With hundreds of thousands of followers across TikTok and Instagram combined, there’s no question that Anisa Nandaula has garnered quite a fanbase. It’s also not hard to see why. Like many emerging talents in the creative space, Anisa’s star began to rise during the pandemic in Australia. After trying her hand at stand-up comedy, she posted more funny content on social media – and she’s never looked back since. These days, her content can range from jokes about interracial dating to childhood experiences and as one popular video is captioned: “the craziest thing to say to an African.”
Born in Uganda before moving to Australia with family when she was seven, Anisa says her comedy is very much inspired by her own lived experiences, and that includes the reality of growing up as a Black woman in regional Queensland.
“I feel like humour is a tool to talk about race and other social issues because it’s incredibly disarming,” she tells Missing Perspectives.
In May, Anisa is hitting the stage during Sydney Comedy Festival with her show, ‘You Can’t Say That’. We caught up with the comedian to hear more about the content she’s got in store. Check it out below:
Anisa, thank you for joining us at Missing Perspectives. To start, can you tell us a bit about your journey into comedy? What inspired you to become a comedian?
I started out as a slam Poet, and when Covid hit, I decided to try stand-up comedy because my friend had just been harassing me to do it. And when I stepped on stage for the first time, I immediately fell in love. I’ve never been certain about anything in my life I’m an incredibly indecisive person. However, the minute I got off stage, I knew that this is what I was gonna do for the rest of my life and no one could change my mind. I never had anything that inspired me to be a comedian because I never thought that I could do it. I never thought that I was funny or I could make anyone laugh. I was just really lucky that a comedian heard me doing poetry and he said that in between my poems, I was very funny
Your show at Sydney Comedy Festival is titled, You Can’t Say That. Can you share more about the inspiration behind the name?
The inspiration behind the name ‘You Can’t Say That’ came from the fact that every time I say things people are always taking it back and shocked that they’re coming out of my mouth. So I decided to make an entire show of things that the average person would respond with “you can’t say that”. These are the things that I find funny and these are the conversations that I enjoy having.
Your show explores your life as a Black woman in Australia, including the experiences of being an “awkward Black girl” and the societal pressures that come with it. How do you feel about the way humour can be a tool for change and bring awareness to topics of race, identity and other social issues?
I feel like humour is a tool to talk about race and other social issues because it’s incredibly disarming. The essence of humour is that the other person must understand what you’re saying in order to generate a laugh. Comedy is essentially just understanding and building bridges between my universe and yours so I think that to have a discussion around race and identity, comedy is the perfect way to do it.
You often talk about racism in your social media comedy videos. How much of this content is informed by your own lived experiences of facing discrimination growing up, and into adulthood?
Everything that I share on social media is derived from my personal experience. I think that the only things that go viral are things that are real and that touch people’s humanity. I just talk about my life and I put it online.
Relationships also play a role in your show, particularly with your boyfriend, your mum, and your classmate Rachel. How do these personal connections influence your comedy.
These personal relationships influence my comedy immensely. Because these are the people who I spend most of my time around and for my classmate, I feel like she was instrumental in how I’ve eaten the world and how I view myself and my place within it. And I’m the type of person where if something pisses me off, I will relive that conversation for the next 15 years, so comedy is a way to continue reliving it without people thinking I’m a psycho.
With more than 200,000 social media followers, how does social media shape your approach to comedy, and do you feel pressure to cater to online audiences in a certain way? How does it differ from appearing on stage for a stand-up set?
Social media shaped my approach to comedy because it just reminds me of the importance of authenticity and being present. Social media is about humanity. People want to feel like they’re watching a real human being with a real life so I just ensure that my comedy is always. I never feel the pressure of catering to my online audience because they follow me because of who I am so that allows me just to be myself and if they don’t like it, they know where the Unfollow button is. I think that doing comedy online versus in real life is, both of those things are very similar. Like you’ll create something – it’ll either succeed or fail and then you analyse why it succeeded or failed and then you try again and create more content. So to me, the process for both of those are exactly the same. Obviously I prefer comedy in real life because I like to have a genuine real life connection with people.
How do you decide how much you want to share about your personal life, especially when there’s so much pressure on social media to share and document every detail of our lives?
I am an over-sharer in my everyday life. If you hang out with me for 10 minutes, I will tell you every single thing there is to know about my life so personally, I do not have an issue with sharing every single detail of my life. I only draw the line when it comes to my family because there’s things that they don’t want me talking about. So out of respect I won’t talk about those things only because they asked me too, but if it were up to me, everyone would know about the size and colour of my stool.
For other young women hoping to forge a career in comedy – especially Black women and other women of colour – what advice would you offer them?
The advice that I would give them is step one, make sure that you love this craft. Make sure that you are obsessed with it because that love and obsession will be your light when things get dark and difficult. Once you know for sure that you love this with all of your being and it’s the only thing you wanna do… it’s the only thing that you wanna talk about and you live drink think eat sleep comedy… then everything else will come from there. I would say write down your goals and try to be methodical about how you achieve them so write, “this is what I want” and then break it down. “These are the steps as to how I’m gonna get there and then achieve that goal” and just keep keep achieving goals. And if you’re having trouble achieving a specific goal try to surround yourself with people who can help you or guide you or teach you.
Finally, if you could have any famous person attend your Sydney Comedy Festival show, who would it be and how would you roast them?
If I could get one famous person to attend my comedy show, I would get Elon Musk… I also think that he would hate my comedy show and that’s why I would really enjoy for him to sit through one hour of it
Anisa Nandaula’s show, You Can’t Say That is on Friday, May 9 and Saturday, May 10 during the 2025 Sydney Comedy Festival at Enmore Theatre. Ticket details are available here.
This interview has been edited for length and clarity.
Top photo source: Sydney Comedy Festival
