chris Lilley just go back to the blackface well? Again? Really?
— Billows (@BillowsOnAir) April 10, 2019
He's always done it: a straight, white, able-bodied middle-class man mocking people who were not in those categories. Unfunny.
— Ginger Cat (@Neko_Akage) April 10, 2019
This is not the first time that Lilley has been under fire for these issues. His 2011 show Angry Boys featured him in blackface as the character S.Mouse. Although at the time of the show’s release, Australia’s predominantly Caucasian critical establishment found no problem with the character, many viewers did.
That backlash returned later in 2017, when the comedian reposted a music video of himself in character as S.Mouse a week after the death of teenager Elijah Doughty.
It remains to be seen what response Lilley or Netflix will have to this recent backlash — if any.