Judith Lucy is back with a whole TV show to herself. Since gaining national exposure as a member of The Late show in the early ’90’s the popular comedian has been on radio and television, in films and become a published author. Now she’s off to explore religion in all its forms – it’s a journey that leads her to frank discussions with priests, nuns, psychics and guru’s galore. Judith spoke to OUTinPerth contributor Clint Little about making the show.
Being a lapsed catholic myself, I wondered did the former good little Catholic girl in you feel intimidated questioning a priest about child abuse, gay marriage and the churches treatment of women?
Well you see that question would only come from someone raised a Catholic, because yes I was terrified, of all the things I did on the show that was easily the most nerve wracking thing because when I went to school it was so strongly ingrained in me to treat nuns and priests with respect. So yeah I found that very tricky and if you told me before I’d done the interview that I would have mentioned having sex with an acrobat to him I would have been pretty surprised about that as well.
You’ve been on stage or in the media for over twenty years now, does anything still surprise you?
What people believed surprised me on more than one occasion, in episode three I spoke to a woman who did some re-birthing and when I asked her what do you think happens when you die, Pauline said without batting an eyelid ‘Well I’m not really interested because I’m not going to’ and I thought well your swimming against the tide there but good for you.
You’ve said that reading Eat, Pray, Love, made you want to smoke, drink, pass out, but did you not think to make a stop in Bali on your spiritual journey to see if there was a chance of getting an epiphany from Xavier Bardem?
Well you know the really weird thing is quite accidentally I have had my own little eat pray love. A couple of years back I went to Italy with my birth mother Jan, and I can say if I spent four months in Italy just eating what I liked and not doing any exercise I would have just been fat constipated and miserable. Of course I was sharing a twin room with my 70 year old birth mother so not exactly a hotbed and on occasion those twin beds were so close together that I’d wake up in the middle of the night and think good lord have I been involved in a geriatric lesbian romp, so that was my Italian experience.
I went to India as part of the show then once we finally finished everything, for the first time in my life I did go to Bali for two weeks but no action I’m afraid, lots of massages and one quite odd massage where I was topless so that’s as close as I got to an older Brazilian man sexually opening me as a flower.
Having consulted with priests, psychics, Buddhists and Aboriginal elders…are you any closer to a spiritual revelation?
Of course I should say well you’ll have to tune in to find out, but the answer is no basically but I must say that the people I connected to the most along the way were the people who basically went , you know what, we don’t know what the hell the answer is.
So I guess my feeling is that I still don’t know anything about anything and the only people I’m really suspicious of are the people who say you know what I have got the answer and I’m just entirely right and you’re just entirely wrong and by the way if I don’t like what you believe in I think you’re going to go to hell.
Judith Lucy’s Spiritual Adventure screens on ABC1 on Wednesdays at 9:30pm.
Clint Little
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