Mette Lisby
May 23, 2024
Mette selects a work by P.C. Skovgaard from the SMK collection
00:03
Mette Lisby
I chose a painting by P.C. Skovgaard from 1857. It's called Beech Wood in May. Everything in that painting says Denmark to me. There's a family, the forest, the light coming down.
00:17
Mette Lisby
My mom lives by a forest. I've never been a forest person like that, but having been away for so many years, we came back a couple of years in a row in that early May-June period to see my mom. And just seeing that vivid green color, to me became the essence of Denmark. And then the light of the Scandinavian nights.
00:38
Mette Lisby
I didn't really know how much I loved it and how special it is. You only understand that when you've been everywhere else. Even in LA, it's not that at all. He must have just thought, how am I gonna say Denmark in one painting? And I think he did with this.
Mette Lisby
01:00
Tina Jøhnk Christensen
My name is Tina Jøhnk Christensen, and I'm the host of Danish Originals, a podcast series created in partnership with the American Friends of the National Gallery of Denmark and the National Gallery of Denmark. Our goal is to celebrate Danish creatives who've made a significant mark in the US.
01:18
Tina Jøhnk Christensen
Today our guest is Mette Lisby, a Danish writer, actress, stand-up comedian, and television host. Welcome, Mette.
01:26
Mette Lisby
Thank you. Thanks for having me.
01:28
Tina Jøhnk Christensen
We're very happy to have you. We talk to you from Copenhagen, but you were based in Los Angeles for a little more than a decade. You moved here in 2009 and left the States a few years ago. What made you move to the City of Angels or La La Land, as we also call it?
01:48
Mette Lisby
It was the combination of positivity and possibility that we just completely fell in love with when we were there. We had great careers here in Denmark and then we moved to London. And coming from London to Los Angeles to experience that openness and just that feeling of anything is possible. And people were really eager to meet you.
02:12
Mette Lisby
Whereas in London, people are a bit more about, what have you done? And we came, having done a lot of stuff in Denmark, saying, oh, we did this, we did that, and they were like, so if you're that great, why don't you just go back home?
02:25
Mette Lisby
Whereas in America, of course you're greeted with, oh my God, you've done something great, come here and do something more. So that was quite a refreshing shift of attitude for us. We loved London. But LA completely won our hearts over.
02:39
Tina Jøhnk Christensen
And when you say "we," you're talking about you and your husband, whose name is Jesper Baehrenz. And you have a company together called VIVE Productions. And you created a sitcom for Disney Channel. You developed several TV concepts and pilots. What was the creative experience of being here in Los Angeles like?
03:01
Mette Lisby
When you pitch for Danish TV stations, and certainly back then, there were not a lot of options, it was like, if they kind of liked it, you would feel like, oh, we just have to change and change and change and change it. And then coming to Los Angeles, it was just like, well, if you don't like it, we can just talk to somebody else.
03:18
Mette Lisby
So that felt like a lot of freedom, to actually just keep looking for people who like your ideas as they are, instead of having to change everything and to compromise your voice all the time. That felt like a creative free space for us.
03:34
Tina Jøhnk Christensen
Do you remember the feeling that you had when you landed at LAX and you had, I assume a couple of suitcases and you were ready for your adventure?
03:42
Mette Lisby
A lot of suitcases.
03:45
Tina Jøhnk Christensen
What was the feeling in your stomach and was it a thrill, or?
03:50
Mette Lisby
Yeah, it was that excitement and actually it lasted, I mean, it stayed with us the whole way throughout because LA has that feeling of opportunity in that sense that even screenwriters who have been in the business for 50 years, you know, someday they might just meet that one person and the timing is finally right for that story that they developed 20 years ago or something, or an idea they've been playing around with.
04:16
Mette Lisby
And that is that magical feeling that suddenly, you know, it can be the right time for this story and you can meet the right person and you can certainly meet people in LA who have the leverage to take your story all the way. So that feeling of, oh, maybe today the agent will finally have looked at the script that we wanted this and that person to be interested in.
04:39
Mette Lisby
Even the whole LA, it's just so impressive, with the beaches and the mountains and all that, and that kind of carries through into the creative vibe of it, I feel.
04:52
Tina Jøhnk Christensen
And when I spoke to you last time, you were developing a TV series or a movie on the beloved Danish comedian Victor Borge, who made it big here in the US. You actually met him and interviewed him once. How is this project going?
05:09
Mette Lisby
Oh, it's a typical film / TV series project in the sense that it went really well, and then it was on a pause, and then it went really well again, and then it was paused, and now we are just waiting for the right people to come together at the right time. So it is that kind of situation where not a lot is happening right now, but hopefully sometime because the story is still great.
05:34
Mette Lisby
And he was a tremendous talent that obviously got recognized worldwide and had a unique voice in the comedy world. Also, I feel that is, for Danish people, quite remarkable to pay attention to, 'coz that was quite outstanding. And we got the rights from his family to do the movie with Kim Magnusson as a producer.
05:54
Mette Lisby
And we wrote the script and yeah, there was a lot of really good stuff happening. And then we fell into this waiting pattern where we wait for the director, wait for certain people to join or get in.
06:07
Tina Jøhnk Christensen
And for those who don't know, this is a common situation that you're in. You actually met Victor Borge. Maybe you can talk a little bit about that experience.
06:18
Mette Lisby
Oh, yes, it was quite extraordinary. I was hosting the New Year's program that ran on New Year's Eve with Hans Pilgaard, who's a Danish TV host. And we were, you know, this huge thing. We were taping it on December 16th. We taped for 12 hours to be edited down to the show that ran on TV2 the whole night, for six hours probably or something.
06:42
Mette Lisby
And we had a surprise guest. We didn't know who it was. And there was a lot of, ooh, who can this person be? And we were like, is it the, what, is it the Queen? And we didn't know anything. And then, on the set, where we were pretending that it was New Year's Eve and oh my God, it's so exciting, like you have to do on these taped shows and the audience was there and everything was fun and going really well.
07:03
Mette Lisby
And then came, you know, now we're going to see who's the surprise guest and it turned out to be Victor Borge. And it actually ended up being the last interview that he did. I felt, had I known, I had so many questions that I wanted to ask him, and I was just so baffled, and we had only eight, ten minutes or something in the show. I was almost exploding because I wanted to ask him so much and we were like on this tight schedule.
07:28
Mette Lisby
He was super charming and, and really, he was old, obviously, but he still had that grace about him and the humor, of course. And he was very funny. And when we ended the interview, we said goodbye to him. And Hans and I were asking him, so where are you going to go for Christmas? And he said, I'm not going to be here for Christmas. I'm going to be somewhere else. He actually died before Christmas.
07:54
Mette Lisby
What happened was the show ran on New Year's Eve. And, of course, us pretending that it was live, and people sitting at home suddenly seeing Victor Borge, and everybody knew he was dead. So, it was kind of a weird situation. Funny when you're a comedian. Timing is everything and they had to run this subtitle that said, "This taping was done before Victor Borge passed away."
08:20
Mette Lisby
It was just that kind of, in a way, he got the last word, if you know what I mean. He was on even after he was gone. He was still there. So, yeah, I remember that fondly.
08:29
Tina Jøhnk Christensen
And you did a lot of research on him writing the series. What do you think he brought along from Denmark to make him so successful? What was it about him that made him an excellent fit here?
08:44
Mette Lisby
Oh, that's a good question. He had the luck. He had the grit also, which I think is one of the things that you just got to keep at it. It's not like an overnight process. Nobody is an overnight success. An overnight success takes ten years, and that is, I think, important to understand.
09:03
Mette Lisby
He had obviously a lot of experience when he came to the US. And that certainly helped him. And I think the timing again, he was at the right time and he had this feeling and this flair for combining music and comedy, which was also one of those things that took a long time for him. But he kept at it and yeah, he suddenly made it.
09:27
Tina Jøhnk Christensen
And I guess you could say that he was a stand-up comedian of a sort. You're a stand-up comedian and we'll talk about that a little later. But this means that you can evaluate Victor Borge as a colleague too. How would you describe his comedic talent? Was there anything particularly Danish about his humor and approach to it?
09:49
Mette Lisby
He had that dry wit. There's one sketch where he enters the stage, it's a huge stage, and he just walks. He just walks on stage and this grand piano is there and he walks on stage and he just keeps walking. He walks on the chair and he walks at the grand piano.
10:06
Mette Lisby
He would do something unexpected. He knew that was the key to making people laugh, to take the expectations and then twist them, turn them around. And then he had this line that I always connect with, but also in a sense to Denmark. It's that the shortest distance between two people is a smile. I think that line is also American in a way.
10:32
Mette Lisby
That is, to me, humor in its essence, because it's not about the logic of something that you understand, oh, and we have to talk about it to understand it, it's just that little signal that, oh, you and I get each other, maybe not on every issue, but there's this connection here, and that's the important thing and we can always build on that, so it's starting to just build on the positive. I like that.
10:57
Tina Jøhnk Christensen
What did you learn from him as a comedian, Mette?
11:02
Mette Lisby
His timing obviously. It's like a masterclass to watch him. I play piano, but I'm not as skilled, unfortunately. What's interesting was actually he thought of himself as a pianist that also did funny stuff. To us, he was a comedian. He practiced every day on the piano and stuff like that. It was really like he knew, cause his father was also a musician.
11:23
Mette Lisby
So he knew what went into that, a lot of tenacity and a lot of just rehearsing and just practicing all the time and keeping yourself sharp on your instrument. That's a huge thing. When you talk about what made him successful, also, I think discipline was a huge part of that.
11:43
Tina Jøhnk Christensen
What do you think that you brought along to manage to stay in LA and be in business in LA for more than a decade, which is quite an accomplishment. What did you bring along?
11:55
Mette Lisby
For 12 and a half years, we were there and certainly we were curious. I remember there was one thing that always I think about. In LA, it's a very different attitude than in Denmark. And we stayed positive all the way. We kept believing in it, and we kept meeting with people, and we just went at it.
12:15
Mette Lisby
And in the beginning with the TV concepts, we sold option rights internationally as well. And that was a great feeling of, oh, there's a lot of things happening, and that really kept us going.
12:28
Mette Lisby
When I started moving into the scripted world, it got — it gets slower. You can't have as many projects. But still the positivity in that and that feeling of, oh my God, we sent this script two weeks ago, maybe today, they've actually read it, that kind of, you can call it hope or believing.
12:50
Mette Lisby
And also I think learning from the journey, no matter what the outcome will be, that is certainly one thing that I appreciate, particularly moving into becoming a writer more and more. I feel that the whole thing is just a learning process anyway. And you gather experience that you can use. Yeah. I just feel like I have more to offer with all the experiences that I have now.
13:13
Tina Jøhnk Christensen
Did the thrill stay with you all through the 12 years that you were in Los Angeles?
13:18
Mette Lisby
Almost. I think something happened during COVID for sure. I think it was a turning point for a lot of the people we knew there. Maybe, I think you have a tendency to kind of bulk together with people who've been in LA for the same amount of time as you have. We just knew a lot of people who went back to Denmark or went back to Seattle where they were from. People went back to their families essentially. That was what we felt a lot during that time.
13:44
Mette Lisby
Our projects came to a halt. Everything stopped. Nobody took new meetings. You couldn't pitch anything. You could maybe get a little seed money for development, but we were far along with a couple of projects. Everything stopped. So we felt that was the right time for us to look back and go back. And also it was a question of if we wanted to stay, we thought we were going to stay forever in LA, but then you get older, and we missed our family more.
14:11
Tina Jøhnk Christensen
How is the entertainment business in the US different from the one in Denmark, and what does one need to be prepared for when you get ready for the adventure doing business here?
14:23
Mette Lisby
I think one thing that I really think Danish people in particular should know when they get to LA is that there's a whole different attitude that we don't really get. I remember one of the first meetings we had was with a CAA agent who sat us down in a cramped little sofa, and we felt like idiots in that little sofa, and she sat, of course, behind her desk.
14:52
Mette Lisby
And we pitched ourselves and we were, hey, we're this and that and we have had all that success. And we did this and that in London. And we worked with that guy who did this and we wrote for this. Maybe also because we had been doing well for so long, you get a little soft. You're used to people being nice to you. And she just looked at us and we were like smiling and da da da, totally upbeat.
15:16
Mette Lisby
And she just looks at us. At one point, oh guys, you have to be way more aggressive if you wanna make it here. And it took me a while before I understood that, but I do understand that very well now because there is a level of just go-get-it-ness. You can say that is certainly required.
15:38
Mette Lisby
I would say in the US, of course if you come in with a project that is like Oscar nominated, you have an easier path for you. You don't have to maybe be pounding as hard, not that it's easy for anybody at all. But there's a certain, when you come just starting out, yeah, you need an agent, you need people, which you don't so much in Denmark, you can pretty much make it on your own, you can pretty much go places on your own. In LA, you need people, and you need to meet people. You need to meet a lot of people.
16:11
Mette Lisby
It's hard to describe, but you just need to not care about the rejection, and to just want it a lot. I think you've gotta want it so much that I think it's a little un-Danish, actually, because there's a certain level here of, oh, that's good enough and that's fine. And we work hard and we're good at what we do. It's a whole other level of commitment throughout. You know, rejection and years and years and years of just trying. That's I think the most important thing to know.
16:45
Tina Jøhnk Christensen
And for those who don't know, CAA is one of the biggest talent agencies here in the US. So you went for the big ones.
16:56
Mette Lisby
Of course!
16:58
Tina Jøhnk Christensen
I also wanted to ask you because even though that meeting didn't go super well, it sounds, you did manage to go through the door to a lot of bigger studios —
17:11
Mette Lisby
And TV companies.
17:11
Tina Jøhnk Christensen
And you managed to talk to a lot of important people. How does one do that?
17:15
Mette Lisby
We got an agent taking us to meet people. And we did have all the Hollywood experiences, you know, we did a pitch and on the way home in the car, they called, it was a pitch for a TV show. And they called us and they said, we love it, we want to do it.
17:30
Mette Lisby
And us being from Denmark, we were like, oh, we're going to turn the car around and come right back and just get in and flesh it out. And they were like, no, no, no, no, no, the lawyers will talk. And then we called our lawyer, and lawyers spoke for like, we felt endless amounts of time.
17:45
Mette Lisby
And I called the lawyer and said, oh, this is going to move faster. And she was like, I'm so sorry, but I'm doing a very big deal right now. So, and I was kind of, yeah, but we need to move forward on this and then. What I didn't know was that she was Vince Gilligan's lawyer also, and she was actually working on a big deal for him, and I got so embarrassed.
18:04
Mette Lisby
Because I was just pushing for this reality show, or comedic reality show. But anyway, we got the contract. All those moments of just feeling like, oh my God, it's happening. And those moments are priceless. That was just so much fun.
18:22
Tina Jøhnk Christensen
What is the art of pitching oneself, in pitching one's project?
18:27
Mette Lisby
Passion, I think is the most important thing, that they know that you are passionate about this project. You don't have to have everything worked out. You don't have to have, oh, we're going to do this, and production-wise, we're going to do it that way. And it's not like that.
18:43
Mette Lisby
But it's just that you will personally guarantee that everything in you will work for that project succeeding. I think that's the most important thing that you have to relay to people you're pitching to, that you have that passion and it's hard to fake it if you don't have it.
19:05
Tina Jøhnk Christensen
When you finally left the city and your lovely home in the hills with a view of downtown Los Angeles, I've been there and seen it. It was quite magnificent.
19:16
Mette Lisby
It was spectacular! Yes, we loved it so much.
19:19
Tina Jøhnk Christensen
It was spectacular. And you went to LAX to leave the city behind. How did you feel then?
19:25
Mette Lisby
Yeah, that was a mix between being really sad and also being really content with the fact that, yes, we're moving back now. We were both very settled with that feeling of that's it, we're going to go back and we are going back to a lot of really great things here in Denmark.
19:46
Mette Lisby
And also the world has changed significantly also in entertainment. You don't have to be in LA to write for Netflix anymore. The world has gotten smaller like that in entertainment also. So it doesn't feel as remote. I remember before we moved to LA and to London, we were feeling left out because we were so focused on what was happening in Hollywood and the movies and the TV concepts and all that. And for Jesper's music and stuff.
20:15
Mette Lisby
And it felt remote. Remember you were waiting a week for the new episode of Lost or something to drop, and it was just, you felt like, and we had that feeling, we gotta be there, we gotta be part of it, we gotta live it. And that changed. You don't have to be there in the same way anymore. You can be a part of it now. You're not as remote sitting even here in Denmark.
20:35
Tina Jøhnk Christensen
And now that you are back in Denmark, in looking back at the experience in LA, what do you think it taught you while you were here?
20:42
Mette Lisby
I think the experience that taught me the most for sure was the variety of people you meet. One of the big Danish prejudices about Americans are that they are superficial. And I don't see it that way. I see that they, you know, at least pretend they're interested.
21:01
Tina Jøhnk Christensen
Which the Danes don't, or what?
21:03
Mette Lisby
The Danes don't bother with that. We're not interested. I don't want to talk to strangers. Don't bother me. Whereas the Americans are, okay, at least they recognize that there are other people and I find that it actually taught me a lot about also being positive and meeting people with excitement instead of going, oh no, what's this?
21:24
Mette Lisby
Do you know what I mean? Just be open to people, talk to people, and that whole attitude, I think. And also, I think one of the things I really appreciated, in LA we had friends from the ages of 17 to 85, and we had so much fun.
21:40
Mette Lisby
And they were from all over the world, and we talked so many things. Just being with different people, and people who were huge stars in the '80s and people who will become huge stars maybe in five years or so, you just interact with all these people who are at different stages in their life. And that is so inspiring I find.
22:05
Tina Jøhnk Christensen
And since we've been talking about Hollywood, I should mention that you have also acted. You played the lead character, Juliane Jensen, in a film by Danish director, Hans Kristensen, called Klinkevals from 1999, The Two Penny Dance, it's called in English. How did this happen that you became an actress, too? You were nominated for a Robert, so you did pretty well, too.
22:30
Mette Lisby
Yes, thank you. I started doing stand-up in '92 and I was, at the time, the only girl on the scene, the only woman there. And it went fast from there. I devoted all my time to it. It was the only thing that interested me, to get on stage, get more on stage, write new material. I was very invested in that.
22:50
Mette Lisby
Within a couple of years, I started doing TV and then I got my own TV show and a couple years later I got a big TV show and it went really well. So I was becoming quite popular. I had done TV and satire shows, stuff like that, for three, four years, and was voted most popular TV host. And it was quite crazy because it went really fast for me.
23:14
Mette Lisby
And then the movie company called me and said, we have this part that we want you to come for a casting. And I thought it was just like a small part that I was going to be somebody's funny aunt, cause I was mostly known for being funny. So then I heard what it was about and oh, okay. And it was the lead and everything.
23:32
Mette Lisby
And so I went to do the first screening or the first taping. And it went quite well. And I went to another one and then eventually a third one with the other players and I got the part. And I always assumed that it was because I was popular on TV.
23:49
Mette Lisby
But when I spoke to the producer, Per Holst, who did Pelle the Conqueror, so he was a huge name, a huge capacity, he told me that the reason that he thought of me was because he had seen me years before I even started doing TV on a stand-up job. And I remember that job very clearly because it was a corporate gig.
24:11
Mette Lisby
And I remember, two minutes into the show thinking, okay, this crowd, half of them, they're really on board so I could do anything. And the other half is, oh no, what is this thing called stand-up? And I just remembered, I just thought, okay I'm just gonna go all the way. And He was there and saw that and he was like, yeah I gotta remember that girl.
24:30
Mette Lisby
It's just that funny story about how things can happen in different ways and ways that you didn't think of. So yeah, that was the story about that. And that's also, I think, very LA actually, that somebody sees you somewhere and thinks, oh, that's great. And then five years later, they call you up and say, hey, I thought about you for this part or you for doing this job or something. There's always this feeling that something could happen.
24:57
Tina Jøhnk Christensen
Did you have a secret dream about becoming an actress in LA too, or was that not on your list?
25:03
Mette Lisby
No, I think when we moved there, Jesper and I, we were both very much into the mindset of creating and not performing. I didn't do stand-up in LA because I did in London a lot. And I knew that if I was going to go for that in LA, you would just have to go out there every night.
25:21
Mette Lisby
And if that was the dream, probably would have been better with New York where you can actually stay in New York and do the job, as opposed to LA, where you have to drive a lot getting from one club to another and stuff. It was more about creating.
25:35
Mette Lisby
And we had the luxury all the time, all the years we were there, to pitch the ideas and didn't have to worry about having a big production set up to carry, to actually produce them. So that was a huge thing for us to just be able to focus on the fun part, on the creative part, coming up with the concept and with the name and we did sizzle reels and we had so much fun doing that.
26:00
Tina Jøhnk Christensen
And let's turn a little bit to stand-up. You were the only woman on the stand-up comedy scene at the time. And you had a big breakthrough there. You became very popular. How did you become part of the stand-up comedy scene? And as a woman who didn't have any role models. How did you get the idea?
26:21
Mette Lisby
I always wanted to sing and do music. As a teenager I wanted to be a singer. I played poorly four different instruments: piano, bass, guitar, and drums, but I started composing music, and I felt that was my way.
26:37
Mette Lisby
When I was singing on stage, I didn't feel as comfortable as I thought I would. And then we were four girls who started performing together, and we were singers, and we did acapella versions of great songs that we liked. And then we started telling jokes in between the songs, and I just felt so comfortable doing that.
26:56
Mette Lisby
And that was really an eye opener for me because I was like, Oh my God, this is what I should be doing. And I didn't know there was something called stand-up. It wasn't a thing here until the early '90s. And of course, we had a lot of comedic people and huge talents and stuff. But it was the art of just going in saying, hi, my name is this, and I like this, that kind of thing was not really happening until that point.
27:20
Mette Lisby
Then I saw it, by coincidence. And I thought that is what I want to do. And I only saw guys perform. The idea that it was happening somewhere that I could get at that time a videotape or something to see Americans or international people perform, I didn't even think about that.
27:36
Mette Lisby
I just went down to this little bar in Copenhagen where they had comedy, and I went there every night for three months. And I finally worked up the courage to go and say, I would like to actually be on stage. See, talking about being aggressive, because actually I sat in that same bar for three and a half months, and actually I didn't go up and say it.
27:59
Mette Lisby
There was a guy who I spoke to. He was often hanging out there, and I spoke to him, and he said, why don't you go and tell them? I was like, no, I think, oh no. And then one night he went up to the owner and said, that girl, she's here because he wants to do a show.
28:13
Mette Lisby
And then he came down to me and said, you have to go up to him. You see, an American person wouldn't need a guy to tell you to do that, right? Eventually I did go up and I did get on and things started moving from there.
28:29
Tina Jøhnk Christensen
Yeah, an American would have done it the first day and not waited three months.
28:34
Mette Lisby
Oh, absolutely, yeah, not waited around, just sitting. I did learn a lot, to watch other people perform for those three months. I must say, I did. It's a funny thing talking about stand-up because I've seen a lot of stand-up in England where I performed a lot in London and then to come to LA and see stand-up there because the difference is so obvious.
28:53
Mette Lisby
In London people are these super smart guys who are just talking into their mic like this because they wrote some really great material, but they don't really have confidence enough to deliver it. And then you come to LA and people, they come in like they own the stage and they're like, what do you want guys? And their materials, usually it's just five really bad jokes because they're just starting out, but they do have the attitude right away. That difference is so striking.
29:17
Tina Jøhnk Christensen
What was it like then, when you finally got on stage and progressed from there? Was it all a bed of roses or was it challenging being a female in stand-up?
29:30
Mette Lisby
I think it got challenging suddenly, because it went so fast for me to start to do TV and then that was when I felt isolated. Because fame, even in Denmark, in a small country, isolates you in a strange way. And as a woman in that business, I was probably even more isolated.
29:49
Mette Lisby
It wasn't so much in the first years because we were a bunch of us starting out together and we were always hanging out. It was when everybody veered off on different projects and different careers, that was when it got a little lonely, I think.
30:03
Tina Jøhnk Christensen
And I'm always impressed by stand-up comedians. I think it must be incredibly challenging to be on stage cracking jokes and if nobody laughs, I would feel very vulnerable up there. What does it take to be a stand-up comedian and what do you do if people don't laugh? I know that you are very popular and people laugh, but there must have been a few moments that they didn't.
30:26
Mette Lisby
Of course, you can lose an audience. Yeah, that happens. And you try out new material that doesn't work. And you just have to have a level of comfort on stage. That's the one thing. And also, it's just a joke, you just have to tell another joke. It's not the end of the world. It's just the joke didn't work. Maybe you work on it some more and then it does work.
30:47
Mette Lisby
I've seen really crafted people trying out new material where they are actually just on stage, in The Comedy Store in LA and stuff like that. They just come out there with an idea that's not even a joke. And they just talk to people about it. They don't even try a joke out. They just test the thought basically. And they're so used to working the room that they can actually get something out of that experience.
31:10
Mette Lisby
We don't perform as much here. When you start doing stand-up in London, you have maybe four or five gigs a night, because that's the amount of clubs available in town, or even more. But here, in the beginning, I could perform once a week. Now, of course, that has changed.
31:26
Tina Jøhnk Christensen
And you've had shows about turning 40 as a woman and you've talked about women's "fuckability." What are the subjects that you care about in your comedy?
31:38
Mette Lisby
One thing I always cared about or always was aware of, was subjects through the eyes of a woman, which is not a very common perspective in stand-up comedy, especially not at that time. And that also was a factor in that the stuff happened so fast for me, because there wasn't that voice of people saying, Yeah, it's fun for you guys when you get drunk, but I stand in the bar and I feel you feel it's just, this is a buffet, basically.
32:11
Mette Lisby
And that is not a great feeling. So just turning the perspective in itself is a huge thing. And in the show I did about after turning 40, I talked about Jesper and I not having children. And that was quite a vulnerable thing to explore in front of an audience, but also I felt a very important thing. I'm very proud of that, to be able to talk about that subject in a funny way, you know, approaching that.
32:38
Mette Lisby
Because I feel that there are some subjects that we perceive as so painful that we don't really know how to talk about them and to get them out in the open where you can actually laugh at them and laugh, not to diminish them, of course, but laugh in that pain of those feelings. I'm quite proud of that moment that I have with the audience there, where we kind of bond over that. That's special.
33:03
Tina Jøhnk Christensen
Is there anything in your mind that is off limits in comedy?
33:08
Mette Lisby
I think there's no topic as such, but I think the angle is everything. You can talk about anything, but you can't laugh at the people who are hurt. You have to point the finger at those who are responsible for the hurting. That's it, basically. At least if you talk about, yeah, all things political, there's a system and you can point fingers at that and not about the people who are the victims of it.
33:37
Tina Jøhnk Christensen
Does anything make you blush?
33:40
Mette Lisby
No, not so much.
33:44
Tina Jøhnk Christensen
Why am I not surprised?
33:47
Mette Lisby
It's funny because I'm quite, you know, shy, private. Like I don't flaunt a lot of my life. But there's an onstage thing where you can make jokes with anything, and that's a different thing, I think.
34:01
Tina Jøhnk Christensen
Is it harder to be a standup comedian these days than it was when you broke through, you think? There's a different climate.
34:10
Mette Lisby
It's a different challenge that we didn't face. Maybe the idea that people can tape you and take one sentence from your show out of context and people all over the world can blow up and go, Oh my God, how could that idiot say so and so?
34:24
Mette Lisby
Of course, that thing about being taken out of context, that's horrible, you can't do anything, you can't say anything. Because if one word can get you in trouble because it's taken out of context, then it's getting difficult.
34:37
Tina Jøhnk Christensen
You mentioned the UK a few times. You moved there in 2004, I believe. Is that correct?
34:43
Mette Lisby
Yes.
34:43
Tina Jøhnk Christensen
And you did really well as a comedian there. You did many shows. How did your comedy translate to the British audience?
34:52
Mette Lisby
That took a while. Not so much the humor itself, because as Danes we are very much used to both American and English humor. I grew up on Fawlty Towers, and we saw Friends and Roseanne and all that. So it's not the humor itself that's difficult. It's the level of the topics.
35:12
Mette Lisby
I assumed, for instance, in London, that everybody knew that Peter Schmeichel, who was playing for Manchester United at the time, I thought everybody knew he was Danish. And they didn't. They knew, of course, who he was, but they didn't know he was Danish. I thought everybody knew Richard Nielsen was Danish. They didn't. Assuming that people know a lot of things about Denmark, I learned very quickly that they really don't.
35:35
Tina Jøhnk Christensen
And when in your life did you realize that you were funny? What was the first laugh that you got? Was it something you did as a child? A lot of comedians talk about the fact that they were the family's clown and could make everybody laugh. Was it like that for you?
35:51
Mette Lisby
I think that came more in school for me. But I do remember the first time that I was conscious about making people laugh. I was maybe four years old or something. My dad worked in a company called Industri Renovationen and he was a shipping man. And my mom had me say, she had guests one evening, and she asked me, so where does your daddy work? And I pronounced it wrong.
36:15
Mette Lisby
And so they left, and then she asked me again, and I thought, why is she asking me? She knows where he's working. And then I thought, oh, she's asking me because I say it wrong. And then I kept saying it wrong because it made them laugh. So for a while there, I was just saying stuff wrong to make people laugh. And that was when I, when I kind of figured out, Oh, I can get this reaction if I say things in a certain way?
36:40
Tina Jøhnk Christensen
And you were also a TV host. Very popular, very successful. And you did a program with your friend Maise Njor, a few decades ago that was called Ugen dek gak. I'm not sure how to translate it, but I'm trying to go for "the week that won't." And you were co-writers on a book called Hostesaft for sjælen, bund eller resten i håret.
37:00
Tina Jøhnk Christensen
I'm sorry for those who don't understand Danish, because that was a difficult one. The title could translate into something like "cough syrup for the soul, button up, or the rest of it in your hair." The book project is the two of you corresponding with each other. Talk about the idea behind it, and how it came about.
37:20
Mette Lisby
Ugen dek gak actually was a British format called Have I Got News For You, and that's still running in England.
37:26
Tina Jøhnk Christensen
But did you like my translation?
37:29
Mette Lisby
I did like your translation a lot. I think it was clever and funny. And Maise was a journalist on that show. And so we knew each other quite well because with deadlines and [sound effect], the environment gets a little rough and you say stuff as it is.
37:44
Mette Lisby
So we knew each other very well, even though we only worked together for a couple of years. And then we hadn't really seen each other a lot. And then actually in COVID, she wrote me when I was living in LA. She wrote me and said, hey, these are weird times, and I just thought of you since you're so far away from your family. Is there anything I can do to help you?
38:04
Mette Lisby
I think we met twice actually in that 20 year period where one time she interviewed me, she was working as a journalist. She's been editor of Eurowoman, the Danish version. And so we met in kind of professional ways a couple of times over the years. And then she wrote me, and then we started writing and it was such a release to write to someone who knew you.
38:28
Mette Lisby
Because that's what I find, everybody will find in LA, is that you meet new people all the time. And that was actually quite nice to just write to someone who knew who you were before all that. So that just took on a life on its own, and we started writing these emails. She's done books like that before.
38:47
Mette Lisby
And then at a certain point we thought, oh, this could be a book. Because we were just basically writing diaries to each other. You didn't have anyone to talk to. Jesper and I was walking around in this huge house and we couldn't see people. And Maise was single, and so she didn't have anyone to talk to. So writing together actually was a great thing for us, and then it became a book.
39:11
Tina Jøhnk Christensen
And it's not like you haven't written before. You've been writing your own material for comedy. You've been writing for various outlets, media, women's magazines, newspapers. You've had columns, I believe.
39:23
Mette Lisby
Yeah, actually the first three years we were in LA, I wrote for Soendagsavisen in Denmark. Yeah, a weekly column.
39:30
Tina Jøhnk Christensen
So, you're not a newcomer. You are writing something at the time being. Can you tell us a little bit about what that is?
39:37
Mette Lisby
Yes, there's a book coming out later this year in the fall, which will be my first kind of fictional book which is not built on me writing columns, but it's a story. It's a script that I did that never found a home. And I just really liked the story so much. So when I did the book with my friend Maise, I talked to the publisher and said, hey, I have the script and they loved it.
40:04
Mette Lisby
So now it's becoming a book and I really enjoy that process of not waiting for the actors or not taking notes from the director, not waiting for all these things to fall into place, that it's just my process with the editors. I really enjoy that, and we're fortunate to be able to do that, so that's a huge thing. There's gonna be three books coming out like that series.
40:28
Tina Jøhnk Christensen
What genre are you writing?
40:31
Mette Lisby
It's a thriller, so it's a little different, yeah.
40:34
Tina Jøhnk Christensen
Exciting.
40:35
Mette Lisby
So it's quite a turn. That's one of the things I did a lot when I did screenplays. I get a lot of ideas for that kind of genre because there's a beginning and an end in that. I've always been fascinated with the math of crime stories and thrillers and stuff like that, and I do like thriller stories where there's a little more of a psychological element to it as well.
40:56
Tina Jøhnk Christensen
What do you feel is the difference between script writing and writing fiction novels?
41:02
Mette Lisby
Oh, I can tell you it very precisely because I felt that. And I didn't know it until I sat writing my book and thinking there's something missing here. And then I actually said to the guy at the publishing company, I said, I know the difference now. Writing a movie is you describe what happens. Writing a book is you describe how it feels to have that happening to you.
41:29
Mette Lisby
And that is quite a different thing, actually, even though, of course, the two things correspond. And movies turn into books and books turn into movies and stuff. But as a writer, that's quite a different perspective, obviously. It's a different layer that you have to put in there. So that's the difference. Or one of them, at least.
41:47
Tina Jøhnk Christensen
And Mette, my last question to you. You're quite impressive. You have done so many things in your career. I mentioned it in the beginning: acting, writing, standup comedy, there's not something you haven't dealt with. What is on your bucket list? What would you still like to achieve? How do you renew yourself to make sure that your job is still refreshing and interesting?
42:12
Mette Lisby
It's all about stories, basically, even if it's jokes, you know, I still write jokes down almost every day. And it's just that feeling, a little bit of that feeling from LA, knowing that at one point, something comes together. But I feel very strongly now with the bucket list, it's writing more books, you know. I have stories lined up that I'm very inspired by.
42:34
Mette Lisby
And I think writing books makes sense for me. That's where my focus is going to be, because I can use everything I ever learned into those books, into my stories. And maybe it's not going to be thrillers all the way, but it's just that feeling of telling stories that excites me so much, and I don't feel I need to conceptualize or reinvent. I don't think about it like that. I just get really passionate about a story or an idea. And yeah, that drives the whole thing.
43:05
Tina Jøhnk Christensen
Well, thank you so much, Mette, for being part of Danish Originals. We appreciate it very much.
43:11
Mette Lisby
So do I. Thank you. It was great fun.
43:17
Tina Jøhnk Christensen
For today's episode, Mette Lisby chose P.C. Skovgaard's A Beech Wood in May near Iselingen Manor, Zealand or Bøgeskov i maj. Motiv fra Iselingen from 1857 from the collection of the National Gallery of Denmark.
(Photographer: Anja Ekstrøm)
Mette Lisby
You've been listening to Danish Originals, a podcast series created in partnership with American Friends of the National Gallery of Denmark and the National Gallery of Denmark. This series is sponsored by Scan Design Foundation and Studio Haslund.
I'm your host Tina Jøhnk Christensen. This podcast is directed by Christian D. Bruun and produced by Teresa Lai and May Eleven Projects. Original music by Joachim Svare. Executive produced by Christian D. Bruun and Tina Jøhnk Christensen.
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