Chloe Petts has opened up about life, comedy, and activism in an exclusive chat with Metro.co.uk (Picture: Matt Stronge)
Chloe Petts is taking the comedy world by storm, and is getting pretty darn’ angry while she’s at it.
After being really quite nice in an effort to advance trans rights in her hit show Transience last year, Chloe is changing tact.
‘Last year I tried to solve transphobia by being polite, but over the course of the last year transphobia has got worse,’ Chloe explained in an exclusive chat with Metro.co.uk.
‘So I guess I better start getting angry, then maybe you’ll listen to me then.’
And that she does in her new show, Chloe Petts: If You Can’t Say Anything Nice, which is an ‘exploration of [her] anger’ and is hitting up the Edinburgh Fringe as we speak.
‘We don’t like to admit it because in the UK we like to think we’re wonderful and polite, but actually, anger is really fun,’ she said.
The star tried a polite approach to activism last year, and is now exploring her inner anger (Picture: Matt Stronge)
Chloe’s show is called If You Can’t Say Anything Nice, and she’s taking it to Edinburgh this year (Picture: Matt Stronge)
However, in real life Chloe isn’t ‘gammon incarnate’ with rage (a brilliant term she coined) but seems incredibly easy going, and very down to earth.
Chloe reckons we need to balance out the viscous politicalisation of trans with some funny, because, as she eloquently put it, ‘trans people aren’t going to steal your children in the night’ – by the way.
But while on-stage anger as a comic has historically been a luxury reserved mostly for men (‘her anger was too much‘ vs ‘he was scathingly funny‘), Chloe reckons she can get away with it because she looks like a ‘white bloke’.
‘Sometimes I do wonder whether I get away with a lot more than what my other female or feminine colleagues get away with, because I sort of do look like what people think a comedian should look like: I do look like a white bloke who is a has a lot of confidence in his own ideas.’
‘So yeah, sometimes I wonder if that’s why I can get away with it, and why people sort of don’t find it distasteful, because it kind of matches up to what they’re used to.’
While Chloe hasn’t hasn’t boycotted any comedy gigs for her trans activism – and she hopes that isn’t because she’s a ‘soulless corporate sellout’ but just hasn’t had to – she has for another reason.
‘I’ve refused to perform somewhere because there was a sex pest on the bill,’ she said.
A well-known sex pest? To that, Chloe answered with a tight-lipped, wide-eyed nod.
Last November Katherine Ryan claimed in her bombshell interview with Louis Theroux that it was an ‘open secret’ in the entertainment industry a prominent comedian was an alleged sexual predator.
Chloe actually decided to do comedy because she was – as she put it – the least funny family member (Picture: Matt Stronge)
But Katherine’s revelations stopped there, as she cited some ‘very good lawyers’ as the reason she didn’t want to risk her mortgage on naming the alleged ‘perpetrator of sexual assault’.
Moving on…
Why did Chloe want to get into comedy? ‘I was always the least funny one in my family,’ she remembered.
‘Comedy was always like a currency and my family, and I think maybe if you looked at this on a deep subterranean level, I’m probably just trying to prove to my family that I can be funny too. I hope they think it now and I think they do,’ she chuckled.
But it’s not all been totally smooth sailing – as any comedian with an ounce of self awareness (which they all happen to have bundles of) will tell you.
Like many, in the days surrounding Chloe’s period she has a confidence crisis of sorts. But that’s not helpful for a comedian, whose self-assuredness is their currency.
‘I would say, three days a month when I get my period, I have one of the most intense confidence crises anyone could have had in the history of humankind,’ she said.
‘I feel like the build up to the Edinburgh Fringe you always have a confidence crisis because you’re doing previews of this new show.
‘You’ll have just finished touring your old show, and your old show will be completely finished and you know it inside out and you’re playing with it and you’re doing really fun stuff with it.
‘And then you come to this new show, and you’re like, “Oh, well, this is s**t, what’s happening here?”‘
On that note, you can catch the brilliant Chloe at the Pleasance Above in the Pleasance Courtyard from August 11 to 13, and 15 to 27.
In all seriousness, expect a hoot-and-a-half from this punchy, exciting comedian – and she’s not all about activism, but what really propels her back to the stage is a fondness for making people laugh.
‘I said something last year, and it hasn’t changed the world. So why try and change the world with what you’re saying?,’ she said.
‘Just try and make that nice room of people laugh, and make them think about something in a tiny bit of a different light.’
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The star is done with being nice.